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Another round of smoke reminds us all: Nature does not respect man’s opinions

The year is 2023. Beginning in April and continuing through October, over 7,000 wildfires will burn 18.5 million hectares of Canadian wilderness. Locally, much of June would be dominated by repeated rounds of air quality issues as dangerous, particulate-heavy smoke would move through Pennsylvania. The year is 2026. Beginning in April and continuing through the present day, over 3,000 wildfires have burned over 2.4 million hectares of Canadian wilderness. Locally, the last week of July has served as a reminder of the 2023 smoke season — a term which we must begrudgingly begin to ...

The Golden Rule

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The ancient maxim, whose precise origins have been lost to history, appears across cultures and civilizations. Ancient Egypt, Greece, India, China and Persia (modern-day Iran) all had iterations of this fundamental ethical principle as early as a thousand years before it appeared in the Gospel of Matthew. The sentiment crosses religious boundaries as well, appearing in Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Islamic and Confucian traditions, to name only a few. To say the Rule is a foundational principle of human culture is perhaps even an ...

America, Land of Hope, at 250

America is the best nation in the world, producing countless famous people and great deeds, making world-leading innovations, producing many of the world’s most influential artists, entrepreneurs and leaders, containing an expansive set of cultures — and it’s all backed by assurances of personal freedom and the ability to be your best self. America is the worst nation in the world, built on a history of crimes against humanity: we violently executed Manifest Destiny, forced women and children to walk the Trail of Tears, brought Nazis into the fold with Operation Paperclip and ...

Code Noir a reminder for states to clean up antiquated laws

In yesterday’s edition of The Express, we published a story about the French National Assembly’s unanimous decision to repeal the country’s long-dormant Code Noir, or Black Code. Enacted in 1685 under King Louis XIV, this decree was designed to regulate slavery across France’s colonial empire. The law, which quietly remained part of the legal code for 178 years after the country’s abolition of slavery, classified human beings as property and permitted them to be worked, beaten, sold, raped and murdered. In France and around the world, many were disturbed by the realization ...

Memorial Day offers somber reminders ahead of America’s 250th birthday

As we approach the dawn of our 250th year as a nation, we would be remiss if we did not take time to reflect on the sacrifices of those countless ancestors who gave their lives to help bring us to this point. We find it particularly poignant at this time that the prototypes for Memorial Day were originally created in honor of the Union soldiers who died during the Civil War — a stark reminder that, were it not for their backs and their lives, the United States would never have made it to its 100th birthday, let alone its 250th. In our modern moment of great division, high emotions ...

Kingfish politics are bad for everyday Americans

No matter how we may try to sanitize the past, the fact remains that history is an ugly place filled with sporadic wondrous people doing great deeds. They are, however, the exception and not the rule. We are left to grapple with this in the wake of last week’s Supreme Court ruling, which will, in effect, return swaths of the country to a time of voting rights prior to the Civil Rights era in the 1960s. We all want to believe that we — as an American people, and as an American country — are better than to use racism in the year of our Lord 2026. Unfortunately, there is a ...