Tag Archives: Civic Responsibility

A Journalist Who Rode the Rails to Professional Respect

Leave a reply

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  OCT 16, 2025 

There were not a lot of journalists covering Capitol Hill in my 13 years there that I called a close friend. There were many with whom I had friendly, but strictly professional relations. And there were a few from whom I would hide under my desk when I saw them strolling down the narrow corridor to the Republican Leader’s office where I worked.

Among the friends was Don Phillips, the United Press International (UPI) Capitol bureau chief. Don was the quintessential reporter—knowledgeable, probing, thorough, honest, trustworthy, and eminently objective. He was also calm and composed in his work and most importantly, civil in the way he conducted himself. I admired him.

Don was among the journalists on a congressional delegation trip I took to Grenada, just a week or so after the U.S. invaded the island to protect American students there. He got us together with other reporters for a beer—or two—the night before in Barbados, where a military cargo plane had dropped us off. Don was known for bringing reporters and staff together for happy hours to build better relations.

We helicoptered into Grenada the following morning. Continue reading →

Random Thoughts

Leave a reply

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  OCT 13, 2025 

In September, I read a column by Colbert K. King in the Washington Post that has troubled me ever since. It was his last column in the Post after he announced in June that he was scaling back, in part due to an illness that hospitalized him.

I’ve followed King for many years in Washington because of his tempered insights, reasoned thinking, seasoned by his intolerance for injustice. His character, calmness, and the kind of civic intimacy he expressed for his beloved city gave you the sense that he could be trusted and that his commentaries were an honest and sincere reflection of his experiences and perspective.

King, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize who has an endowed chair in his honor at Howard University, has had a distinguished career in journalism that began and has ended with the Post.

The September column seemed ominous. “My time is passing, and the hour is dark,” he wrote, “but I hold faith that wrong will be righted in the end.” Continue reading →

It’s Time to Make Civics Great Again

BY Louise Dube’ and Shawn Healy, Ripon Society Forum  |  APR 19, 2025 

The Founders would be appropriately bewildered by many facets of modern life in year 250 of the American experiment, but they’d probably be downright shocked by how far we have let our approach to educating young people stray from their original vision.

They believed unequivocally that the point of education in America should be to impart knowledge to young people that would help them be responsible citizens, contributing members of their communities, and ultimately, defenders of constitutional democracy. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison extolled civic learning as a bulwark against tyranny. And President George Washington, in his final Annual Address to Congress in 1796, said that the “education of our Youth in the science of Government” would prepare them to be “future guardians of the liberties of the Country.” Continue reading →

Trump vs Congress Showdown

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  FEB 3, 2025 (Updated 2/19/25)

“The Founders knew they were creating something different and, hopefully lasting. They were visionary. No constitutional democratic republic has survived as long as ours. Maybe our longevity is to the credit of (John) Adams and other Founders who were smart enough not to create a pure democracy or a monarchy, as some preferred, but a democratic republic with three branches of government, each serving as a check and balance of the other.” — Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People, (Chapter 15, Pg 265)

The separation of powers and the checks and balances that make our government functional are part of the genius of our Constitution and a reason for its historic longevity.

President Donald Trump’s early actions tell us he rejects the premise of checks and balances and with an unorthodox view of the separation of powers and believes he can muscle his way past them.

The alarm bells are ringing.

The checks and balances are embedded in Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution, along with separation of powers among the branches of government, each of which is distinct, function separately but answer to each other and hopefully function as one. I will try to connect my dots here with the disclaimer that I’m not an historian, nor a constitutional scholar. What I do know is that Mr. Trump’s autocratic view of the first three Articles has him speeding along an unfamiliar road without political or ideological GPS.

I’ve always found it helpful to take a step back before leaping forward, so back to history. Continue reading →