“No Easy Day”, a firsthand account of the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, is not even out yet and it’s already a bestseller on Amazon.com and BN.com. The author who tried to publish under a pseudonym has been identified by Fox News, his book is under investigation by the Pentagon for possible national security violations, and jihadists are calling for his assassination. He can’t be surprised to ...

Good people want justice. Good people know that the world is broken and most of that brokenness is due to people committing acts of evil. When good people desire justice, they desire to set the world right from the consequences of evil. Justice is a good thing. But it is also a complicated thing. There is truth you might not suspect in the cliché that “Justice is blind,” because our desire for justice can b ...

“… everything seems to indicate that violent imitation is the rule of the day.” - Rene Girard, Battling to the End, 13. Does imitative violence rule the day, as Girard suggests? There is good reason to take his warning seriously.  During the last two weeks we have seen examples of imitative violence in the name of justice.  First there was Troy Davis, who was executed on September 21 for the murder of polic ...

Adam discusses the new Raven Foundation project "Be a Hero for Peace" and how violence and non-violence work. Violence is mimetic in that it leads to more violence, and violence that escalates. This happens in our personal lives with physical and verbal violence, but it also happens on a national scale as well. What's the way out? Nonviolence, forgiveness, and love. Nonviolence, used in the spirit of love a ...

Emotions have been running high since last week’s acquittal of Casey Anthony in the murder trial of her two year old daughter Caylee Anthony.  Many have lived with this case since Caylee’s murder three years ago.  The case has been a media sensation for many reasons, one being that Casey Anthony has made for a very good villain.  She is portrayed as monster of a human being – a mother who would rather party ...

Taylor Swift’s latest hit, Mean, is full of anger, resentment, bitterness, and a desire for revenge. And I like it. Swift apparently wrote Mean after a critic wrote very “mean” things about her.  So, Swift is a victim of a mean critic and she sings the song for all people who have been victimized.  She claims, “When you write a song and it comes from such a vulnerable moment in my life and then you get to s ...

This is an amazing project that we think reveals the alternative apocalypse. Film maker Laura Waters created a documentary about two Rwandan women seeking reconciliation with the men who killed their families during the 1994 genocide. In the case of Rwanda, what does justice require? Revenge?  Forgiveness? ...

“Do I really look like a guy with a plan?” In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the Joker, magnificently impersonated by the late Heath Ledger, wants to make everyone believe that there is no motif for his neurotic sowing of destruction and mayhem in Gotham City. “I’m an agent of chaos”, he explains to Gotham’s new district attorney Harvey Dent. He seems to appear from nowhere at the exact moment, when G ...