There’s a German word, Schadenfreude, that has slowly worked its way into English. It means taking pleasure in the failure or pain of others.

It’s not a nice word. As a habit, it’s despicable. I have tried hard all my life to recognize it’s ugly little face in myself and not indulge it.

But this morning I admit to Schadenfreude, trusting that Luther was right all those years ago about grace abounding. I’m even willing publicize it. Hear my story.

Yesterday the Justice Department moved to drop the criminal charge against David Hearn, a Maryland man and former Olympic canoeist whom Trump and other officials had loudly accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial.

As the US assassinated hundreds of national leaders in Iran and escalated a catastrophic war in which it is being humiliated before the world, we were treated to days of headlines about a biker “forcefully and violently” tearing off a chip of paint.

Nasty people are out there intentionally destroying one of Trump’s big contributions to the world. They’ve got evidence now, see!

When I first saw the story of his arrest in the national news several weeks ago, I didn’t know who Hearn was. The following Sunday I was startled to learn that he had attended my church with his mother when he was a boy.

I have no actual personal connection to this dude but suddenly the story felt personal anyway.

Trump and other government spokespeople repeatedly claimed that vandals had deliberately damaged the new blue liner in the pool. Trump said it had been slashed with a knife or box cutter. Hearn was arrested and criminally charged.

But yesterday the Justice Department itself admitted the widespread damage was the result of a botched installation, not vandalism. Internal Interior Department documents showed that mistakes were made during the hurried effort - a no-bid contract of exactly the kind this administration is now using over and over again to meet the deadlines of this impatient president - to get the pool finished before the July celebrations.

Even worse, according to the Justice Department, the Interior Department did not turn over that information until prosecutors had made “dozens and dozens” of requests for it. Prosecutors now say that if Interior officials had been forthcoming about information already in their possession, they would never have sought an indictment.

C’mon people, how can you look the other way at this kind of blatant nonsense, all done at national expense? It’s not just bad management and waste, it’s manipulation of truth. Even if they made an innocent error in their hasty accusations, why were they so slow in presenting the truth that they apparently have known for a while now?

I’ve been a painter and repairman in one way or another in multiple locations around the world my entire life. It’s not my calling but it’s a survival tool, for financial and emotional reasons, thanks to the relaxation that comes with it.

From years on ladders with brushes and on my knees with tools, I know something about the interface between human beings and our work patterns, construction materials, water and the natural environment. I have been humbled and confounded so many times.

Materials don’t behave the way the label says they will. Things peel. Water gets in. A job done too fast comes apart.

So if you see a seven-acre liner peeling in many different places, including in the middle of a pool where no vandal is likely to have been standing, maybe you investigate the workmanship before you start arresting people and accusing them publicly of crimes.

Why does this little tempest in a national teapot matter enough for me to set aside my ethical reservations about Schadenfreude?

Because it highlights a river of similar experiences under this administration. A project was rushed at Trump’s direction. The cost went from under $2 million to more than $14 million, in a no-bid process.

The work failed. Trump instantly blamed vandals, with no evidence. An man was arrested and charged. Information pointing to the real cause was not handed over until prosecutors asked for it again and again.

A national population was intimidated. Not the MAGA base of course, but the message meant to be sent was received - “Don’t even think about trying to oppose this government! You’re going to getting prosecuted and jailed!” More or less in those words, by several government spokesmen.

And meanwhile Trump announced, “I’m very good at building things and constructing things.” OK, I’ll take my chances with the Almighty above and admit Schadenfreude on this one.

But it’s really not at all funny. An innocent person had the power of the federal government turned against him. And this small story displays a larger pattern that a whole band of intelligent, decent and practical Americans, many of whom have not had an easy life due to no fault of their own, either never hear about or carefully averting their eyes from.

I’m not even going to try to categorize or label that behavior. It is so complex - and pernicious - that doing so would only start another argument.

But I do think the American public ought to hear about this widely and ponder its meaning.

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Increasingly, we are being reminded that policy decisions have human consequences.

This week, there is this terrible story about the couple pictured above.

Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz was deported to Guatemala last year after being detained by immigration agents in Missouri. His wife, Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz, was still in Missouri, working two jobs and caring for their children. Fearing that the family would be permanently torn apart, she eventually returned to Guatemala with the children to join him.

Just weeks after the family reunited, Nixon and Glendy were found dead in a sugarcane field. Reuters reports that their hands were tied behind their backs. Their one-year-old daughter was found alive, seriously dehydrated, beside them, and their other children are now in the care of extended family. Guatemalan authorities are investigating who carried out the murders.

We should not instantly conclude that ICE is legally responsible for these murders. That would be too simple, and hasty in circumstances where we don't know all the dynamics.

Some will be quick to point out they were "undocumented". But what does that mean in the eyes of their Creator? Their lives, loves, and dreams are worthless? Are we prepared to look our Creator in the eyes and speak our answer outloud?

When fellow human beings die or suffer needlessly when we are in a position to assist them, we don't have the option to shrug and say this has nothing to do with us.

When people are fleeing violence, poverty, intimidation, gangs, or political instability, deportation is not just a bureaucratic act. It often means sending human beings back into danger. It can mean forcing families into impossible choices. It can mean children losing parents.

Mass deportations do not just “clear dockets.” They disrupt families, uproot children, and sometimes place vulnerable people back in direct danger.

And we should stop pretending the only two choices for us are open borders or mass deportation. That is a false choice.

There have always been more humane and practical middle paths: serious border management, more immigration judges, faster and fairer asylum hearings, work permits for people already contributing here, targeted enforcement against genuinely dangerous people, and policies that keep families and children from being casually sacrificed to political theater.

Policy is never just policy. Somewhere, eventually, it lands on a family.

* * * * * * * *
Original story at https://www.kcur.org/news/2026-07-28/missouri-couple-shot-dead-in-guatemala-after-local-ice-stop-led-to-deportations/. (Be forewarned that the details are even worse than described above.)

Reuters story (behind paywall) at https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/guatemalan-man-deported-us-wife-found-dead-sugar-field-baby-alive-beside-them-2026-07-28/

I learned a good bit over the weekend about the consequences of years of misinformation from the MAGA information system.

I was taken aback by the aggressive response to my post about the SAVE Act, still readable at https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GTiU6eK92/. The gist of my post was, if it works, don't fix it. It turns out there's a fair number of folks out there very set on fixing stuff, and they're deeply misled about the tool they're proffering.

I was told that I had no idea what I was talking about, that I was “gaslighting,” that I needed to “take off the blinders,” and that I must “live under a rock.” One reader wrote “SHAME ON YOU. DO BETTER.” Another suggested that “woke people” would try to convince us that four plus four is 7.9 or 8.1.

I care about factual accuracy, and accusations like those get my dander up. But I also know that I am capable of making mistakes. So rather than simply fire back, I went back and checked my research again.

That REALLY got my dander up!

Truth be told, the SAVE ACT is even more restrictive than I had realized. It infuriates me to realize that decent people are so deceived about something so basic to democracy. Their ignorance damages all of us at a deep level.

Let me begin by restating what I actually said. I did not say election fraud never occurs. I did not say officials should ignore irregularities. I did not say that every request for identification is unreasonable.

I said this: Before imposing substantial new burdens on millions of lawful citizens, proponents should demonstrate three things:
- That a serious problem exists.
- That their proposal actually addresses that problem.
- That the remedy will not obstruct vastly more lawful voters than unlawful ones.

Supporters of the SAVE Act have not demonstrated even the first of these.

The SAVE ACT is not Simply “Show an ID”

Several readers spoke as though the proposal merely asks voters to show the driver’s license already in their wallets. That is deeply misleading.

The legislation requires documentary proof of citizenship when registering for federal elections. An ordinary driver’s license establishes identity and residence, not citizenship.

Only five states issue specialized Enhanced Driver’s Licenses that certify citizenship: Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington. Even in those states, residents must make a special application for one, and most do not possess one.

A Social Security card does not prove citizenship. The Social Security Administration explicitly says so.

An EBT card does not prove citizenship. It establishes eligibility for a benefit program. Some qualified noncitizens are eligible for such programs, and many families contain members with different citizenship or immigration statuses.

Even a REAL ID does not ordinarily prove citizenship. That is the official name for a state-issued license or identification card meeting federal standards for identity and lawful presence. Lawfully present noncitizens can also obtain one.

Many citizens would therefore need a passport, certified birth certificate, naturalization record, or other citizenship document. People whose current legal names differ from the names on their birth certificates could need additional records connecting the two.

One reader compared this with opening an eBay seller account. But eBay ordinarily verifies identity, not citizenship. More importantly, selling on eBay is a private commercial opportunity. Voting is a fundamental right of citizenship.

Another reader reasoned that because fraud is rare, very few people would need to produce documents. That gets the legislation exactly backward. The SAVE Act requirements would not apply just to that tiny number of people suspected of wrongdoing. It would screen EVERYONE registering to vote in federal elections.

SUMMARY: A documented but exceedingly rare offense is being used to justify new screening requirements for a vast population of lawful citizens.

Damaging Impact on Voter Participation

We do not have to speculate about what happens when documentary proof of citizenship is required. Kansas tried it.

Kansas adopted such a requirement in 2011, and it took effect in 2013. During the period examined by the federal courts, 31,089 registration applications were suspended or canceled for failure to produce the required documents. That represented approximately 12 percent of new applicants.

