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Readers write: Beacon of hope, change for Supreme Court?, locals’ stories

Letters to the editor for the Sept. 10, 2018 weekly magazine.

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J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The U.S. Capitol is seen in Washington on Sept. 3, 2018, as the Senate prepares for the confirmation hearing of President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, and the House returns to work for the first time since July 26, 2018.
  • By Constance Del Nero Monitor reader
  • Nick McNaughton Monitor reader
  • Rich Keig Monitor reader

Beacon of hope

I have been a faithful subscriber of The Christian Science Monitor for years, ever since my mother gave me a gift subscription to the daily edition as a housewarming gift. I particularly like editor Mark Sappenfield’s perspectives. I find him to be wise and compassionate. His columns are spot on and I often find myself nodding in recognition of the importance of one of his observations. 

I believe the magazine is a beacon of hope and reality in a busy world where truth and the positive aspects of humanity are sometimes obscured. I am also a big fan of the new science section. Thank you for being there, for chronicling lives all over the globe, and for letting us know about points of progress.

Constance Del Nero

Easton, Md.

Change for Supreme Court?

Regarding the July 10 Monitor Daily editorial, “The big question for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee”: Unfortunately, Supreme Court appointments are moving further away from independent decisionmakers and more to ideologues whose minds seem to be made up in advance and who use their legal abilities to support preconceived positions. The best solution would be to amend the Constitution to set term limits for federal judges. 

Without the high-stakes poker game of a lifetime appointment and the likelihood of extreme ideological opinions being reversed when the political winds shift over time, the pressure on the respective left and right to appoint judges who are in lockstep with their own opinions will grow less.

Nick McNaughton

Los Angeles

Locals’ stories

The Aug. 6 OneWeek article “Why a 30-year-old list is roiling Latvia” is an excellent read and extremely informative. It is consistent with stories we heard from locals during recent travels to Romania, Slovakia, and Croatia.

Rich Keig

Houston

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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