A Finnish film about the inhumanity and pervasive danger of a system that functions to deny asylum and force deportation, even if that film is warm-hearted, should also be deeply unsettling to US viewers in 2018.

Greeks young and old, workers and professionals, showed that in utter hopelessness you can vote to maintain your dignity.

Over the past few years I have used this space mainly as a sounding board for ideas and arguments that I worked into my book In Defense of Religious Moderation. Looking back over those posts I can see the progression of the project, even down to the change of title, and relive some of the debates that informed it and criticisms that enriched it.

Many travelers still seek solitude among the tourists, the luxury to communicate personally with the ruins. They long to leave their minds on idle, while they enter the vista before them, undisturbed by the other souls striving for the same illusion. I often feel this contradiction of being alone with others when I travel.