Meanwhile, Kansas established only 39 confirmed noncitizen registrations over 19 years. They represented 0.002 percent of the state’s registered voters, and the court found that administrative anomalies might account for many of them.

More than 99 percent of the people caught on the suspended list were American citizens.

The Kansas requirement was not a precision instrument catching fraudulent voters as intended. It was an enormous net overwhelmingly catching citizens. After a full trial including careful examination of data from the experience, the law was struck down, and the federal appeals court affirmed that decision.

National survey research conducted with the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement reached a similarly sobering conclusion. It estimated that 21.3 million voting-age citizens, about 9 percent, could not readily produce documentary proof of citizenship. Approximately 3.8 million reported possessing none of the surveyed documents.

That does not mean none of them could eventually obtain the necessary records. But it does mean that the claim that virtually everyone already possesses them and can easily produce them is factually false.

Most of the Fraud Being Invoked is Irrelevant to this Law

One reader listed noncitizen voting, ballot stuffing, ballots cast in the names of dead people, vote buying, and rigged machines as if mentioning many categories proves that all are widespread.

It does not.

More importantly, documentary proof of citizenship at registration would not prevent ballot stuffing, vote buying, machine tampering, misuse of a deceased person’s registration, or most absentee-ballot fraud. Those are different offenses requiring different safeguards.

Even the Heritage Foundation, which advocates restrictive election laws, calls its fraud database “a sampling.” Description of individual cases proves, at best, that fraud sometimes happens. It do not establish its prevalence. A pile of anecdotes without a denominator tells us little about the overall integrity of elections.

What about New Jersey?

The recent New Jersey disclosure is serious. A system failure mistakenly registered approximately 6,600 people who had identified themselves as noncitizens, and fewer than 400 apparently voted. That requires investigation and correction.

Governor Mikie Sherrill disclosed the failure, ordered an independent investigation, began removing the improper registrations, and directed the state to replace the vendor responsible for the faulty system. Exactly right!

The sensible response is to determine exactly what happened, correct the software and procedures, improve database checks, remove improper registrations, and hold responsible officials or vendors accountable.

A specific software and administrative failure does not by itself justify requiring millions of citizens in every state to locate and present passports, birth certificates, or naturalization records.

The Most Revealing Response

One thoughtful reader eventually offered a different justification. Even if widespread fraud is not real, he suggested, perhaps we should adopt a uniform national system because many people feel the system is open to fraud. Perhaps it needs fixing “for the perception alone.”

That comment reveals the danger of years of political misinformation.

First, political leaders repeatedly tell people, without adequate evidence, that elections are riddled with fraud. The resulting fear is then cited as a reason to enact laws burdening voters. The misinformation manufactures the public anxiety, and the manufactured anxiety becomes the justification for the policy.

This is a case study in how falsehood becomes politically self-validating. It's time to stop treating it as harmless exaggeration.

If public officials want to restore confidence in elections, we must hold them accountable to begin by telling the truth about them. They should stop exaggerating isolated incidents, stop treating allegations as findings, and stop telling voters that every election their party loses was probably stolen.

Of course we should examine every documented irregularity. We should correct genuine weaknesses. But “look at all the fraud” is not evidence. Nor is the accusation, “You must live under a rock” Calling disagreement “gaslighting,” shouting “SHAME ON YOU,” invoking “woke people,” and accusing opponents of wanting fraud are not evidence.

* * * * * *

Does this legislation provide enough additional security to justify the number of lawful citizens it will burden or exclude?

The best real-world evidence shows it does not.

After all the comments, accusations, and renewed research, I am still waiting for credible evidence that answers my original question: Why is this sweeping national change necessary?

Until proponents supply that evidence, the old common-sense rule from the work world still applies:

IF IT WORKS, DON’T FIX IT.

“If it works, don’t fix it!” That’s a phrase I learned and often used in years of my life when I spent a lot of time in the world of manual labor. There repairs come with the territory of every project.

But repairs cost, in time, money, and hassle. Sometimes those costs are higher than any possible benefits. That common sense rule of thumb often points to a wise decision to settle for less than perfection.

When I hear Donald Trump and Republicans under his spell talk about the SAVE Act, I wonder if they’ve truly lost all common sense. Or do they know jolly well what they’re doing? Are they smirking inwardly as they put on earnest faces and speak of election integrity?

The truth is America has no serious threats to the integrity of elections due to voter fraud or noncitizen voting. They are known to happen occasionally, but both are exceedingly rare.

Noncitizen voting, of course, is illegal. There is no evidence that noncitizen voting or any other form of fraud occur on anything approaching a scale capable of affecting national election outcomes.

Supporters of the SAVE Act insist it's no big deal. Why, they cooly ask, should producing a birth certificate, passport, marriage certificate, or other document be such a problem?

Common sense suggests that’s the wrong question. The question we should start with is, if it works, why fix it?

There's a reason why Donald Trump and Republicans generally are getting more desperate to pass this act. Things aren't looking good as voters recognize the widening path of destruction that Trump-led Republicans are creating. And, there's something Republicans aren't saying outloud.

They know that additional paperwork, expense, travel, and bureaucratic complications will fall more heavily on some citizen groups than on others. People who have changed their names, lack passports, cannot easily locate birth certificates, work inflexible hours, live far from government offices, or move frequently are more likely to encounter difficulty. Republicans also know that many of these groups tend to vote more Democratic than Republican.

Flawed and limited creatures that we are as human beings, every additional obstacle prevents some eligible citizens from completing the process. The SAVE Act is designed to capitalize on this reality. That's why Republicans are so determined to pass it.

Before placing a new and needless obstacle between citizens and the ballot box for millions of lawful American voters, clear and compelling evidence should be presented about why the changes are necessary in the first place.

The evidence that they have serious costs is clear - see my long Comment below where I delineate these.

The burden of proof belongs to those proposing unneeded change. They need to demonstrate that a serious problem exists, that their proposal would actually solve it, and that the remedy would not prevent more lawful votes than unlawful ones. They have not demonstrated even the first of these.

The SAVE Act is not about repair. It is voter suppression dressed up in pious talk about election integrity.

If Republicans can demonstrate a serious problem with noncitizen voting, let them produce the evidence. Until then, the old common-sense rule of the work world applies:

If it works, don’t fix it!

The United States is in a terrible pickle in Iran. We cannot achieve a clean military victory, yet the costs of yielding to the terms Iran is now demanding would be high, not only for the United States but for the world.

Who’s right and who’s wrong here? It’s for situations like this that we have international laws and treaties. What do they say?

Today, a reader of my posts wrote:

“Blockades are considered an act of war, and a crime against humanity. I’m curious to hear what you think the solution is to a bad actor, Iran, who illegally blocks international waters and illegally attacks innocent vessels.”

This is a worthy question that deserves a thoughtful answer. I am not a lawyer, but I do have thoughts based on my lay person’s understanding of this complex situation and my years living abroad, seeing the world through the eyes of people outside the US, and working in various institutions committed to peace resolution of conflicts internationally.

First, I agree with the heart of the objection. Iran should not be free to attack innocent commercial vessels, mine shipping routes, or arbitrarily prevent peaceful passage through the Strait of Hormuz. The fact that Iran has legitimate grievances against the United States does not give it the right to endanger civilian crews or hold international commerce hostage.

The Strait of Hormuz has an unusual legal status. Iran and Oman are the coastal states, and much of the Strait lies within their territorial seas. Iran therefore does possess real territorial and security rights there. It is not accurate to speak as though these waters belong to no one and Iran has no legitimate authority in them.

But territorial sovereignty does not give Iran unlimited control. Under the widely accepted law governing straits used for international navigation, ships of all countries possess a right of continuous and expeditious transit that must not be impeded.

Coastal states may regulate safety, pollution and navigation, but they may not simply suspend passage or treat an international strait as their private waterway. (United Nations)

So we need to hold two principles together here:

• Iran’s territorial sovereignty and legitimate security interests must be respected.

• Peaceful international navigation must also be protected.

Iran cannot properly use the first principle to erase the second. AND, the United States cannot properly invoke the second while ignoring the first.

* * * * * * * * *

But before considering what America should do, I think there is a prior question:

Are both Iran and the United States willing to submit to the rule of law, even when it goes against them?

Without that commitment, appeals to “international law” are just another instrument of power. We demand obedience to law from our adversaries while reserving the right to decide for ourselves when the law applies to us.

To keep things simple, I’m going to ignore for now the origins of this war, pointing out only there is a strong case that the United States and Israel violated international law when they launched the war on February 28, 2026.

The body of law most specifically relevant to management of the Strait is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. It is the principal international framework governing territorial seas, international straits, navigation rights and maritime disputes.

The United States never became a party to UNCLOS. Yet Washington routinely invokes rules reflected in UNCLOS when challenging the maritime claims of Iran, China and other countries. The American position is that the convention’s major navigation provisions have become customary international law and therefore bind countries regardless of whether they joined the treaty.

That’s a serious legal argument, not mere hypocrisy. But it leaves the United States in the awkward position of demanding the benefit of rules it has refused to accept through full treaty membership and its accompanying dispute-resolution system. American government documents have explicitly treated transit-passage rules as customary international law while recognizing the importance of protecting them without joining the convention itself. (Office of the Historian)

* * * * * * * * *

There’s a MASSIVE parallel situation that’s just emerged over the last 24 hours. Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, has announced that the US State Department is launching a campaign to “systematically disable” the International Criminal Court’s ability to act against Americans and American allies. This is a deeply disturbing policy that guts any American credibility in trying to hold Iran accountable to international law.

