Are We All In This Together?

An email from a reader this week asked me to remind Alaskans, and myself, to “appeal to the better angels of our nature.” I’ve been rolling around that phrase, “better angels,” for days. It was first used by Shakespeare in his play, “Othello,” later by Charles Dickens in his novel “Barnaby Ridge,” and still later by President Abraham Lincoln in his inaugural address. (His secretary of state, William Seward, added it to the draft. Yes, our Seward, the guy who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia.) With Alaska news outlets reporting daily on the fiscal crisis facing our state,…