The coming months will test the American experiment in self-government. It is a test we dare not fail.
Terry Newell is currently director of his own firm, Leadership for a Responsible Society. His work focuses on values-based leadership, ethics, and decision making. A former Air Force officer, Terry also previously served as Director of the Horace Mann Learning Center, the training arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and as Dean of Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute. Terry is co-editor and author of The Trusted Leader: Building the Relationships That Make Government Work (CQ Press, 2011). He also wrote Statesmanship, Character and Leadership in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and To Serve with Honor: Doing the Right Thing in Government (Loftlands Press 2015).
The coming months will test the American experiment in self-government. It is a test we dare not fail.
Regrets are not detours from living life "my way" but paving stones for it. They shape us. They are signals about who we should be.
Our reverence for the U.S. Constitution is understandable. But, like all living things, it is subject to disease and mortality. George Washington warned us to be careful.
Whatever dancing ability I gained in the last half century came from my wife's teaching. Until recently. After years of pleading, I finally agreed to dance lessons.
Concerns about our status in a group can lead our emotions to overtake logic. But this is not inevitable.
Those who wrote the Constitution feared the rise of political parties. They came anyway - for good and ill.
Children deserve a childhood which today, for too many, is fleeting and endangered. We all suffer as a result.
Whether we have ticker tape parades may be no big deal. But the lack of unifying goals and pride in what democracy can give the world is.
I am an American and Jewish. I always thought I was a good American and a good Jew. Yesterday, the President of the United States told me I was neither.
If we could savor at least some things in each day as if they might be the last time we would experience them, how much more joyous might our lives be?
We need cures for student loan debt that do not produce unintended side effects that warp society and the character of the students they are designed to help.
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) advances, we are beginning to confront a host of ethical issues. More will be coming as AI moves from science fiction to fact in our lives.
The president’s demand that four members of Congress who disagree with him should leave America misunderstands and disrespects the Constitution. It was designed to manage disagreement, not ensure unity.
The climb up the leadership ladder is often slow and and arduous. The fall is much faster. Those who have made it to the top can stay there, but only if their realize the dangers on the uppermost rung.
Because we’re good people, we sometimes permit ourselves to do things that are not so good. Knowing why can help us be better when we want to be.
On Independence Day, we should recall our founders, who took the hard way against the world's greatest power. The longer we take the easy way, the steeper the price we pay to address our nation’s problems..
Current immigration policy is a failure of elected officials. It divides us from each other, increases distrust of the law and pulls Americans away from their compassionate instincts.
As the recent concert of the Crozet Community Orchestra showed, there is a beating heart in every community, a spirit central to our lives and happiness as Americans. .
Americans love to shout “unfair!,” but what’s fair differs depends on who’s deciding. Checking our emotions, seeing the world through others' eyes, and seeking compromise help bridge gaps in our views.
Whenever the military is asked to serve political purposes, as it was recently in Japan, it threatens our Constitution.