Peace Education
32 essays
Columns and essays on teaching peace and nonviolence in American schools and universities. Spanning decades of advocacy, these pieces chronicle McCarthy's experiences bringing peace studies into high schools and colleges — from Wilson High in Washington, D.C. to Georgetown and American University — and make the case that nonviolence is a discipline as rigorous as any other. Topics include the origins of peace studies programs, resistance from administrators and school boards, the case against standardized testing, Maria Montessori's educational philosophy, and what it means to choose teaching peace over teaching war.
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War & Militarism
35 essays
A pacifist's unflinching examination of American militarism, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. These columns challenge the logic and language of war — the propaganda cycles, the embedded generals turned TV commentators, the politicians who wrap themselves in flags while others bleed. McCarthy profiles conscientious objectors, questions the return of ROTC to campuses, measures the human cost of war taxes, and responds to September 11 by asking whether violence can ever produce peace. Taken together, they form a sustained argument that war is neither noble nor necessary.
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Criminal Justice & Death Penalty
8 essays
Essays on the American death penalty and the broader failures of the criminal justice system. Central to this collection is the case of Joseph Giarratano, a Virginia death row inmate whose story McCarthy followed for years, and Vicki Schieber, a mother who lost her daughter to murder yet became an advocate against execution. These pieces examine Virginia's notorious 21-day rule, the moral bankruptcy of state killing, and the question of whether a society that claims to value life can answer violence with more violence.
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Profiles in Moral Courage
42 essays
Portraits of peacemakers, activists, and people of conscience who chose the harder right over the easier wrong. This is the largest collection, featuring Daniel Berrigan and the Catonsville draft board raid, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, Sargent Shriver and the Peace Corps, Palestinian farmer Daoud Nassar and his Tent of Nations, Iraqi refugee Batul Al-Zubeidy, and many others — teachers, nurses, nuns, priests, soldiers-turned-pacifists, and ordinary people whose moral imagination led them to extraordinary acts. McCarthy finds courage not in grand gestures but in persistence.
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Media, Politics & Corporate Ethics
42 essays
Sharp commentary on the intersection of journalism, political power, and corporate accountability. McCarthy draws on his years as a Washington Post columnist to examine the narrowing of public discourse — why op-ed pages are predictable, why third-party candidates are shut out of debates, why the press failed to challenge the march to war in Iraq. He profiles Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, and other dissenters, critiques the Catholic Church's institutional failures, and makes the case for non-voting as a form of political conscience.
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Book Reviews
37 essays
Reviews and reflections on books about peace, justice, nonviolence, and the people who practice them. McCarthy is a generous but discerning critic, covering works on Gandhi, Dorothy Day, the Berrigan brothers, nonviolent resistance movements, prison reform, and animal rights. Each review is less a literary judgment than an occasion to explore ideas — using the book under review as a launching point for McCarthy's own arguments about war, peace, and the moral life.
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Golf & Sports Reflections
15 essays
A surprising counterpoint to the weightier themes: McCarthy's love of golf and its unexpected connections to larger questions of character, conscience, and community. These columns profile golfers like Rory McIlroy navigating political pressure, reflect on the ethics of elite sports culture, and find in the game a metaphor for the patience and persistence that peacemaking also demands. Even here, McCarthy cannot resist asking moral questions.
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Voices of the Movement
8 essays
Writings by students, colleagues, and fellow travelers in the peace movement — people whose lives were shaped by McCarthy's teaching or who share his commitment to nonviolence. These pieces include personal conversion narratives, reflections on service among the poor, testimony before the Senate against the death penalty, a former major leaguer's second career in literacy, and a comprehensive classroom guide to teaching peace. Together they form a chorus of voices that grew from the same soil McCarthy has been tending for decades.
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