America Today

Regarding letter writer Ilene O'Connell's comment that she was ashamed of her country for re-electing President Obama, how ashamed was she eight years ago when the country elected the president who is responsible for the soaring deficit Mr. Obama inherited ("Ashamed of the country that re-elected Obama," Nov. 11)? How ashamed is she that former President George W. Bush saddled us with not one but two unnecessary wars that added to the debt and resulted in the deaths of so many? Evidently, the country of which Ms. O'Connell is so ashamed preferred Mr. Obama over her candidate.

Are we capable of restoring American values and ending the governmental logjam created by Democrats and Republicans alike? Do we have the moxie and patriotism necessary to address the increasing challenges facing America today? The sequester struggle again suggests we can't - at least under current circumstances. But maybe, with a new political party, we can. Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's new book, "That Used to Be Us," describes America's regression since the Cold War ended and outlines our critical challenges posed by globalization, the information technology revolution, out-of-control debt, rising energy consumption and climate change.

"For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Committment in America Today," by Jebediah Purdy. Knopf. 207 pages. $22.At the tender age of 24, Purdy has written a thoughtful treatise on the masks we hide behind, the feelings we quash with ironic detachment and the detrimental effects of living life at a remove from reality.

Sunday night, many Americans watched the Academy Awards; celebrating Hollywood's finest, analyzing red carpet entrances, and critiquing stars' fashion choices. For a few hours we are offered a glimpse into a world of glitter and wealth foreign to most Americans. For many people, the Oscars offer a welcome distraction from the impending sequestration, the bitter partisan political atmosphere, the economic downturn, and the myriad crises playing out around the world. The Oscars acknowledge the year's top film professionals, from actors and directors, to cinematographers and editors.

This letter is in response to atheists who feel that Christians who are opposed to same-sex marriage are forcing their religion on atheists. That is not the case at all. We are seeking to maintain and uphold the Judeo-Christian standards that made America great in the first place. Ask yourselves. What kind of country would America have grown to be without the Ten Commandments? Has America changed for better or worse since prayer was taken out of schools? We need the standards set by the Founding Fathers who, though not perfect, based the nation's laws on a biblical foundation.

WASHINGTON -- It's hard to believe that just a year ago, in the wake of 9/11, the French newspaper Le Monde carried the headline "We are all Americans now." What a difference a year makes. Today, I figured, that headline would probably read: "We are all anti-Americans now." So I called Alain Frachon, the senior editor of Le Monde, and asked him how his paper was viewing America today. I was close. He said: "The same columnist who wrote that piece a year ago on 9/11 wrote another one this year on the first anniversary.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- For an itinerant demographic dabbler like me, always remembering that the plural of anecdote is data, the audience was almost too good to be true. There they were, about 500 people, mostly students, seated in the chapel at Oklahoma City University (OCU). It's a good school. And, mid-continent and Methodist, it's a good sample to assay as I go about my quest for my grail: trying to understand why educated young Americans are having so few children, what it means, and whether there is something gentle and reasonable that might be done about it.So I conducted a poll.

Theatre Project patrons will realize they're in for something different as soon as they see the physical set-up for Double Edge Theatre's "Song of Absence in the Fall of the Ashen Reign," which opens Wednesday. Instead of the usual bank of seats at one end of the room, the audience sits on elevatedbenches on either side of an elongated playing area.Doing things differently is practically a way of life for Double Edge founder and artistic director Stacy Klein, a native Baltimorean whose work is being seen in her hometown for the first time.

"The Day Before Yesterday: Reconsidering America's Past, Reconsidering the Present," by Michael Elliott. Simon & Schuster. 292 pages. $24.Since the days of Tocqueville, Americans have learned to understand themselves better and see themselves clearer through the eyes of foreign observers.Michael Elliott is not a passing visitor. Like Alistair Cooke, he came to this country from England, settled here and has been fascinated ever since by the American phenomenon. This book is a summary of his impressions as former Washington bureau chief of the Economist and as current editor of Newsweek International.

Washington. -- I don't get infuriated often, or about many things, but my blood was boiling last weekend when I first read figures about rising teen-age unemployment.And then I read about our soaring prison population.You probably read or heard that in April the nation's unemployment rate held steady at 7 per cent. But did the media, or any of our politicians, tell you that unemployment for teen-agers rose to 17 per cent for whites and an outrageous 46.8 per cent for blacks?It bodes ill for this society when one white teen-ager out of six can't find a job; but calamities await all of us when one black youngster out of two can't find work, even though they need and seek it desperately.

