Summary: Do Americans still hold certain truths to be self-evident? Do all human beings possess inalienable rights endowed by their creator? Are all lives of equal value? And if so, how do those core beliefs translate into public policy on issues such as healthcare, poverty, abortion, capital punishment, and euthanasia? This program explores what the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin called a "consistent...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Can killers and survivors coexist in peace? That is the crucial question facing Rwanda a dozen years after the genocide that claimed the lives of approximately 800,000 people-and the subject of this multi-award-winning documentary. Using interviews with Joseph Habineza, Minister of Education and Culture; Freddy Mutanguha, director of the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center; and numerous survivors,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: When it comes to situations involving life and death, the United States is strongly polarized. Liberals commonly support the legality of abortion as a private matter of personal choice but condemn the death penalty as inhumane, while conservatives often support execution as a form of justice but denounce abortion as legalized murder. How did these points of view become a part of the ideologies...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Who should lead the world's only superpower? When is it acceptable to topple another country's leader? Are personal freedom and national security mutually incompatible? The answers to urgent political questions such as these are informed by 23 centuries of discourse that started with The Republic. This program focuses successively on the pivotal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: More than 300 million men, women, and children are being forced to work in conditions of virtual enslavement. They have lost all control over their lives, and their survival rests in the hands of exploitative individuals and corporations. When they are no longer productive, they are simply discarded-broken, empty, and humiliated. This program goes around the world to document the stories of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: The Bush Administration is ending just as, some say, the conservative movement has run out of gas. How did the political right go so wrong? In this edition of the Journal, Bill Moyers is joined by conservatives Mickey Edwards and Ross Douthat, who discuss why they believe their movement has gone off track and what it means for the Republican Party. Douthat is senior editor at The Atlantic...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: For many Americans, the threat of sudden poverty has less to do with the nation's overall economy than it does with personal circumstances. This program discusses the hard facts of situational poverty with a focus on the four most common triggers: job loss, the fastest way to become impoverished; health issues, such as severe injury or long-term illness; the loss of a spouse through divorce or...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: This program weighs the financial savings of a reformed welfare system against our responsibility to those who need help. Political and religious leaders discuss the feasibility of establishing a new system that works to eliminate the problems of crime, drugs, poverty, and unwanted births. Critics and supporters of current reform efforts discuss their views. Those interviewed include a New...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This documentary filmed in 1995 focuses on the efforts of the Christian conservative movement to reshape educational curriculums and public policy around the country. Ralph Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition; Gary Bauer, formerly of the Family Research Council; the Reverend Lou Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition; Robert Simonds, author of How to Elect Christians to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: When Americans become outraged with behavior considered immoral or unethical, a typical response is to call on state legislatures or Congress to pass legislation outlawing it. Can government impose morality on its people by banning negative behavior or mandating positive behavior? History suggests that such efforts, though well-intentioned in many cases, are often ineffective. This program...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: While politicians grapple with reforming welfare, those who receive benefits worry about how welfare reform will affect their lives. Critics of welfare argue that it has created a psychology of dependency, and that it is rife with fraud and abuse. This program traces the history of welfare beginning with the Depression, then examines the complex issues involved in reforming it. Experts discuss...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Frances, Allen
Summary: It is comforting to see President Donald Trump as a crazy man, a one-off, an exception -- not a reflection on us or our democracy. But in ways I never anticipated, his rise was absolutely predictable and a mirror on our soul. What does it say about us, that we elected someone so manifestly unfit and unprepared to determine mankind's future? Trump is a symptom of a world in distress, not its...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: William Morrow 2017
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 320.6 FRAKlein, Naomi
Summary: "Remember when it all seemed to be getting better? Before Trump happened? What went wrong, and what can we do about it? Naomi Klein--scourge of brand bullies, disaster capitalists and climate liars--shows us how we got to this surreal and dangerous place, how to stop it getting worse and how, if we keep our heads, we can seize the opportunity to make it better. She reveals how Trump is not a...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Haymarket Books 2017
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 303 KLESummary: At Guantanamo Bay detention camp, history has proved that concepts of right and wrong can all too easily become distorted by expediency and ambiguity. This program examines the lives of high-profile individuals from both sides of the razor wire who have intimate knowledge of the horrors of Gitmo: Murat Kurnaz, a former inmate who was detained without trial for five years; former Navy officer...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: This emotionally charged program follows five participants of different ethnic and racial backgrounds through a three-day Unlearning Racism workshop. As the workshop begins, a European-American man offends his African-American workshop partner by making a joke during a one-on-one dialogue. The incident sparks anger among African-American participants, who openly confront the offender. White...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: With nano-enabled drugs that destroy diseased cells and enable tissue repair, doctors may one day extend life expectancy far beyond our current capabilities—at least in countries wealthy enough to afford the technology. But the medicine that so radically redefines our standards of health and mortality will also profoundly challenge our social support systems and cultural values. In this Fred...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: In May 1987, Edward Johnson, a young African-American found guilty of murder and attempted rape, was executed at Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi. This program, set in the days immediately preceding and following Johnson's death in the gas chamber, focuses on the legal mechanism for execution and the intense ethical debate surrounding it. Johnson is interviewed at length. Questions arising...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: After the chaos of the French Revolution, the concept of liberty became associated with nature rather than political events. This program analyzes the Romantic fascination and identification with the power of the natural world. Shedding light on William Blake's early childhood experiences in the countryside, the film also explores the work of John Clare-conveying how both poets revered the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Jacob Needleman, author and professor of philosophy and comparative religion, says he writes for people like himself who want to return to the basic questions: Who am I? Why am I on Earth? How do I engage in making a living and still keep my soul? In this program with Bill Moyers, Needleman discusses the role of money in our society and its power to shape our culture and our souls.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Raising complex and timely questions about the warehousing of America's prison population, this program accompanies photographer Ron Levine on his mission to depict the physical, emotional, and psychological conditions of aging inmates-including those nearing death. Levine focuses his work on Alabama's Hamilton Institute for the Aged and Infirm, the first prison created specifically for elderly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Her feeding tube removed, Terri Schiavo has passed away. Medically speaking, was she in a persistent vegetative state or a locked-in state? On that question hung Terri's fate for more than a decade. Was she alive in a meaningful sense? Her husband said no; her parents said yes. This ABC News program, broadcast at the time when Terri's case was brought before the Florida legislature and Governor...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Is the line between being male and being female blurrier than we think? What are we to make of the fact that humans differ from chimpanzees by only a few nucleotides? At what point do we decide a fetus has "the right to life," and that someone existing on life-sustaining technology has the right to die? In this TEDTalk Dr. Alice Dreger questions the categories that are often used to define...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Is polygamy a degrading and harmful practice that only benefits men, or a misunderstood aspect of American subculture that deserves a break? This ABC News program gives the subject careful attention by interviewing women with widely varying polygamist experiences. Some practitioners portray it as a healthy institution that eliminates jealousy and isolation. Another woman condemns it, recounting...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In a society that is so economically, racially, and culturally diverse, how hard should people pursue individual and group rights? Does humanity's modern obsession with rights create a self-obsessed world preoccupied by victimhood? Archbishop Rowan Williams thinks so, and worries that rights groups become static whenever civil liberties are obtained. Filmed at Lambeth Palace, this multifaceted...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006