I’ll approach this initial Posting by answering some questions no one has yet asked but might.
Q. Why are you creating this blog? Aren’t there enough of them already?
A. My guess is that there are probably too many blogs out there. But I’m creating this one anyway, because I think it’s necessary. I’ve gathered a group of excellent writers together who all feel an urgent need to express themselves about the future of the United States of America.
Q. Why the urgency and why now?
A. I grew up in the aftermath of World War 2, the Korean War, and the Communist hysteria of the fifties. On October 26, 1962, I stood on the quad of the Columbia University Campus along with hundreds (maybe thousands, I was too dazed to count) of other students waiting to see if we were going to be nuked along with the rest of New York City as a result of our standoff with the Soviets over Cuba. I experienced the horrors of the civil rights movement, Vietnam, Watergate, the Iran hostage crisis and the Israeli-Arab wars of the sixties and seventies. More recently were the financial crashes of 1987 and 2007, nine-eleven, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nuclear brinksmanship of North Korea, the threat of Iran, and the fight against ISIS, all of which have exposed an underbelly of isolationism and bigotry not seen in the United States since the 1930s.
Why now? Because the divisions in our country that were revealed and exacerbated by the 2016 election have left me more fearful about our future than at any time in my seventy-three years.
Q. What difference will this blog make?
A. Maybe none. But the lessons of history are clear: when people who are concerned about the future sit back and do nothing, things invariably get worse. And the lessons of my own life have taught me that standing up for what I believe is right usually produces results beyond anything I imagined.
I’ll let the diverse group of people who agreed to join in this venture introduce and speak for themselves, but here’s what I’m certain we all share in common. If we tell the truth, engage in meaningful, rational dialogue, and relentlessly address everything we perceive as a threat to the principles and values were raised with, we will at least make people think and at most affect their ideas and behavior in positive ways. We will not engage in name-calling or political rhetoric, we will not mock or belittle anyone, and we will respect any opinion presented in that spirit. Maybe we can help identify a meaningful way forward out of the chaos we currently find ourselves in.
America the Beautiful 
Well, good luck, Alan! It’s a worthy goal.
Why not try to give donald trump a chance. Let’s see what he can accomplish. His personality leaves a lot to be desired but his actions are a different story. Love barry
This blog is an example of an important form of discourse. I will applaud everything the President and the Congress does to strengthen our country and oppose everything that either of the two branches of government does to weaken it. Responsible conversations should always be encouraged.
We will applaud everything the President does to strengthen our country and oppose everything he does to weaken it.
Voting for the President of the U.S. should be an action taken seriously by the voter. The vote itself should be a reflection of a person’s core values. It should be realized that a person’s core values are not all weighted equally. As this last election evolved it appeared that one party, the Democratic Party sought to win hoping that the ‘herd mentality’ of years gone by would kick in. That is, the lead in period to the election saw the Democratic party try to rouse the passions of the traditional party voter base knowing that their party traditionally outnumbered that of their opposing party. That was a strategic mistake.
The sentiments in the various global democratic political arenas were rapidly changing as a reflection of numerous factors with the most influential undoubtedly being the manifestation of the infiltration of unfathomable acts of terrorism in otherwise peaceful countries and regions of the world.
Secretary Clinton was apparently receiving bad advice apparently for quite some time. She made many missteps. That is, she made too many missteps to stay credible enough to become the leader of the free world in its current state.
The Democratic Party and Secretary Clinton had failed to demonstrably address the fear of terrorism and its impact on the U.S. electorate. The bombing of the USS Cole, the two bombings of the WTC, et al were not meaningfully responded to by President Bill Clinton or Secretary Clinton. When Secretary Clinton stated “what difference does it make” in regard the Libyan, Benghazi Consulate raid and the deaths caused by the terrorists there, she stepped into a deep pothole that opened her future up to deep criticism.
Both President Obama and Secretary Clinton were showing weakness in support of Israel at a time when past weak Middle East relationships were getting weaker. For example, many voices were telling the White House that Iran was not trustworthy and guess what, they are and were not and Iran cost the U.S. taxpayers a fortune for no gain in global or U.S. safety or security.
Israel is the eyes and ears in the Middle East for global democracies and any expression or act that seemingly weakens our bond with Israel weakens U.S. safety as well as the democratic countries of the rest of the world.
Donald Trump made his positions on Israel. global terrorism, homeland security, et al very clear from the outset of his campaign. In the end, these were the core issues that mattered most to me.
I like the part where you say:
“We will not engage in name-calling or political rhetoric, we will not mock or belittle anyone, and we will respect any opinion presented in that spirit. ”
That’s enough to get me back to see if you can do it. I’m pulling for you.
The biggest issues facing the world are global warming and the threat of nuclear war. Either of these can kill hundreds of millions of people. Terrorism is way down the list of threats to human safety. On average maybe a few hundred peopled killed per year, even including the world trade center. Compare that to about 30,000 a year from guns (2/3 suicide), about 35,000/year from automobiles, even more from drug overdoses. While every life is valuable, I think it is important to focus of the biggest threats rather than vote based on the tiny ones.
Should we determine national policy on the basis of four people being murdered at Benghazi? Are terrorist victims more valuable human beings than those killed by drunk drivers?
Scientifically speaking the biggest threats to the survival of humanity and the planet are an asteroid or some other stellar object colliding into the earth. Also on top of that list is an untreatable airborne disease that could eradicate all human and most animal and plant life. The threat of nuclear war, if it would to occur, will be a decision made by a terrorist or a fanatic leading a nation or group of egotistical homicidal individuals who have obtained the capacity to launch or set off those types of weapons. Fanatics often lack sufficient sanity or reasoning power to care about the consequences of their actions. I am not sure that much could be done about global warming in a human’s lifetime, however I do believe that the effort to control toxic or harmful emissions that thin the atmospheric ozone layer, giving it porosity, should be a communally agreed upon global mission.
The size of the threat of homicidal people is limited to their capabilities. Do you think that those fanatics that initiated the attack in Benghazi would not have done worse if they could have? Irrational individuals don’t think as clearly as you, or care to think any clearer than they do. Don’t think for a moment that those 9/11 fanatics who boarded those planes that killed all of those innocent people, if they could have, would not have placed nuclear weapons aboard the jetliners and used them to create mass destruction and hysteria, after all they killed themselves initiating those acts The number of people killed by just Stalin, Hitler, the Khmer Rouge (the Communist Party of Cambodia) were in the tens of millions.
Our borders need to be secure from internal and external harm by all means necessary.
The tendency toward chaos in the mathematical sciences is assumed as a fact and reflected upon as the theory of entropy. The famous singer Frank Sinatra once said that “fear is the enemy of logic.” If you examine what is happening to the political systems of many countries in the EU you will see the same or very similar shift that the USA is making. In much of the free world we are witnessing the politics of fear because self-protection, self-preservation and/or the survival instinct are basic traits embedded in human and most other life forms DNA.