Ezra's Essays

Category: October 2006

  • ON FEAR AND DUTY

    When it comes to fear, this might be the first essay you will ever read which does not make an allusion to Franklin Roosevelt’s thought that we have “nothing to fear but fear itself.” In this essay, I propose to comment on three kinds of fear that are prevalent today. Under ordinary circumstances, I avoid…

  • COMPASSION BEYOND ALL REASON

    This is an essay that was run over by the events of this week. For two or three weeks, it had been my intention to write an essay having to do with civility. I had thought that the title of the proposed essay might be, “Civility, Decency, and Compassion Toward Others.” But as I said,…

  • BE A MAN

    William Meredith Carr must have had a terrible hangover on October 10, 1881, because he named his newly born son Ezra Edgar. That mistake was compounded when in 1922, that Ezra passed that name on to me. It has always been my belief that only the Holy Ghost or Moqtada al Sadr has a more…

  • TRUE CONFESSION OF A MARRIED MAN

    Preachers of all sorts generally contend that confession is good for the soul. I have never paid much attention to those preachers on confessions or on any other subject. On the other hand, the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief Decider of the United States seems to pay considerable attention to what preachers have to say. The…