John J. Tierney Jr.

Now the entire country is in a “pandemic.” The word has a combined meaning. One is sociological, “panic,” “hysteria,” chaos.” The second is biological, “fever,” “virus,” “spread.” Combined, they represent what might be called a national “lockdown,” meaning everything geared toward a single purpose, no deviation. Our nation has come together before The last time…

There are times when I wonder if I may have missed something, amidst the vitriol engaged between and among today’s “populations.” Or, to the contrary, am I all right while they keep talking “past one another” toward destinations unknown? I finally take refuge in age: I’m simply too old to understand current interests (now that…

Leaders who fail in their global missions are normally dismissed by history. What do we remember about Napoleon? Waterloo. Wilsonianism Woodrow Wilson, another case in point, is not remembered for his efforts to re-make the world but by his failure to do so. The League of Nations and Wilson’s crusade to “make the world safe…

On our first day of practice, the football coach uttered these memorable words to his new team: “Remember men, there’s no ‘I’ in team.” Such an admonition has remained a mainstay of human activity, sports included, since the dawn of time. The realization that human progress depends upon “teamwork” instead of “the individual” has descended…

The United States may be the only country on earth where most of its citizens represent themselves by halves. Hyphenated Americans appear to be the whole, with almost all of them identified first by their ancestry, and second by their citizenship. Not only does this mock the term “united,” but it serves also to question…

The key assumption behind this most-asked question states that any final solution is irrelevant and that any one of a series of solutions will suffice. In other words, the issue/problem is either too difficult to solve and would make little difference in any case. So, why bother? Better to leave it alone and let “nature…

The “nation-state” system is widely believed to have begun in 1648, after the Thirty Years War ended the Holy Roman Empire and created mankind’s belief in the centrality of being part of something, “nation” (Peace of Westphalia). Henceforth, the division of the world’s political existence has derived from two separate but equal conceptual designs. The…

This question addresses the most tragic and recurring human event throughout history and, to this day, defies an answer. At bottom, the recurrence of war is nearly an illogical and irrational behavior. Consider a fictitious occasion where boys 16 and older are dressed in uniforms and sent to a neighboring village to kill other boys…

In my many terms as a member of the U.S. delegation at the 40-nation Conference on Disarmament (CD), held annually in Geneva, we grew accustomed to a favorite accusation on the failure to achieve a lasting peace. If a resolution failed to achieve a majority, the sponsors would invariably decry the incapacity of “some member-states”…

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the recent election of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of Great Britain has emphasized a fact which many have thought was either outdated or irrelevant in an age of mass communication and “globalization.” The resurgence of nationalism that has been promoted by Trump’s “MAGA” campaign and by…