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When children walked to school

When I was a boy, my brothers and I walked more than 2 miles every weekday. This was because we lived a little bit more than a mile from the school we attended. Our home was in the Dominican neighborhood of San Rafael, California, which was named for Dominican College, the then-all-girls Catholic college that was located there. Our school was at St. Raphael Parish, the home of Mission San Rafael, which was founded by Spanish Franciscan missionaries in 1817. Our route took us through a pleasant residential neighborhood of single-family homes and then into the business center of the ...

Phones versus play

When I was a kid, childhood meant playing on the street, riding my bike, hanging out with friends. Most kids now experience a different childhood. Jonathan Haidt's bestselling book, "The Anxious Generation," talks about that. He calls it "a tragedy in two acts." "Act One, we lose the ...

Charlie Kirk’s free speech, anti-violence legacy

For those of us of a certain age, the assassination of Charlie Kirk brought back memories of other momentous assassinations -- the moment of disbelief and then stomach-turning horror on first hearing the news, the sense that events were tilting wildly out of kilter, the fear that more terrible ...

Trump’s Phase 2 now begins

We are now witnessing the start of what might be seen as Phase 2 of Trump's efforts to eradicate political opposition. Phase 1 has centered on silencing criticism. It has featured retribution toward people Trump deemed personal "enemies" — not just Democrats who had led the criticisms and ...

Charlie Kirk: Converter

Charlie Kirk has been called many things, including an influencer, especially of young people. A better label might be "converter." The power to speak truth in a way that changes a political mindset is better than influencer. Kirk possessed that power which led to his murder by a 22-year-old ...

The siren song of despair

Charlie Kirk was a one-man answer to campus illiberalism. He rose to prominence at a time when university administrators and progressive students were working in league to make campuses no-go zones for conservatives. They effectively banned them from faculties. They didn't invite them on ...