BY RICHARD C. GROSS “We the people are the rightful masters of the Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln The sitting president of a mighty nation founded on a body of laws, Donald J. Trump, agreed…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” Thomas Jefferson It started for me, as with millions of American kids, in first grade: Reading. It was the mid-1940s, and letters spelling “see Dick run…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” George Santayana, 1922 Russia methodically is destroying a neighboring independent democratic country and is accused of committing mass atrocities, war crimes that include evidence of executions of hundreds of civilians. Yet American far-right radicals applaud Russian President…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.” Marcus Tullius Cicero Far-right white Republican senators, tossing aside decency, decorum and respect, ganged up on Black Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in a despicable display of unprovoked arrogance, shamelessly asking her…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.” Jesse Jackson Republican conservatives in state legislatures, pushed by far-right ideologues, are taking apart liberal democracy little by little, looting the future for millions of Americans. They’re destroying our freedoms. Undoubtedly inspired by racist Donald Trump’s denigration…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky should get the Nobel Peace Prize for unifying the West to fight for liberal democracy and combat a major symbol…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Albert Einstein A rusted Russian Iron Curtain may be descending on a vulnerable corner of Eastern Europe, lowered by a ruthless dictator trying…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.” Thurgood Marshall, associate Supreme Court Justice, 1967–1991. Things really must be getting bad if polite, deferential, calm and peaceable Canadians…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “’Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind.” William Shakespeare, Gloucester, King Lear, Act IV, Scene 1 The lying of Republicans spreads like the coronavirus, both with different variants. Now the Republicans are telling us to believe the mob that invaded the Capitol, leading to…