The International Criminal Court is not directly relevant to the Strait. The ICC does not normally settle maritime boundaries or determine ordinary navigation rights. It prosecutes individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression. Neither Iran nor the United States is a party to its founding treaty. (ICC Court of Arbitration)

But the message being sent by the Trump administration is difficult to miss:

• International law should constrain Iran.

• International law may constrain weaker countries.

• But international institutions must not be allowed to constrain the United States or the allies it chooses to protect.

That is not a sustainable basis for world order or for credibility for the US. .

It does not mean Iran should get a free pass. Quite the opposite. Iran’s attacks on civilian vessels should be investigated, condemned and met with consequences. But American bombing, any American blockade, any attempt to impose tolls, and any use of force against Iranian territory should be judged by the same independent legal and moral standards.

* * * * * * * * *

As for the practical question, “What is the solution?”, I do not believe the only alternatives are to surrender to Iran or bomb Iran until it submits.

A responsible approach would include an immediate halt to attacks on civilian shipping, restoration of the ceasefire, internationally supervised demining, agreed shipping routes negotiated with Iran and Oman, neutral monitoring, defensive protection for commercial vessels where necessary, and binding arbitration or adjudication of the disputed legal claims.

Iran would have to surrender the claim that it may use civilian shipping as leverage.

The United States would have to surrender the claim that its military power makes it the final judge of what international law requires.

That may sound unsatisfying to those who want a decisive victory. But we should have learned by now that military dominance does not reliably produce political submission.

Bombing may destroy weapons, radar and ports. It cannot by itself produce legitimate rules, affordable insurance, willing shipowners, confident captains or a stable regional order.

My answer, then, is not that Iran is right.

It is that America cannot effectively defend a rules-based international order while claiming exemption from the rules and institutions that make such an order possible.

The standard must be simple even when its application is complicated:

• One law for Iran.

• One law for America.

One law for everyone

APPENDIX: INTERNATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORKS THE US HAS DECLINED TO JOIN OR FULLY ACCEPT.

The United States played a central role in building the modern international legal order. Yet it has repeatedly declined to join major treaties and institutions accepted by much of the rest of the world.

These examples are not identical. In some cases, the United States signed a treaty but the Senate never ratified it. In others, it refused to sign or later repudiated its signature. Sometimes it nevertheless recognizes parts of the agreement as customary international law.

Still, the cumulative pattern matters. The United States frequently invokes international rules against adversaries while declining the full obligations, institutions, or jurisdiction through which those rules could also be applied to Americans.

1. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

UNCLOS is the principal international framework governing territorial seas, international straits, navigation, maritime boundaries, seabed resources, and dispute resolution.

The United States did not sign the 1982 convention and has never become a party to it. It later supported the 1994 agreement modifying the deep-seabed provisions that had generated American objections, but the Senate still did not consent to ratification.

Nevertheless, Washington routinely invokes navigation rules reflected in UNCLOS and argues that many of them, including transit passage through international straits, are customary international law binding on all countries.

This position may be legally defensible. But it allows the United States to claim many of the convention’s benefits while remaining outside its complete treaty obligations and compulsory dispute-settlement structure. That contradiction is directly relevant to American claims about the Strait of Hormuz.

2. The Rome Statute and International Criminal Court

The Rome Statute created the International Criminal Court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

The United States signed the statute in 2000 but announced in 2002 that it did not intend to become a party. It has subsequently used legislation, diplomatic pressure, sanctions, and bilateral agreements to limit the Court’s ability to investigate Americans and, at times, citizens of favored allied countries.

The ICC presently has 125 member states. The Court is not the appropriate institution for settling an ordinary maritime dispute over Hormuz, but American hostility toward it illustrates the larger problem: Washington supports accountability for international crimes in some settings while fiercely resisting any institution that might exercise authority over Americans.

3. Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties

The Vienna Convention establishes foundational rules concerning how treaties are interpreted, applied, amended, breached, and terminated.

The United States signed the convention in 1970 but never ratified it. Nevertheless, American officials and courts frequently describe many of its principal provisions as customary international law.

This creates a familiar arrangement: the United States relies upon rules contained in an international convention without formally accepting the complete treaty.

4. Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions

The United States is a party to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which form the core of international humanitarian law. But it never ratified Additional Protocol I of 1977, which expanded protections for civilians and combatants during international armed conflicts and further codified principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack.

President Ronald Reagan rejected ratification in 1987, objecting to several provisions. Successive American administrations have nevertheless recognized many, though not all, of its individual rules as customary international law.

This is especially relevant when the United States criticizes other governments’ conduct in war while reserving its own position concerning an important treaty that now has 174 parties.

5. Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty prohibits nuclear explosions for both military and civilian purposes.

The United States signed it in 1996, but the Senate rejected ratification in 1999. The United States has generally observed a voluntary moratorium on explosive nuclear testing, yet its failure to ratify has helped prevent the treaty from formally entering into force because American ratification is one of the specifically required conditions.

Thus Washington supports restraint in principle but has declined to make that restraint a binding treaty obligation.

6. Convention on the Rights of the Child

The Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes widely recognized protections concerning children’s welfare, development, education, exploitation, detention, and participation in decisions affecting them.

The United States signed the convention in 1995 but never ratified it. It remains the only United Nations member state that has not become a party.

American objections have included concerns about parental rights, federalism, sovereignty, and the effect of international standards on domestic law. Whatever one thinks of those concerns, the result is remarkable: the United States stands outside the world’s most broadly accepted human-rights treaty.

7. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

CEDAW requires governments to address discrimination against women in law, politics, employment, education, health care, and family life.

The United States signed it in 1980 but has never ratified it. The convention has been accepted by almost every country in the world.

Various American opponents have argued that it could interfere with federalism, domestic family law, abortion policy, or traditional social arrangements. The United States therefore criticizes abuses of women abroad while declining membership in the principal global treaty addressing sex discrimination.

8. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The disability convention promotes equal rights, accessibility, participation, and protection from discrimination for people with disabilities.

The United States signed it in 2009. The Senate considered ratification in 2012 but fell short of the required two-thirds majority, even though much of the convention was modeled partly on principles already embodied in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Opponents again cited sovereignty, federalism, parental authority, and concern about international oversight. The result was that the United States declined to join an agreement closely reflecting legal principles it had helped pioneer at home.

9. Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention

The Ottawa Convention prohibits the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of antipersonnel land mines and requires their destruction and the clearance of mined areas.

The United States has not joined it. American governments have cited military requirements, particularly the defense of South Korea, as a principal reason for retaining land-mine options.

Most countries have joined the convention. The United States has adopted shifting administrative policies limiting land-mine use, but those policies can be reversed by later presidents because they are not treaty commitments.

10. Convention on Cluster Munitions

The Convention on Cluster Munitions prohibits the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of weapons that disperse multiple smaller explosives over a wide area. Unexploded submunitions can continue killing civilians long after hostilities have ended.

The United States has neither signed nor joined the convention and retains cluster munitions in its arsenal. More than 100 countries are parties, and 123 states have either joined or signed it.

The United States maintains that modernized weapons with lower unexploded-ordnance rates can possess legitimate military utility. Critics argue that the weapons’ inherently broad effects and long-lasting danger to civilians justify a categorical prohibition.

I’ve been writing recently about the need for both a capitalist and a socialist analysis in America.

By that I do not mean America should become socialist. I mean something more basic: we need more than one lens for understanding economic life.

A capitalist lens helps us see enterprise, initiative, investment, innovation, productivity, and the dangers of suffocating bureaucracy.

A socialist lens helps us see inequality, worker vulnerability, concentrated wealth, corporate power, public responsibility, and the ways markets can abandon people who do not have enough money to matter.

Both lenses are necessary. Neither is sufficient. Either one becomes dangerous if turned into an ideology.

* * * * * * *

For decades, however, American politics has been dominated by a knee-jerk anti-communism that often treats socialism, communism, public investment, labor rights, public health insurance, and modest restraints on corporate power as if they are all the same thing.

Let's be clear - there is good reason to be wary of communism. Communist regimes have produced terrible oppression, economic failure, censorship, surveillance, and mass suffering.

But capitalism also has a shadow side. It has produced its own forms of exploitation, cruelty, inequality, environmental destruction, colonial plunder, company towns, child labor, union-busting, and support for brutal regimes when those regimes served business or geopolitical interests.

So the issue is not whether socialism has dangers. Of course it does. The issue is whether Americans have been trained to see only the dangers on one side.

Powerful interests have spent decades creating a narrative in which the great threat to human freedom is not concentrated private wealth, corporate domination, or market cruelty, but “socialism.” In this story, capitalism is freedom, government is the enemy, and any serious public effort to protect ordinary people can be made to sound like the first step toward tyranny.

That narrative is so one-sided, and so deeply fixed in the minds of many Americans, that I think it needs to be examined. Not to make room for a one-sided socialist narrative to take over. That would simply create another form of blindness.

The point is to recover the capacity to think morally and carefully about both markets and government.

* * * * * * * * * *

We could start many places, but I want to start with Ronald Reagan. Not because Reagan invented American anti-socialism. He did not. Suspicion of socialism had deep roots in American business culture, Cold War politics, Protestant individualism, and immigrant memories of authoritarian regimes.

