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 framers of the Constitution left “God” out . Their goal was to allow religion to flourish as a way to build virtue and morality in citizens.
Evidence that three administrations have been lying to the public about the war in Afghanistan has been met mostly with Congressional and public apathy. This is dangerous for our troops - and democracy.
As we enter another election year, progressives and conservatives will want us to see things their way. But rather than rest comfortably in their “correctness,” maybe they need to challenge their own thinking.
America’s current tit-for-tat approach to Iran can lead to war. Leaders of democracies need carefully developed and widely supported strategic thinking before plunging into military conflicts.
Being so cute helps babies get the care and attention they need. Could this work for the elderly too?
When we allow leaders to avoid responsibility for their actions, we destroy the trust on which a healthy society depends.
We all have mental models of “the way the world works.” We seldom challenge them. We should.
Slavish attention to constituents’ demands is not what the Constitution's framers wanted.
The hug is as old as humanity, and its benefits help explain why we need and love to do it.
Public servants who have taken an oath that requires loyalty to the Constitution are now subject to ad hominem attacks.
Exciting presidents may be fine, though we should be wary of them. Boring is not necessarily bad.
Without closure, we’d never make decisions. Yet premature closure chokes off needed thinking.
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.
