Goodness and Power by David Brooks
Originally posted on April 28, 2015 | Discussed on Friday, May 1, 2015

There was an interesting poll result about Hillary Clinton last week. According to a Quinnipiac poll, 60 percent of independent voters believe that she has strong leadership qualities. But when these same voters were asked if she is honest and trustworthy, the evaluations flipped. Sixty-one percent said she is not honest and trustworthy. Apparently there are a lot of Americans who believe that Hillary Clinton is dishonest and untrustworthy but also a strong leader.

Let’s set aside her specific case for a second. These poll results raise a larger question: Can you be a bad person but a strong leader?

Read the Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/opinion/david-brooks-goodness-and-power.html

Where Reason Ends and Faith Begins by T. M. Luhrmann
Originally posted July 26, 2014 | Discussed on Friday, August 1, 2014

STANFORD, Calif. — Not long ago, I was at an event in which many people, most of them professors, were arguing for the existence of things that many of their colleagues did not believe in. Someone gave a talk in which he explained that he knew that U.F.O.s existed even though all the best evidence for them turned out to be false. Others spoke sympathetically about shamanic healing, reincarnation and near-death visions. But then a woman described her research on what it was like to be dead, which she had based on reports from mediums who claimed to have had the dead speak through them. She cited, as evidence of the benevolence in the afterlife, an Anglican priest, Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson, who wrote a book attacking spiritualism while alive but who, she said, recanted the book after his death in 1914. The group stared at her in disbelief. This, they felt, was flabby-minded.

Read the Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/t-m-luhrmann-where-reason-ends-and-faith-begins.html