But Reagan did something big. He took a complex set of economic, moral, and political questions, and translated them into simple stories. He used those stories to turn an important, complex debate into a winner-takes-all political battlefield. And he helped define the battlefield in such a way that his side held the most powerful weapon.

In other words, he took a complex situation that should have been dealt with as a polarity and turned it into a battle that will rage forever unless we recognize that the only sustainable answer is to ensure both "sides" win. (See my post of July 8th at https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18rTwau8FE/ for more on polarities; see also my Comment below.) I doubt he intended a forever battle; he just wanted to win in politics.

The story begins before Reagan was governor, before he was president, and long before he became the conservative icon now revered by much of the Republican Party.

It began when his movie career was fading. In 1954, Reagan landed a job as host of "General Electric Theater", a popular television anthology series sponsored by General Electric. But the job was more than television. Reagan also became GE’s traveling ambassador, visiting plants, speaking to employees, meeting managers, and addressing community groups around the country.

GE later said that from 1954 to 1962, Reagan traveled as its spokesman to 139 plants and met more than 250,000 employees.

This work became Reagan’s political apprenticeship. He later described his GE years as a kind of “post-graduate education in political science.” The Reagan Library says that his public speaking intensified during those years as he traveled widely, speaking to Lions Clubs, Rotary Clubs, Chambers of Commerce, and other civic groups.

His message, in broad terms, was this: Government is a threat. Business is freedom. Social welfare programs are the slippery slope to socialism.

It is hard to imagine that General Electric did not benefit from this larger message. Under Lemuel Boulware, GE had built one of the most ambitious corporate political education programs in America. It promoted management authority, free-market ideology, resistance to unions, and suspicion of government regulation.

Reagan became the perfect messenger for that project. He could translate corporate self-interest into neighborly common sense. He could make management’s agenda sound like patriotism. GE may not have foreseen that it was helping prepare a future president, but it clearly understood that Reagan’s anti-government, anti-union, anti-socialist message served its corporate interests.

Reagan’s genius was not in economic analysis. It was in narration.
He knew how to turn an abstract policy issue into a story about ordinary people. And in the coming posts I’ll describe how he used that gift to shape not only the politics of his own time, but the politics we are still living with today.

FOOTNOTES

GE says Reagan worked from 1954 to 1962 as host of General Electric Theater and traveled as its spokesman to 139 GE plants, meeting more than 250,000 employees. The Reagan Library describes his GE years as a period when his public speaking intensified, and calls his 1964 “A Time for Choosing” speech a pivotal turning point in his life. The Miller Center, in its Reagan biography, also describes the GE years as crucial to Reagan’s development as a political speaker.

Historians have documented Lemuel Boulware’s role in GE’s anti-union, pro-management political education program, later known as “Boulwarism.” Legal scholarship and labor law records also note that the NLRB and federal courts found aspects of GE’s Boulwarist bargaining strategy to violate good-faith bargaining requirements.

Sources include: GE historical materials on Reagan’s GE years; Ronald Reagan Presidential Library page on “A Time for Choosing”; Miller Center biography by Lou Cannon; Thomas Evans, The Education of Ronald Reagan; History News Network on Reagan’s GE years; and labor law discussions of NLRB v. General Electric Co. and “Boulwarism.”

My concern is not primarily with one post or one argument, but rather with a long-running habit in American public life: treating capitalism as morally pure, treating socialism as inherently evil, and allowing those labels to shut down serious moral conversation about poverty, inequality, health care, wages, housing, debt, corporate power, and public responsibility.

I think that habit has done enormous damage, especially among Christians. Our silence on these matters has too often enabled our unintended alignment with powerful, materialistic, and greedy interests in our nation and our world.

Socialism and capitalism are economic concepts with powerful political and spiritual implications. I see them as two poles of a necessary polarity for human life and, in Christian language, faithful followership of Jesus.

A polarity? By this I refer to the outstanding work of Barry Johnson, whose writings on “Polarity Management” taught me and many others to understand a polarity as a necessary tension in complex situations with multiple causes. In such circumstances, rather than choose one single problem and solve it, we need to hold several problems in mind and address all of them.

For example, should a meal planner emphasize quality or quantity? It would be possible to emphasize only one of those, but I wouldn’t want that person as my cook! In planning a budget, whether personal or business, should we save money or spend it? Again, probably both. In our faith communities, should we honor old traditions and teaching, or innovate? Obviously, we need both.

Much of my work in peacemaking, and much of my theology, has been guided by awareness of polarities. Not all situations contain a polarity, of course. Sometimes one simple answer is right.

But far more than is commonly recognized, especially in longstanding and painful conflicts, a critical polarity lies at the core. For people interested in this, Johnson has excellent videos and books on the topic, including practical conflict resolution strategies.

I see much of the debate about socialism and capitalism as an overlooking of this fundamental reality of polarity in human life. This is at one level an economic debate, but it has profound implications at the personal, moral, and spiritual level.

Pure capitalism is starkly individualistic in the end. The idea is that the financial well-being of individuals and societies is a free-for-all and that, more or less, we all start out equally. So if some aren’t doing well, it’s on them.

Capitalism has much to say about individual initiative. That is what drives it. And individual initiative truly matters. It is one of the great engines of human creativity, responsibility, productivity, and freedom. I run a small business and am grateful every day for the energy that capitalism encourages in me!

But capitalism, especially when treated as morally self-sufficient, is largely blind to the ways some people are highly privileged while others are severely disadvantaged. Raw, unbridled capitalism isn’t interested in seeing you in the web of circumstances you have to struggle with. It is interested in goosing you on to start competing and does that well for some people. It trusts the competitive process to make things right for all in the end.

Socialism, or at least the socialist critique that emerged over the decades, has much to say about social realities. It helps us see that people are not isolated individuals floating freely through life. We are born into families, neighborhoods, races, genders, classes, histories, schools, economies, legal systems, and inherited structures of power. Some of those realities open doors.

But some close them. Some hand people capital, networks, confidence, safety, education, and second chances. Others hand people trauma, a belief they are stupid or worthless, debt, danger, humiliation, underfunded schools, exploitative wages, and a constant fight for survival.

That is not an excuse for every bad choice. It is an insistence that choices are made inside conditions and the options that seem available.

Socialist movements and thinkers have often seen these social conditions more clearly than capitalism does. But socialism has its own dangers. Some versions have over-trusted the state and the selflessness of the human beings who run it, flattened individuality, demonized whole classes of people, treated human beings as products of social location alone, and failed to honor the moral agency, freedom, creativity, and spiritual dignity of the individual person. In its worst historical forms, like capitalism socialism has become authoritarian, elitist, coercive, and deadly.

So I am not interested in romanticizing socialism. I am not defending Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ortega, Chávez, or any other ruler who used socialist language while crushing human freedom, dissent, religion, democracy, and basic rights. I reject that completely.

I have read and found Alinksy thoughtful-provoking and insightful on certain points, but as a reliable blueprint for building a healthy community, his book has gathered dust for years on my shelves!

I am equally uninterested in romanticizing capitalism. Capitalism too can become brutal, exploitative, spiritually deadening, and indifferent to the people it grinds up.

Capitalism can produce wealth and innovation, yes. But it can also produce obscene inequality, corporate predation, disposable workers, unaffordable housing, medical bankruptcy, political corruption, and a culture that measures human worth by market value.

In the end, these are human terms for real-life dynamics we all live with. I believe we desperately need the truths carried by both poles if we are to live compassionately, justly, and faithfully to the teachings of our faith.

I am not interested in choosing capitalism or socialism as tribal banners. I intend to actively resist any systematic effort to discredit either of these essential poles in the places I live my life.

I am interested in asking what combination of freedom, responsibility, initiative, justice, public provision, private generosity, market energy, and social protection actually serves human flourishing.

That is the conversation I want. And it is the conversation I believe Christians, of all people, should be able to have

.

Many people seem surprised that, in the recent primaries, several candidates won who describe themselves as socialist. I am puzzled by their surprise.

The pain of America’s working class and much of the middle class has been evident for years. Struggles with housing, health care, education, groceries, childcare, debt, job insecurity, and the relentless sense that they seem to trail behind others in life have besieged many Americans for years.

When people see that the existing economy is working very well for those at the top and poorly for almost everyone else, some will start looking for alternatives. That’s predictable.

Since the recent elections now I am seeing a sharp uptick in reactions, including social media posts by people I know. Communism is coming, they warn, don't be deluded by its false promises!

We are going to see many more of these as the Fall election nears. Some will make valid warnings. Others will be ideology dressed up in religious garb. We should know what to look for.

Some Questions to Consider

1. Does the author define terms clearly enough to make honest assessment possible?

Recently I read a post from a lifelong acquaintance who lamented his youthful naivete in esteeming the revolution of Daniel Ortega, who espoused Marxism, promised liberation for Nicaragua’s poor, and today presides over one of the most repressive regimes in the hemisphere.

That regret is well-justified. Ortega became exactly the kind of ruler Christians and democrats of all stripes should oppose: corrupt, authoritarian, repressive, and violent. No one should romanticize that.

But the author then moved from Ortega to a sweeping condemnation of “socialism” as such. That’s where the argument breaks down.

