“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”—George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. 1 In Harold Ramis’s classic 1993 comedy Groundhog Day, TV weatherman Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is forced to live the same day over and over again until he not only gains some insight …

“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.”—Gore Vidal The countdown has begun. We now have less than one year until the 2016 presidential election, and you can expect to be treated to an earful of carefully crafted, …

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: …