About two years ago I scrapped my website and stopped writing my blog that was focused on the moral dimension in education, society, and politics. At the time, there were a number of reasons for that decision, which in retrospect was probably too hasty and ill-advised.
To begin with, as I saw the increasing threats both here and abroad to democracy and public morality, I confess I began to lose faith in the value of assessing such matters through my writing, especially since I seemed only able to talk about dangers and failures while being essentially clueless about realistic steps to achieve solutions. Was I not just adding to the climate of negativity?
Then too, while I did have a group of loyal readers, it was small, and I began to doubt that that any impact was not sustaining enough for me to balance out the amount of time the blog required for research and writing.
And perhaps a final nail, the cost of maintaining the website was going to increase by 300%. And the website was admittedly of very limited use in publicizing my book on moral education.
So, what has led me now to change my mind? Some factors are not new. The previous decision had been accompanied by a nagging sense that I had made the wrong turn. Why was I not using what abilities I did have to take a stand and play a positive role, in however small a way. Silence is acceptance and complicitly; it is not a moral approach. Better to remember that Camus’ Sisyphus was smiling as he descended the mountain and prepared to roll the rock once again back up to the top and be guided by the kind of perspective expressed by Howard Zinn:
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act….
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Isn’t this a lesson we try to teach our children? As a retired educator, shouldn’t I be acting as I had preached? Besides, I have continued to think of issues swirling about in the news that I could be writing about to help myself and any reader figure out what is really going on, particularly from the moral point of view.
A more immediately compelling reason arose when I was presented with the offer of a January video interview about my book on moral education, prompted by some research that indicated the book was important and deserved to be better known. And I still strongly believe that however much there is a tendency to look for political solutions to our problems, it is really in how we educate our children that has the potential to lead us to form a more perfect union in the future. This our founders believed. In any case, I now needed a website to house the interview as a podcast.
As I prepare to launch the new website in January, I am already thinking of topics to address in upcoming posts. Two of them seem particularly pressing. First, the need for a reasoned counter to the emerging MAGA doctrine that empathy is toxic. Allie Stuckey, Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, and the late Charlie Kirk, among others, have espoused the idea or implied that empathy is having a negative affect on or even destroying Western (Christian) Civilization. This view is based on misconceptions that need to be challenged. In reality, empathy is often a factor in moral behavior; and that needs to be understood and valued.
A second topic may be more controversial for my readers as it tries to sketch the role of the Democratic Party in its opposition to MAGA. While for all intents and purposes that party is the only viable oppositional force at this point of time, it needs to avoid the temptation to characterize the battle as simply one between good and evil, between good people and bad people, or between smart people and stupid people. And its efforts will not be ultimately successful without empathy and a vision that rights our cultural and moral bearings.
And so, welcome to the new website. May it stimulate some thinking and debate. My focus will continue to be on endeavoring to provide thoughtful posts rather than frequent ones. I have included on the new website a selection of former posts that remain relevant to today.
Do not hesitate to share your comments and sign up to receive notices of posts from me. Thank you.
Michael
January 2026