Is “socialism” being used to mean Soviet communism? Cuban one-party rule? Venezuelan authoritarianism? European-style social democracy? Medicare? Public schools? Social Security? Universal health care? Worker cooperatives? Strong unions? Antitrust policy? Progressive taxation? Public investment in housing?

Those are not all the same thing.

If an author is evaluating "socialist" claims and fails to define terms, take it as a major caution flag. That’s often a sign that “socialism” is being used less as an analytical category and more as a scare word.

2. Does the author compare the best of capitalism with the worst of socialism?

This happens constantly. Authors invoke Castro, Ortega, Chávez, Stalin, Mao, shortages, repression, poverty, laziness, and ruling-class corruption. Those words are serious reminders of real moral disasters that can - and have - arisen under socialism. They shouldn’t be dismissed.

But then capitalism is described only in its noblest language: freedom, creativity, enterprise, innovation, hard work, self-responsibility, risk-taking, prosperity, and opportunity.

That is not honest comparison.

If socialism must answer for its worst outcomes, capitalism must answer for its worst outcomes too. Those include Pinochet, Suharto, Marcos, Mobutu, Franco, apartheid South Africa, oil dictators too numerous to mention in the Middle East, slavery, colonial extraction, sweatshops, child labor, monopoly power, financial crashes, medical profiteering, union-busting, environmental destruction, and billionaires buying political influence.

Capitalism has created enormous wealth. It has also created enormous suffering.

Socialist and social-democratic movements have helped push modern societies toward labor protections, public education, social insurance, universal or near-universal health care, stronger safety nets, and wider access to the basics of life. Those gains did not require Soviet-style one-party rule. In many countries they developed within democratic, mixed economies, and you can easily find large numbers of people in those societies who are deeply grateful for the benefits of their system.

And yes, socialism has also, in certain forms and circumstances, produced coercion, tyranny, and devastation of human beings. But a serious conversation has to be honest about the dangers of both.

3. Does the author admit that concentrated power is dangerous wherever it gathers?

One of the best arguments against authoritarian socialism is that it concentrates too much power in the state. I agree.

But unbridled capitalism concentrates power too, in corporations, monopolies, billionaires, banks, private equity firms, media empires, political donor networks, and in government itself.

The state can become an idol, but so can the market. Government bureaucrats can become controllers, but corporate owners can become takers. Political elites can rig systems, but economic elites can rig systems too.

In our own time, we see how easily economic power can capture political power: wealthy donors, favored corporations, private contractors, media owners, and politically connected firms can shape public policy for private gain. They are actively engaged in this as we speak.

We should be suspicious of all unchecked power, not only the forms of unchecked power we have been trained to dislike.

4. Does the author treat inequality as morally irrelevant?
One post I saw defended capitalism by saying that capitalism gives everyone freedom, and then some people build more, risk more, earn more, and receive more. “That’s just life in a free country," its deeply religious author seemed to be saying. I almost saw his shoulders go shrug, shrug.

There is some truth in that. Christians even have a scripture passage that specifically points out that different gifts, efforts, choices, risks, and responsibilities produce different results. It would be wrong to say all inequality is injustice.

But it’s equally wrong to suggest that’s the whole story. Yes, some wealth comes from hard work and creativity. But some comes from inheritance, monopoly, exploitation, political access, regulatory capture, speculation, and the ability to shift real costs onto workers, communities and the environment.

Extreme inequality almost always becomes a form of domination. The Bible may not say that outright but it surely warns repeatedly about the danger.

When wealth buys limitless legal maneuvering, vast media influence, privileged access to housing, education, and health care, not to mention political access, and practical immunity from consequences, we should stop pretending that everyone is equally free in any meaningful sense.

It's not that socialism has easy answers to these unsavory realities, but a biblical faith hardly gives us the option to just ignore them.

5. Does the author recognize that providing public services or resources is not the same thing as totalitarian control?

One common move is to say: socialists promise free health care, free college, free housing, and free everything, but what they deliver is dependency, scarcity, and government control.

That’s a fair warning against utopian fantasies. Nothing is truly free. Public goods must be paid for. Badly designed programs can create dependency or inefficiency, and it’s not hard to find examples.

But public services are not automatic tyranny.

Public schools are not communism. Medicare is not Stalinism. Social Security is not the gulag. Fire departments, libraries, public roads, clean water systems, food safety rules, disaster relief, unemployment insurance, and public research on important health and technical questions are not the end of freedom.

The real question is not whether something is public or private. The question is whether it serves human flourishing, protects freedom, restrains abuse, and remains accountable.

6. Does the author ask why socialism is gaining appeal?

This is a question many critics avoid. If people are drawn to socialism, we should ask what pain is driving them.
- Why do so many people feel they cannot afford a home?
- Why are medical bills a terror even for people who work hard?
- Why does college debt feel like a trap?
- Why do full-time, dedicated workers still struggle to survive?
- Why are corporations reporting profits while workers feel disposable?
- Why do bailouts seem to reach the powerful faster than relief reaches ordinary families?
- Why do so many people believe both parties are more responsive to donors than to citizens?

A society that refuses to address those questions should not be shocked when people go looking for better answers.

7. Does the author speak as a Christian or merely as an ideological partisan?

The Bible doesn’t give us a modern economic system. It does not say, “Choose capitalism,” or “Choose socialism.”

But it does say a great deal about dishonest scales, exploitation of workers, neglect of the poor, greed, debt, land, rulers who enrich themselves, the danger of wealth, and God’s concern for widows, orphans, strangers, laborers, and the vulnerable.
It also warns against envy, theft, coercion, idolatry, false messiahs, and the abuse of power.

Christians should be wary, to be sure, of utopian socialism. We should be equally wary of naive capitalism.

The Christian question can’t just be, “Is this capitalism or socialism?”
The deeper question is:
- What does this system do to human beings?
- Does it protect the weak?
- Does it restrain the powerful?
- Does it honor labor?
- Does it protect freedom?
- Does it encourage generosity rather than domination?
- Does it tell the truth about human dignity?
- Does it recognize that both the state and the market can become idols?

We should not trust wooden ideological answers from the left or the right. We should eschew the slick one-liners popular on Facebook suggesting that one system is simply right and the other is simply wrong.

We need markets, but markets need moral limits. We need individual responsibility, but we also need corporate responsibility. We need freedom, but freedom alone, bereft of a deep heart for justice, becomes predation. We need concern for the poor, but concern for the poor without accountability can become coercive or sentimental.

When the political ads, memes, sermons, and AI-generated posts show up in the coming months, we should ponder whether they are honest, whether they define terms when comparing systems, whether they critique capitalism and socialism with equal moral intensity, whether they grapple with why people are angry, and whether they show deep caring about the actual lives of working people.

Do they acknowledge that concentrated power is dangerous in every system?

And do they help us build an economy where human beings can flourish, with enough freedom for creativity, enough justice for the vulnerable, enough limits on concentrated power, and enough humility to admit that every system needs correction?

On July 4, this 250th birthday of American independence from a colonial ruler, I find myself thinking about a Muslim family in Texas.

That may seem like an odd place to begin an Independence Day reflection. But to me, this story highlights some of the deepest things I love about America, and also some of the most important things we need the honesty and principle to face.

Aminah Knight, a Muslim mother of six, wanted to create something joyful for families in the Dallas area: an Eid al-Adha gathering at an indoor water park. It was not a protest. Not a political rally. Not an attempt to take anything away from anyone else. It was a mother and educator trying to make space for Muslim families, especially girls and women who wanted to swim modestly and comfortably, to celebrate a major religious holiday.

(Full story accessible free at https://www.nytimes.com/.../muslim-swim-party-texas.html...)

I love that America is a place where such a dream makes sense.

I love that people of many faiths come here believing, and with good reason, that the American Constitution protects them too. Not merely tolerates them. Not merely permits them to exist quietly in the background. Protects them. Welcomes them. Recognizes them as equal citizens under law.

I love that America continues to attract courageous, imaginative, deeply principled people like this family, people committed to faith, family, education, community, and public service. People who want to live their convictions fully, while also trying not to offend or exclude others.

That’s part of the American promise at its best. We are not a land where everyone becomes the same. We are a land where people can bring their deepest identities to life, privately and publicly, and still belong.

I also love something else in this story: the capacity for revision.

Ms. Knight’s original flyer said “Muslims Only.” I understand why that wording alarmed people. In a public facility owned by a city, even if rented for a private event, religious exclusion raises legitimate questions. A Christian-only, Jewish-only, Hindu-only, atheist-only, or Muslim-only event in such a setting deserves scrutiny.

But here is what matters: when Ms. Knight realized the wording had caused offense, she changed it. She clarified that people of other faiths were welcome if they honored the modest dress code and the religious purpose of the event.

That’s a big deal to me. We ought to be a country where people care about not offending others, and along with that, are given the space to learn. Where intentions are weighed alongside mistakes. Where revising a flyer is not treated as proof of guilt, but as evidence of responsiveness. Where people who say, “I see the problem, let me fix it,” are not crushed for having needed the correction.

I love the America that believes in course correction rather than humiliation.

I love the America where people of faith can create spaces shaped by their religious practice, and where others can say, “Help me understand,” rather than immediately reaching for suspicion and accusation.

I love the America where a Baptist woman can call a Muslim woman in anger and, after an hour of actual conversation, soften into empathy. That moment may seem small, but it’s a glimpse of what we desperately need more of. These two could have remained caricatures to each other, but they stayed on the line long enough for their humanity to break through.

