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Making Better Humans
If you’ve never seen the work of Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, you’re missing a treat. Cesar is a man who has mastered teaching people how to manage their dogs in a way that I’ve never seen anyone else do. He does it with kindness, humor, and consistency:
According to Millan, a common pitfall for American dog owners is to give a great deal of affection with very little exercise and even less discipline. He encourages owners to understand the effect their own attitudes, internal emotions and physical postures have on a dog’s behavior, counseling owners to hold strong posture (i.e., shoulders high and chest forward) and to project energy that is calm-assertive. [Italics are mine.]
Millan’s TV programs are centered on the rehabilitation of dogs while Millan concurrently educates the dog owners in his dog-handling philosophy. Conversations with owners typically revolve around his philosophy: that healthy, balanced dogs require strong ‘pack leadership’ from their owners, while Millan demonstrates how owners can achieve and maintain a leadership role with their dogs.
Georgina Ross is back in England for the first time since she was a toddler. She has no memory of it. She grew up in a station in the Cape Colony where her father was a missionary. After her father was killed by renegade natives (who also killed most of his Christian converts), her mother decided to return to England with Georgina. Then her mother died and was buried at sea.
Over and over again, I’ve allowed myself to agonize over the information available on the state of transgenderism. Much of the focus is on the ways that children’s lives have been manipulated and destroyed, with some of their parents speaking of the difficulty of trying to understand their children’s predicament. In a one-hour documentary called “Dead Name” (referring to the given name that a child has rejected), the anguish, bewilderment, and horror of the parents of three children, two boys and one girl, is difficult to witness.
Father Lovasik didn’t mince words. He made it clear that gossip is a hateful activity, and those who indulged in it were to be held in contempt.
Now that the Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives, it has become crystal clear that there will be no federal wealth tax on high-net-worth individuals for at least the next two years. Unfortunately, as with so many bad policy proposals, the push for a wealth tax has instead generated 
In a recent speech, Rand Paul gave a powerful presentation regarding the millions of dollars we are giving to Ukraine. He likened our situation to a conundrum that Davy Crockett faced when he served in Congress. (Most of us perceive Crockett as an iconic symbol of the West, but he also served in Congress from 1827 to 1835.) And Paul told a story that speaks to our continual donation of funds and military equipment to Ukraine and how it extends a long, expensive, and debilitating process of trying to be generous to other countries under the guise of national security.
Ishmael Jones hunts monsters. He solves mysteries and uncovers dark secrets. He works for Britain’s Organization, which does not officially exist within government. He feels like he is doing some good there, and working for the Organization allows him to maintain his anonymity.
“Belief” in “climate change” is a signifier of a vast raft of opinions and stances. Those who “deny” are guilty of ecocide, the primary sin of our time. It supersedes all other sins, because it is existential murder of the broadest sense.
In a time when the term “equal rights” has taken a beating and people feel that equity is the only acceptable goal, I infer from Angelou that equal rights should be ubiquitous. We shouldn’t have to fight over them, or distort them so that some people get more of them than others. Or the term, “fair play.” Today we would use the term “equal opportunity,” even though many people would insist that equal opportunity is unacceptable unless we get equal results, which is impossible to attain. And justice: neither the rich man nor the poor man should have more access to justice just because of their circumstances. Unfortunately, the political Left would turn all these assumptions on their head.
Recently, American unions have pushed hard to increase their power in the employment market. Unions may strike and thereby shut down a reluctant firm to extract a favorable deal, and will often do so even though that strike action imposes economic losses on union members. But just how hard will unions press to get a strongly pro-union labor contract? Last week in 
On January 10, 2023, New York Governor Kathy Hochul 
“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca