Marchyco Harrell, right, a teacher in the Lorain City Schools, and Verlene DeWitt, a teacher in the Westlake City Schools, listen to speakers at a rally co-sponsored by the Cleveland Teachers Union and We Are Ohio in Cleveland on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011. By voting no on Issue 2, Ohioans in this group hope that Ohio will overturn the controversial Senate Bill 5 which limited collective bargaining for unionized public workers. (Amy Sancetta - AP) Ohio voters have decisively defeated “Issue 2,” a proposal to retain or repeal Gov. John Kasich’s massive rewriting of Ohio’s collective bargaining law, called Senate Bill 5 (SB5). “Thank God for unions” was the hand-lettered statement on a sign carried by a woman at an Ohio rally on “The Ed Show” the night before the Ohio vote.

Education is a powerful force that shapes how individuals respond to fundamental differences of opinion and belief. It can encourage tolerance and respect for all, but it can also foster disdain and contempt for those who dissent from prevailing orthodoxies.

In Pakistan, schools often serve as incubators of societal intolerance, especially toward religious minorities, with profoundly negative implications for religious freedom and security. Such is the finding of a new report, “Connecting the Dots: Education and Religious Discrimination in Pakistan.” Released today by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), on which we serve, this study was conducted by the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD), a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

As the UN prepares to issue its report this week about Iran’s nuclear build-up there is a marked increase in anti-Iranian rhetoric and military threats by Western nations.

Decades back, when many of us Boomers went off to college, the purpose for that four year experience seemed twofold. On the one hand, get ‘credentialed’ by securing an academic degree from a good university. This was paramount. The other aim, while not always celebrated or articulated by parents, was also quite clear: this was to be a period of discovery, a time to explore who you are, get the craziness and wanderlust out of your system. Following graduation, things would starkly change, you were to be automatically responsible and mature, evidenced by landing a solid paying job with a long term career trajectory, probably getting married and having kids-- in essence, on with ‘life’. The occasional rogue, like yours truly, went to Ethiopia or Paris, to explore the world beyond. But for the most part, the way for young people as well as the metrics for success, was very structured, predictable and widely understood. But, my, how the journey has changed.

70 percent of 30 year olds in the 1960s had accomplished certain specific benchmarks, financial independence, married, and likely with children, among others. Looking at 2000, the picture is quite different, with less than 40 percent of 30 year olds similarly positioned. Some scholars see this as a reaction to tightly structured and controlled childhoods where choice and decision- making on the part of children were at a minimum. Once ‘launched’ in their 20’s, they often appear bewildered, much to the consternation of parents. Often ill equipped to face a global world fraught with perceived danger, intense competition and uncertainty at every turn, they can appear ‘lost’, at least in the view of some parents. This extended discovery phase of life’s journey, named now, the odyssey years, is an extended period of launch.

So the question becomes, is this a troubling trend, or is it merely different, perhaps even better, than the “Boomer” approach?

Rick Santorum, left, Ron Paul. center. and Herman Cain before a Republican presidential debate Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011, in Las Vegas. (Chris Carlson - AP) We’re well into the presidential primary election debate season and I suspect that the candidates are as frustrated as those of us in the viewing audience, with “gotcha” questions, testy squabbles, and your-national-defense-strategy-in-30-seconds-please time limits.

Those of us in the social conservative realm have noticed something else-the virtual absence of intelligent and probing questions on the enduring values of faith, family, and society’s responsibilities to its children, both born and preborn. These are the messier and many times controversial issues that derive from the soul and for which sound bites simply won’t do.

After long debates and tortuous negotiations, the state of Michigan passed anti-bullying legislation, which on the face of it, should be a good thing. Unfortunately, Michigan has managed to pass a law which, despite bearing a name designed to honor the memory of a victim of bullying, may actually provide legal cover to the worst of the bullies.

The law, Matt’s Safe School Law, named in memory of Matt Epling, who committed suicide in the wake of relentless anti-gay bullying, offers a loophole to those who want to bully gay students or anyone else they don’t like. All they need to do, according to the newly passed legislation, is claim that their bullying was based on “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.”

It baffles me why so many politicians who tout their Christian credentials are millionaires. They claim they’re willing to follow Jesus Christ straight to heaven, but they’re unwilling to follow His example here on earth and sacrifice a little luxury for the benefit of others. And -- shame on them -- they think all voters are as materialistic as they are.

I hosting a Friday, midday show on radio station WMRA called “The Spark,” during which I talk with creative people. Yes, I talk to artists, musicians, writers, but I also talk to people who live creatively - among them Ben Wyse and his wife, Anna; whom I’d like to offer as evidence that Americans are better persons of faith than our politicians give us credit for.

Tens of thousands of Muslim pilgrims pray inside the Grand Mosque, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Friday, Nov. 4, 2011. The annual Islamic pilgrimage draws three million visitors each year, making it the largest yearly gathering of people in the world. The Hajj will begin on November 5. (Hassan Ammar - AP) Year after year, holiday after holiday passes with no progress in the Holy Land. In August, Muslims celebrated the end of Ramadan, with no peace in the Holy Land. In October, Jews marked the High Holy Days with Palestinians still under occupation. Now, as millions of Muslims descend upon Mecca to perform the pilgrimage, or Hajj, peace between the children of Abraham remains as elusive as ever.