That is America at its best.

But love of country cannot mean pretending not to see what is wrong. If we love America, we must be honest that anti-Muslim hatred is real. We must be honest that politicians and media figures know how to inflame it. We must be honest that “religious liberty” is too often defended passionately when Christians feel threatened, but becomes suspect when Muslims ask for room to practice their faith.

We must be honest that there are Americans who hear “Muslim family celebration” and immediately imagine danger. We must be honest that some people believe, whether they say it plainly or not, that Muslims do not really belong here. We must be honest there are politicians eager to build power by manipulating that belief.

And we must be honest that this is not a minor problem. It is a direct contradiction of a principle that once made us great, and could do so again if we reclaimed it.

When a Muslim woman organizes a holiday event, changes the language after objections are raised, clarifies that no one will be excluded, and still faces cancellation, threats, slurs, and public vilification, we are not merely debating policy about a public event. We are testing whether our deepest principles apply when the minority religion is unpopular.

Religious liberty is easy when we are defending people like ourselves. The real test comes when we defend the rights of people whose prayers, clothing, customs, and holidays are not our own. That’s why this story belongs in a July 4 reflection.

The Declaration of Independence speaks of equality. The Constitution protects religious freedom. The First Amendment does not say that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of Christianity. It says no establishment of religion. It protects free exercise. It imagines a society in which the state does not decide which faiths are truly American. That’s one of the greatest achievements of this country.

But principles do not defend themselves. They require citizens with enough honesty to see when they are being violated, and enough courage to defend them even when doing so is uncomfortable or unpopular.

I love America because its founding ideals are larger than any one tribe, party, religion, or race. I love America because its best traditions give us language for self-correction. I love America because again and again, people excluded from the promise have appealed to the promise, and in so doing have helped call us back to our own creed.

Black Americans did this. Women did this. Catholics and Jews did this. Immigrants did this. Indigenous people, laborers, disabled Americans, LGBTQ Americans, and religious minorities have all forced us to face the gap between our words and our actions.

That gap is painful, but naming it is not anti-American. It is one of the most American things we can do.

What worries me now is not only the presence of hatred. Nothing new there, hatred has always been with us. What worries me is the permission structure being built around it. Powerful people can take a local misunderstanding, magnify it into a threat, and then stand back while ordinary families absorb the fear, the phone calls, the slurs, the threats.

That is not strength. It is cowardice dressed up as vigilance. A strong country does not need to terrorize a preschool teacher because she planned an Eid party.

A confident Christianity does not need to shout down Muslims at City Hall. A principled government does not punish a local community after the alleged problem has already been corrected. A free people do not preserve their liberty by denying liberty to others.

So on this July 4, I say two things.

I love America. I love its constitutional promise. I love its restless moral imagination. I love its capacity for self-renewal. I love the neighbors who compliment a woman in hijab at Target. I love the people who keep talking across lines of fear. I love the families who come here believing that their children can belong. I love the possibility that difference need not mean danger.

And I long for America to be more honest and couragous. Honest about the hatred that still lives among us. Honest about the politicians who exploit it. Honest about the double standards we apply to religious freedom. Honest about the fear we project onto people we do not know. Honest about the damage done when public leaders turn vulnerable minorities into targets.

Patriotism, to me, is not the refusal to criticize America. It is the refusal to give up on America’s best promises. It is loving the country enough to say: we can do better than this.

We can protect Christian freedom without diminishing Muslim freedom.

We can honor legitimate concerns about public facilities and discrimination without unleashing bigotry. We can correct mistakes without destroying people. We can disagree without dehumanizing.

Ms. Knight said something after the ordeal, “We still have to live together.”

Not as conquerors and enemies. Not as insiders and outsiders. Not as “real Americans” and tolerated guests. But as neighbors, citizens, parents, believers and nonbelievers, all sharing the same public square.

That is the America I love.

And that is the America we still have opportunity to become, in hope for a “more perfect union”.

As a student at Goshen College in the 1970s, I read the Barmen Declaration, the 1934 statement by German Christians who refused to let the church be swallowed by Adolf Hitler’s totalitarian state. Would I have had the courage to stand with them, I asked myself?

The Barmen Declaration became the defining text of the Confessing Church, a movement of Christians who resisted the Nazi effort to bring the church into alliance with the state. Theologian Karl Barth was deeply involved in its writing. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was active in the movement, though he believed the church needed to go even further. Still, historians rightly regard Barmen as a pivotal event.

Decades later, in 1974, I lived, worked, and studied for a year in Germany. I was deeply moved by the shame and regret that still made it difficult for many Germans, especially those middle-aged and older, to talk about what had happened. By then, most had come to recognize their complicity. Even if they did not directly participate, many knew that in their silence, in their failure to challenge what their government was doing, they had implied assent.

In 1990, I was living in South Africa when yet another group of Christian leaders gathered to address a national crisis of governance and morality. Knowing the deep role Christianity had played in creating and justifying apartheid, and remembering the importance of Barmen in Germany, I made a point of attending the entire Rustenburg Church Conference in November of that year.

Rustenburg, too, became a watershed moment. Gathering nine months after President F.W. de Klerk unbanned liberation movements and released Nelson Mandela, more than 230 church leaders from nearly 100 denominations wrestled with what role the church should play in a changing South Africa.

On November 6, Professor Willie Jonker, a leading theologian in the white Dutch Reformed Church, stood before the assembly and made a dramatic, unscripted, public confession:

“I confess before you and before the Lord not only my own sin and guilt... but, vicariously, I also venture to do this on behalf of the Dutch Reformed Church...”

A stunned silence followed and the flustered moderator started moving on from the awkward moment. Then a flurry of motion appeared on the edge of the stage as a short man in clerical garb hastened to the microphone.

It was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Anglican primate and leading light of the anti-apartheid church. In a voice filled with grace, he said that our Lord had taught that when there is confession, there should be forgiveness. Without reservation he accepted Jonker’s confession on behalf of those who had suffered under apartheid.

The next day, newspaper headlines across South Africa carried the story. It was late, painfully late, but many white Christians in South Africa finally began to separate themselves publicly from the legal structures of apartheid. They did so just in time to stop lending moral cover to a system that was collapsing.

As I read the newspaper in America this week I once again find myself asking: Where is the confessing church of America and what would it take to open eyes and hearts to the needless suffering our policies are creating?

The Supreme Court’s ruling this week now makes it legal for the Trump administration to detain and deport people who came here from places of war, disaster, and extreme danger.

But a favorable court ruling does not make something moral.
It does not make it righteous in the eyes of God.

The Bible is not vague about this:
- “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19)
- “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:35)
- "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." (Matthew 25:40)

There are moments when legality becomes a refuge for cowardice. There are moments when people of faith must say: This may be legal, but it is not right.

The full truth of what is being done to immigrants and their families by our government will take years to document. But enough is already in plain view for anyone willing to see.

Any person of conscience who remains silent now may one day live with deep regret. In hindsight, as in post-war Germany, right and wrong will look far more obvious one day than they may seem in the moment.

The question many Christians, and their children and grandchildren, will then have to live with is this: What kept us from recognizing and acting on the obvious?

For details of how arrests have doubled in recent days see this free post in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/us/politics/ice-immigrant-arrests-surge.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ulA.BZfr.D9LkWm-rd3kC&smid=url-shar

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When people think of United Nations peacebuilding, they often imagine high-level diplomacy: envoys, resolutions, blue flags, negotiated agreements, and formal meetings among government leaders.

Those things are real and ensuring their availability matters. But my most meaningful experiences of peacebuilding, including years of high level work in the UN in three different locations, point in a different direction. They taught me that peace is most durable when it is rooted in the people, institutions, and moral resources already present in a society.

Heads of Churches Facilitating Peace in Lesotho

My most rewarding UN experience was in Lesotho. I had later UN appointments in the Philippines and Solomon Islands, but Lesotho remains, for me, the clearest example of what international peacebuilding can be when it works at its best.

The country had been troubled by political conflict since independence in 1966. Elections always generated anxiety and on multiple occasions, killings and street violence. In 1998, 80% of the commercial infrastructure of the capitol city Maseru was destroyed in looting and burning.

Our challenge as the 2012 election loomed was much more than how to manage the technical delivery of a electoral process. We wanted to help a government and a nation move toward an election without once again sliding into fear, accusation, and violence, and do it in ways that empowered local actors to be the leaders of the effort.

The insight that shaped our work was simple: if you want change in a community or nation, look first for what is already there that has life, credibility, and resources. Do not begin by importing a complete program from outside. Do not imagine that outsiders can manufacture trust. Look for the people and institutions that already carry some moral authority, even if they are imperfect, divided, or compromised. Then support them in becoming more fully what the situation requires.

In Lesotho, one such resource was the national religious leadership. The conflict was political, but the churches were not outside it. Denominations and church leaders had their own relationships with competing political parties. That made them complicated actors.

But it also made them important actors. They were not neutral in some abstract, untouched sense, but they were deeply embedded in the society, and they cared about the country. Many had seen what political violence had done, both there and elsewhere in Africa. They did not want it to happen again.

So the work began, already in 2009, not with politicians, but with religious leaders. We convened a monthly breakfast meeting with heads of churches that met regularly for several years. The first task was not to ask them to issue statements or perform ceremonies. We wanted to help them talk with each other, eat together, pray together, build enough trust to work together, and form a shared vision of what they might offer the nation.

Only after more than a year did they begin convening political leaders, including through prayer breakfasts and related gatherings designed to create a different kind of political space.

This was not “the UN bringing peace to Lesotho.” That would be the wrong story. The visible conveners were local religious leaders. The credibility was theirs. The language was theirs. The relationships were theirs. The public ownership was theirs. Do a web search on "2012 election in Lesotho" today and you will even find a single mention of the UN role. That's the way it ought to be!

But the UN mattered, quite a great deal. The UN had prestige. It could open doors. It could call people into a room who might not have come if invited by a small local organization. It could provide staff support, money, logistics, and continuity.

As the UN representative mandated to make this happen, I reported to the senior UN representative in the country, the Resident Coordinator. A Nigerian woman, she had her own life experiences with hotshot outsiders and she was unusually open to this different way of working. Rather than insisting that everything be run through formal UN channels and credited to the UN, she allowed space for a locally grounded peacebuilding process to emerge.

That strategy was crucial. The UN needed to restrain its visibility because the work would not last if it belonged to outsiders. The art was to use the UN’s weight without letting that weight crush local ownership.

This is one of the hardest disciplines in peacebuilding of all kinds. Human beings instinctively want credit when good things happen. Partly this is about individual egos, but it’s more.

Credit for success gives power and credibility to those receiving it. Agencies want credit. Donors want credit. Consultants want credit. Everyone wants a photograph highlighting their role, a report, a success story, a measurable outcome with their logo attached.

But in peacebuilding, the desire for credit is a saboteur of success and peace. If local actors are to carry a process through moments of danger, they must own it. They must be seen by their own people as the agents of change. They are often risking their careers and sometimes their lives by being involved in a genuine peace process, since invariably there are people who oppose talks or don’t like the agreements being discuss.

Locals need every ounce of power and energy that comes from a successful peace effort. When internationals take credit for peace they are robbing essential lifeblood that ought to be retained to local benefit.

One of the rules I lived by is that international actors must often do serious work and then let the credit go elsewhere. If locals choose to honor internationals, well and good. But chasing it reveals a serious deficit of judgement in internationals.

That is not easy. I do not pretend to be above the desire for recognition. Like anyone else, I have had longings for credit. But in the end, if one wants social change, one has to make peace with the fact that the people who most need to own the change must also receive the recognition for it.

A wise formulation credited to the sociologist Robert Theobald is that you can have social change, or you can have credit for social change. But you can't have both.

National Peace Accord in South Africa

This lesson was not unique to Lesotho. I had seen a larger version of it in South Africa during the transition from apartheid. There the National Peace Accord created layers of conflict-resolution capacity throughout the country at national, regional, and local levels.

I had a front-row view of that process as well, but from a different location, based in a South African organization from 1989-1995. We had nowhere near the resources and influence of the UN in that situation, but we had credibility of a local base, and we understood throughout that we had no choice but to extend our small status through partnerships with influential actors throughout the society.

Among other duties, I was appointed jointly by the white government and the black and brown political formations to serve as a conflict resolution training advisor to the National Peace Accord. This entity became for several years the world’s largest national conflict resolution structure, supported by tens of millions of dollars from abroad and from worried South African businesses, mandated to keep the peace as the talks dragged on and on.

While high-level negotiations proceeded, the NPA trained local and regional peace committees that responded to killings, provocations, and outbreaks of violence that could easily have overwhelmed the political process. Hundreds of people, most volunteers but some also full-time employees of the NPA, labored tirelessly behind the scenes throughout the country.

It was not glamorous work. It was dangerous, tiring, difficult work carried by people close enough to their own communities to be trusted and close enough to the danger to act quickly. The country hung on a knife’s edge the whole time and to this day I don’t think the political transition would have occurred without their efforts.

That experience convinced me that peace processes need more than elite agreements. Agreements at the top can be essential, but they are fragile if they are not supported by capacity below. Societies need people in neighborhoods, churches, civic groups, unions, businesses, schools, and local government who know how to hold the line when fear rises. They need people who can cross boundaries, interrupt rumor, convene enemies, lower emotional temperature, and create space for better choices.

Lesotho reaffirmed that conviction. The role of the international actor is not to replace those people. It is to find them, support them, connect them, and sometimes protect the space in which they can act.

Formation for Transformation

This way of working is rooted in a broader understanding of peacebuilding. Mediation is not merely a technique. It is not only a set of skills for getting disputing parties to identify interests and generate options. Yes, those skills matter - I spent much of my early work life teaching them, and I still believe they are essential. But the longer I have worked in conflict, the more convinced I have become that sustainable peace requires formation, of people, institutions, and cultures capable of responding to conflict differently.

A society does not become peaceful because a few people learn a process. It becomes more peaceful when enough people begin to see conflict through a different lens. They ask different questions. They resist the reflex to strike back. They look for the human being inside the enemy. They notice the local resources already present. They understand that peace is rarely achieved by one brilliant intervention. It is a journey, a long process of taking the next faithful step.

That is why the Lesotho experience still matters to me. It offers a model for international efforts in peacebuilding that is both modest and powerful. Modest, because it does not pretend that international actors can impose peace. Powerful, because it recognizes that international institutions can help local actors become more effective than they could be alone.

The best international peacebuilding does not arrive as a finished answer. It arrives as accompaniment. It listens first. It studies the social landscape. It asks: Who here already cares? Who has moral authority? Who can convene? Who is trusted across lines? Who is not yet ready but might become ready? Where are the existing strengths from which peace can grow?

In Lesotho, the answer began with religious leaders. In another setting, it might be women’s groups, business leaders, traditional authorities, teachers, youth networks, municipal officials, or former combatants tired of war. The principle is the same: build from what exists. Strengthen the capacities already present. Let local actors own the process. Use outside power sparingly, carefully, and in service of local initiative.

That is the kind of international peacebuilding I still believe in. It cannot be led by actors that fancy themselves as the hero of the story. Nor by negotiators trapped in bureaucracy and upward accountability to distant headquarters. Instead the world needs facilitators and negotiators who use their convening power, resources, and legitimacy to help societies discover and strengthen their own peacebuilding capacities.

Any nation that understands this can make a big contribution to peace by redirecting the resources currently invested in vast systems of weapons and in topdown peace initiatives "owned" by international actors into accompaniment of locally and regionally owned peace initiatives.

Donald Trump’s latest attacks on the Supreme Court deserve more attention than they are getting.

Presidents have criticized Supreme Court decisions before of course, some sharply.

But Trump is different - he talks about the justices as though they owe him personal loyalty.

After the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 a few months ago that Trump lacked authority under a 1977 law to impose sweeping tariffs, Trump didn’t just argue that the Court got the law wrong. He said he was “ashamed” of some of the justices. He singled out Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, both of whom he appointed, and called the ruling an “embarrassment to their families.”

Then he went further. He complained about Barrett and Gorsuch’s lack of “loyalty.” That's a giveaway.

In a constitutional republic, Supreme Court justices don't owe loyalty to the president who nominated them. They don't sit on the Court as representatives of the president, a party, the Federalist Society, or any political movement. They take an oath to the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

That's the whole point of judicial independence.

Of course presidents nominate justices whose legal philosophy they respect. Of course presidents hope their nominees will rule in ways consistent with that philosophy. But there is a bright constitutional line between appointing a justice because you trust their judgment and expecting that justice to function as your agent.

Trump keeps erasing that line.

He seems to believe that if he gave someone a Supreme Court seat, that person owes him fealty. If they rule for him, they are strong. If they rule against him, they are weak, stupid, bad, disloyal, or an embarrassment to their families. Those are all his words, publicly expressed, multiple times, about justices ruling against him.

This is not normal presidential frustration. It is a fundamentally authoritarian understanding of power.

It is also exactly why federal judges are given life tenure. The framers did not want judges looking over their shoulders to see whether the president who appointed them was pleased. They did not want justices acting like agents of the ruler dressed up in robes.

The Supreme Court has handed Trump many victories. That makes this even more revealing. The Court is broadly sympathetic to his view of presidential power, yet Trump still rages when it refuses to become personally subservient to him.

Richard Lazarus, a Harvard law professor, put his finger on it: the heart of the conflict is Trump’s belief that conservative justices owe him fealty rather than acting as an independent branch of government.

That should alarm anyone who still believes in the separation of powers. A justice’s job is not to be loyal to Trump. A justice’s job is to be loyal to the law.

The fact that Trump cannot seem to understand the difference tells us something very important about him.

[This article in the Trump-inclining Washington Post gives more depth on this long-standing pattern - https://wapo.st/4vreoEb]

For background on how white enslavers sought to de-feminize black woman, see this by Rev. Benjamin Cremer, a Nazarene pastor who summarizes work by Black scholar Moya Bailey.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BLuJDcZaY/

Few American presidents have been willing to put serious public pressure on an Israeli prime minister in the middle of a military confrontation. If Trump really did tell Netanyahu to hold fire, that is a hopeful sign, not because it redeems Trump, but because it shows that Washington still has leverage when it chooses to use it.

It’s hard to make sense of what is happening between the United States, Israel, and Iran. It is tempting to throw up our hands and just hope it all ends soon.

