John Couretas

is a writer and editor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Posts by John Couretas

Solzhenitsyn: Prophet to America

Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West. David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson, eds. University of Notre Dame Press. 2020. 392 pages. English literature scholar Ed Ericson told a story about teaching Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago to American undergrads, who knew plenty about the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and other dehumanized minorities but next to nothing about the genocidal history of the Bolshevik and Stalinist regimes. Continue Reading...

Bari Weiss and a lesson in media literacy

In June, Columbia University’s Teachers College Center for Educational Equity and a group called DemocracyReady NY issued a report that called for New York state to take “immediate and decisive steps to require media literacy education in K-12 schools throughout the state.” Continue Reading...

‘Planet of the Humans’: Michael Moore goes off the (ideological) grid

Imagine you have just wrapped up another Earth Day celebration at your church (online only this year) and as long time chair of the Creation Care committee, you reflect on all the accomplishments: banning Styrofoam coffee cups and plastic bottles; mandating locally sourced and sustainably farmed organic food at all hospitality events; convincing your pastor to offer sermons and “climate blessings” provided by the mother church’s Social Justice office. Continue Reading...

Coronavirus’ greatest threat: our social fabric

Over the weekend, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced that her office received 75 complaints of retailers gouging coronavirus-panicked consumers on the price of basic necessities: Stores in Farmington Hills, Dearborn, Ann Arbor and Allendale have been accused of jacking up the price of hand sanitizers, face masks, and rice and lentils by up to 900%. Continue Reading...

As it turns out, Lake Erie does not have ‘rights’

Last week, a federal district court judge in Ohio declared that the city of Toledo’s move to establish a Lake Erie Bill of Rights, or LEBOR, was invalid.  Judge Jack Zouhary put it this way: Frustrated by the status quo, LEBOR supporters knocked on doors, engaged their fellow citizens, and used the democratic process to pursue a well-intentioned goal: the protection of Lake Erie. Continue Reading...