Indeed, there is great fear that even more violence will erupt, and the chance for a lasting peace will become even more remote that it already seems. Yet, far beyond the cynical political calculation of politicians, the Realpolitik of various world leaders, and overarching geopolitical interests of nations, there lies the lives of people, real live people, who have suffered and are suffering tremendously. That is what I see as a person of faith, who values the Holy Land tremendously.

This land is very special to me, as a Muslim. It is the land of my ethnic and spiritual father Abraham, to which he fled the oppression of his people for his staunch belief in the Lord God. It is the land in which my Master Abraham, and his sons Isaac and Jacob, are buried. The rituals of the Hajj, in fact, are all a re-enactment of the story of Abraham with his son Ishmael in the plain of Paran.

In this Holy Land, my Master Joseph, who preached the faith of the One God to my Egyptian people many centuries ago, was also laid to rest. In this land, my Masters David and Solomon ruled in justice and faith, and on this land, my Master Jesus Christ tread his holy footsteps, preaching the Gospel to the Children of Israel. And to this most holy of lands, my Master Muhammad traveled by night to lead all of the prophets in prayer. For all these reasons and more, the veneration of this land will be ingrained in and be with me forever.

In such a wondrous place, there should be no violence. In such a wondrous place, there should be no occupation; no war; no sadness for the loss of life; no cries of children attacked by rocket fire; no screams of mothers holding their dead babies in their arms. In such a wondrous place, the children of Abraham should be living and working together in peace, just as their holy fathers did all those years ago.

Yet, sadly, despite the wondrous nature of the land, these are not wondrous times. Extremists who hail from both Isaac and Ishmael are bent on seeing the other destroyed. Politicians lack the courage to make the hard choices for peace. And as diplomats wrangle over what to say and do to save political face, terrible misery continues to envelope this most wondrous and holy of lands. As those diplomats wrangle, the blood of innocents, which defiles and chokes this most wondrous and holy of lands, continues to spill with abandon.

Will this sad state of affairs fail to awaken us? Will the cries of the Holy Land, in her utter anguish, not arouse us to try to bring and end to this suffering? It brings me no pain to see Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall: this was, after all, the wall of my Master King Solomon, about whose story I read in the Koran itself. And neither should it bring any misery to our Jewish brethren to see Muslims worshipping on the Temple Mount: in the chants of the Koran is the glorification of Moses, David, Abraham, and Solomon, and most importantly, the glorification of our mutual Lord and God.

This is the middle way, about which the overwhelming majority of us can agree. There can be peace between Christian, Jew, and Muslim in the Holy Land; there can be mutual respect for the life of the other in that most wondrous land; the cries of the innocent can be quieted and replaced with the laughter of children hopeful of a bright and prosperous future. We live this reality in America, and it is most joyous indeed. It just takes courage and fortitude, and reliance upon our Lord, to make this come to pass over there. As I behold the scurrying of the politicians near and far, I realize that change cannot come from they. So let that change come about through us.

Brown writes for On Faith as part of our expert roundtable on the Mississippi personhood initiative, a constitutional referendum on whether or not to call a fertilized human egg a ‘person,’ thus giving it legal rights and protection. Read Francis Kissling, former head of Catholics for Choice, who asks, Does Mississippi really respect life?, Colleen Carroll Campbell of EWTN, who writes, Personhood begins when life begins, and Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life on Taking ‘personhood’ back. Cast your vote in our poll: Should personhood start at fertilization?

This Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009 picture shows the shadow of an anti-abortion supporter holding a cross near a Planned Parenthood in Dubuque, Iowa to protest the 36th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court's ruling on Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortions. (Jeremy Portje - AP) In “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance,”  Atule Gawande’ s remarkable 2008 collection of essays, his final advice for all of us struggling with tough problems in complex societies is to count things – things that matter to us.  He suggests that by counting, we may see new ways forward.    

The current storm over the upcoming Mississippi vote to define personhood as beginning at the moment of conception has brought Gawande’s advice to mind.  This bill and pending vote are just the most recent effort to eliminate abortion, although as Jessica Valenti and others have recently pointed out, this effort has implications far, far beyond abortion – implications that should give all of us pause and deep unease.   But to stay on point, the Mississippi madness should be properly seen as only the latest in a long list of ways that those who oppose legal abortion have tried to eliminate it from the scene.  

A police cordon is placed outside the offices French satirical magazine 'Charlie Hebdo', following a petrol bomb attack on November 2, 2011 in Paris, France. The attack, which completely destroyed the offices, comes a day after the French satirical magazine 'Charlie Hebdo' featured a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad on its cover and named him as 'editor-in-chief'. (Marc Piasecki - GETTY IMAGES) The office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris was badly damaged by a firebomb early on Wednesday after it had published a spoof issue “guest edited” by the Prophet Muhammad to salute the electoral victory of an Islamist party in Tunisian elections, according to a report published in the Post. The publication also said hackers had disrupted its Web site.