France’s obsession with protecting its traditions was on display in last Sunday’s crucial legislative elections, during which far right parties gained enormous ground. And while those parties decry immigration as a threat to France's national glory, that glory — like America’s — was attained BECAUSE of its historic openness to exiles, immigrants and foreign ideas.

For years, foreign governments and domestic ideologues have been injecting disinformation into our national debate. Any attempt to crack down on disinformation risks suppressing legitimate speech, since telling the two apart is often difficult. Constitutional scholars and social media giants have been struggling with the problem for years.

The Gilded Age was a lively, important and troubling period in our country’s history. Troubling because it looks a lot like today.

That first Earth Day distilled a growing unease among Americans over how they had been treating God’s green earth. And so we gather today, as on every April 22 since 1970, in towns across the Berkshires and the nation, to celebrate Earth Day — with rallies, seminars, nature walks and neighborhood cleanups.

Easter is supposed to be about serious things — renewal, resurrection, redemption. But as a kid, it all sounded suspiciously like wishful thinking to columnist Donald Morrison. Which is why, he concluded, God invented baseball.

Reading the reports of census takers in 1950, you realize what an orderly, confident, welcoming country this was. It could be so again. 

Just when you thought it was safe to go in back in the water … oops!

Leaders throughout history have used religion, culture and history to justify all sorts of mischief and mayhem, and they’re trying today in both the U.S. and Russia. Invoking God or tradition doesn’t make those goals right.

A 1775 meeting at a Pittsfield tavern and its aftermath led not just to American independence, but also to a democratic model that captured the world’s imagination. At a time when those values seem to be on the wane, the siege on Ukraine is a powerful reminder of their importance.