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Here’s something I’ve learned about growing older: there’s always more growing to do. Every time I pause to draw a self-satisfied breath at how wise I am becoming—how I finally learned my lesson, avoided repeating the same sticky mistake, saw an opportunity in time to seize it—I catch a whiff of a new challenge bearing …

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. To me, it is a sacred text. Article 1 is as beautiful, as affecting, as inspiring as anything in the deepest spiritual teachings of this world: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and …

A reader send me this great blog featuring lyrics and videos of songs about Barack Obama created by musicians with roots around the world—Africa, Mexico, the Caribbean and beyond. Some of these artists vote in the U.S., some cannot. Why do musicians beyond our own borders care so much about one of the candidates in …

It’s kind of a stressful time in my personal soap opera. Every once in a while I pause to give myself a boost, repeating two words that have a remarkable ability to lift my spirits: President Obama! When friends are in the vicinity, I tend to add a few more words of rational exuberance, such …

The same qualities Hillary Clinton is displaying now—commitment, tenacity, fortitude in the face of opposition and ridicule—need to be cultivated by anyone willing to stand up for an unpopular position. The thing is, it matters greatly whether that position derives from a wounded certainty of one’s own merit and therefore entitlement, as I’m afraid is …

A couple of weeks ago, Adam Liptak of the New York Times reported from the front lines of the U.S. prison-industrial complex: The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a …

Never in my lifelong observation of politics have I seen an election to match this one for extravagant theatricality: Laughter! Tears! Elation! Nausea! This campaign is like a periodic table of human capability, from venal self-interest to hermetic self-delusion, from moral blindness to moral grandeur. To find another story that encompasses as much of the …