Regarding letter writer Ilene O'Connell's comment that she was ashamed of her country for re-electing President Obama, how ashamed was she eight years ago when the country elected the president who is responsible for the soaring deficit Mr. Obama inherited ("Ashamed of the country that re-elected Obama," Nov. 11)? How ashamed is she that former President George W. Bush saddled us with not one but two unnecessary wars that added to the debt and resulted in the deaths of so many? Evidently, the country of which Ms. O'Connell is so ashamed preferred Mr. Obama over her candidate.

This letter is in response to atheists who feel that Christians who are opposed to same-sex marriage are forcing their religion on atheists. That is not the case at all. We are seeking to maintain and uphold the Judeo-Christian standards that made America great in the first place. Ask yourselves. What kind of country would America have grown to be without the Ten Commandments? Has America changed for better or worse since prayer was taken out of schools? We need the standards set by the Founding Fathers who, though not perfect, based the nation's laws on a biblical foundation.

"Moral paralysis" is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Adolf Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them. It is a term that may be painfully relevant to our own times. Back in the 1930s, the governments of the democratic countries knew what Hitler was doing - and they knew that they had enough military superiority at that point to stop his military buildup in its tracks.

For an original, inexpensive theater experience, consider Saturday's minimarathon of stage readings. Three full-length plays will be read at the Fell's Point Corner Theatre. After the readings, the writers will take questions. The readings are part of a series sponsored by the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. The only requirement for submitting a play: The writer must have some connection to Maryland. Here is a preview of the works that will be read. Patricia Montley - a free-lance writer living in Lutherville, - adds a twist to the classic Greek comedy by Aristophanes in her Adaptation of Lysistrata.

WASHINGTON -- It's hard to believe that just a year ago, in the wake of 9/11, the French newspaper Le Monde carried the headline "We are all Americans now." What a difference a year makes. Today, I figured, that headline would probably read: "We are all anti-Americans now." So I called Alain Frachon, the senior editor of Le Monde, and asked him how his paper was viewing America today. I was close. He said: "The same columnist who wrote that piece a year ago on 9/11 wrote another one this year on the first anniversary.

"For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Committment in America Today," by Jebediah Purdy. Knopf. 207 pages. $22.At the tender age of 24, Purdy has written a thoughtful treatise on the masks we hide behind, the feelings we quash with ironic detachment and the detrimental effects of living life at a remove from reality.

The best memories? Gwynn Oak Park, I guess. All those summers with people gathered in the darkness, with that orchestration of fireworks in the sky and the imagined echoes of some ancient battles crackling above us, and everybody saying, ''Aaah'' in a kind of collective sigh.But it wasn't the fireworks exactly, so much as the notion of it all: It was the Fourth of July, so you belonged in a place like this. The sky was all lit up, and later a band would play patriotic songs, so this must be the America they kept telling us about.

PAUL McHUGH, head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, believes the ages of human history can be defined, at least in part, by psychiatric pathologies: scrupulosity (obsessive fear of sinning) in the age of religion, shell-shock during times of modern war, anorexia nervosa today, which he has labeled the ''age of self-absorption.''Choosing a few snappy words to seize the zeitgeist -- as the intellectuals say -- is usually a pastime of newspaper pundits, not psychiatrists. It requires a certain catholicity of interest.

PAUL McHUGH, head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, believes the ages of human history can be defined, at least in part, by psychiatric pathologies: scrupulosity (obsessive fear of sinning) in the age of religion, shell-shock during times of modern war, anorexia nervosa today, which he has labeled the ''age of self-absorption.''Choosing a few snappy words to seize the zeitgeist -- as the intellectuals say -- is usually a pastime of newspaper pundits, not psychiatrists. It requires a certain catholicity of interest.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- For an itinerant demographic dabbler like me, always remembering that the plural of anecdote is data, the audience was almost too good to be true. There they were, about 500 people, mostly students, seated in the chapel at Oklahoma City University (OCU). It's a good school. And, mid-continent and Methodist, it's a good sample to assay as I go about my quest for my grail: trying to understand why educated young Americans are having so few children, what it means, and whether there is something gentle and reasonable that might be done about it.So I conducted a poll.