But for Americans, that is a copout. The painful truth is that the United States is not a bystander in this conflict. Our weapons, our diplomatic protection, and our long-standing regional policies have helped create the conditions now threatening to explode. If peace is ever to come to this region, Americans have to look honestly at how our own government continues to shape the violence unfolding there.

For that, we need to pull back the curtain on several moving parts.

1. Trump’s Current Dilemma with Iran

Donald Trump now finds himself in a dangerous geopolitical corner on Iran. It is a predicament partly of his own making.

During his first term, Trump championed “maximum pressure” on Tehran, including his 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the JCPOA. His gamble was that crippling sanctions would force Iran to its knees and end its nuclear ambitions. Instead, the policy weakened moderates, strengthened hardliners, and freed Iran from the limits and inspections built into the agreement.

Even in late 2025, U.S. intelligence still assessed that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon. But Iran had greatly expanded its nuclear capacity, including uranium enrichment far beyond JCPOA limits. That meant the danger was not an imminent Iranian bomb in hand, but a rapidly shrinking distance between Iran and the ability to build one if its leaders chose that path.

Then Netanyahu came knocking. For years, he has urged American presidents to take a harder line against Iran, urging open participation in military threats and pressure to stop Iran’s nuclear program. With Trump he succeeded for the first time in getting full American buy in.

Arrogant in the beginning, this pair soon discovered that even the combined militaries of both countries can’t block Iran from inflicting catastrophic damage in return. Nor can they re-open the Strait of Hormuz without extreme risk to their forces.

Rummage through a vast country for nuclear stockpiles? Forget about it! Both countries have consumed large quantities of their anti-missile defenses; it will take years and cost billions to re-build them.

Israel is now more vulnerable than in many years and Trump sits with a humiliating dilemma. If he does nothing more and withdraws, Iran may move closer to a nuclear deterrent, permanently changing the balance of power in the Middle East and damaging American credibility.

But if the United States joins or supports a major preemptive military campaign against Iran, it risks triggering a massive regional war. Such a war would mean prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important oil transit chokepoints, and send energy markets into chaos. American allies in the region would suffer deep and possibly irreversible economic damage. America’s economy would take a huge hit along with global econonmy; voters would hold him accountable for it all.

He is trapped with having to choose between a geopolitical reality of reduced American power in the region and the world or . proceeding with an economically ruinous war that he could definitively lose.

2. How Outdated U.S. Policy Helped Create the Predicament

This trap did not spring overnight. The stage was set by a decades-old U.S. policy shared by administrations of both parties.

For generations, Washington’s Middle East doctrine has rested on extraordinarily strong support for Israel: massive military aid, diplomatic protection at the United Nations, and political backing that often continues regardless of what Israeli leaders actually do.

That policy was built for a different era, when Israel was widely seen as a vulnerable democracy surrounded by hostile conventional Arab armies. Many Americans still carry that image.

But Israel has changed. The region has changed. And U.S. policy has not kept up.

By continuing this policy mechanically for decades, successive U.S. administrations insulated Israel from many of the diplomatic consequences of its own choices. Washington repeatedly shielded Israel while illegal settlements expanded in the West Bank and Gaza remained under blockade. These policies steadily destroyed the plausibility of a two-state solution while also deepening Palestinian despair, regional rage, and Israeli insecurity.

By giving Israel something close to a blank check, America helped make an eventual explosion more likely, and blinded itself to how dramatically Israeli politics were changing.

3. The New Breed of Israeli Extremism

Many Americans still hold a nostalgic image of Israel from the 1950s and 1960s: a country of creative, hopeful, open-spirited pioneers and pragmatic leaders.

That image no longer describes the government now driving Israeli policy.

Earlier Israeli leaders, including Yitzhak Rabin and even traditional conservatives such as Menachem Begin, were capable of hard realism. They understood the limits of military power. They signed peace agreements. They could trade land for security.

Today, Netanyahu’s political survival depends heavily on far-right, ultranationalist religious parties and leaders, most notably Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. These are not cautious pragmatists. They are ideological maximalists.

They have openly opposed Palestinian statehood, supported settlement expansion, and promoted visions of permanent Israeli control over the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have also advocated policies that would push Palestinians out of Gaza under the language of “voluntary emigration” or “resettlement.” That rhetoric was condemned even by the U.S. State Department as inflammatory and irresponsible.

These politicians benefit politically from conflict. A wider regional war with Iran is not necessarily a nightmare for them. In fact for them it is more like an opportunity: a chance to redraw borders, crush enemies, deepen Israeli control, and make Palestinian dispossession harder to reverse.

No one reacts kindly to neighbors who speak and act as though they have a divine license to rewrite the boundaries of the entire neighborhood. True, there is deep and sometimes murderous hostility toward Israel in the region. But Israel’s actions and policies have greatly inflamed that hostility.

The answer is not to give Israel carte blanche to continue down this road. The answer is to insist that Israel stop policies of permanent expansion and domination, while supporting the long, patient work of de-escalation and negotiated security for everyone who lives there.

4. What Americans Need to Do

America is deeply complicit in this disaster. We give more money, more weapons, and more diplomatic cover to Israel than to any other nation on earth. It is our oxygen that allows this dangerous bonfire to burn.

If we want to get our country out of the terrible situation we helped create, citizens cannot remain passive observers. Many of our politicians were elected with massive assistance from the Israel lobby and will not challenge existing arrangements unless they are pressured by voters.

We need to end the blank check. U.S. military aid should be tied to international law, human rights, and a halt to territorial expansion. American taxpayers should not be funding policies that endanger Palestinians, Israelis, American soldiers, and the global economy.

We need to break the political taboo. Supporting the security of Israeli civilians does not require blind support for an extremist Israeli government. Criticizing the radical policies of Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and Netanyahu’s coalition is not antisemitic. It is morally and strategically necessary.

And we need to champion diplomacy. The United States must abandon the illusion that military force alone can solve this crisis. Washington should use its enormous leverage to push for ceasefires, halt settlement expansion, end political assassinations, restrain Israeli escalation, and engage Iran directly to prevent a nuclear breakout without triggering a catastrophic regional war.

The ticking clock in the Middle East is loudest for the people living under the bombs. But the economic, moral, and security shockwaves reach all the way here.

It is time for Americans to wake up, look honestly at the map Israeli extremists are trying to draw with our money, our military personnel and our global standing, and demand that our government stop fueling a war that cannot be won.

Today Donald Trump took a “peepee step* in the right direction.

This is straight from the website of the White House. See it live in a shocking digital creation at https://www.whitehouse.gov/aliens/.

“It”. Ponder that and what is going on in the mind and heart of the creator and sponsor to speak in this language.

I had an ethics professor who often asked students as we discussed ethical issues, “How would we respond to this situation from the perspective of the afterlife?”

How do you think this banner on the digital frontal porch of the American president might look to the Author and Finisher of creation?

For a summary of the truth on this matter, see the Appendix below.

Appendix - Facts about Immigrants and Crime

The White House digital presentation reasserts the lie that immigrants are dangerous. In fact the evidence is clear that immigrants are much LESS likely to commit crimes than are ordinary citizens. Here’s the truth:

1) There’s a difference between volume and rate: Tracking every individual crime committed by any given segment of a population will always produce large, startling numbers. To understand if a group poses a disproportionate danger, researchers look at the crime rate, that is, the number of offenses PER CAPITA (e.g., per 100,000 people).

2) What the research Shows: Decades of data consistently reveal that both legal and undocumented immigrants are arrested, convicted, and incarcerated at lower rates than native-born citizens. For example, extensive studies using data from Texas, the only state that systematically logs the immigration status of individuals at the time of arrest, show that the felony conviction rate for undocumented immigrants is roughly HALF that of native-born citizens.

In my view, wide open borders is not the answer regarding immigration, but neither is lying and de-humanization of struggling people. I say shame on the Republican party for actively promoting the lie for several decades that immigrants are unusually dangerous. I respect the case for a rational approach to border management, but if you’re building it on the basis of lies, count me out.

Major studies de-bunking the myth that immigrants are dangerous include:

- The Texas Study (PNAS): Looking at the only state that tracks legal status at arrest, researchers found native-born U.S. citizens are over 2x more likely to be arrested for violent crime than undocumented immigrants.

- The 150-Year History (Stanford/NBER): Economists found that immigrants have been significantly less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans for 150 consecutive years.

- Incarceration Rates Today: Data analyzed by the Cato Institute shows that today, immigrants are roughly 60% less likely to be imprisoned than those born in the U.S.

It seems there are objections to using money from America’s national park entry fees for July 4th celebrations and beautification projects in Washington. That’s what Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post says today. https://wapo.st/4fn8ezJ

I live less than ten miles, as the crow flies, from the National Mall and other important sites our president is currently prettying up. When you live that close to things that really matter, it is easier to appreciate proper priorities. So let me set things straight for my fellow citizens out in the wilds.

Washington is not just any city. We are the symbolic center of the most powerful nation on earth. Americans everywhere should feel pride when our fountains sparkle, our statues gleam, and our fireworks explode with suitable majesty over the National Mall. If you’re not American, well, my condolences, but maybe you could aspire?

Seems people complain that national park fees from places like Yellowstone and Yosemite should be used mostly for, well, Yellowstone and Yosemite. But that misses the point.

National parks are out in the weather, and they are supposed to look weathered. Rustic. Underfunded, even. A broken bathroom in a distant campground says “authentic American wilderness” in a way no marble fountain ever could.

Washington is different. We are the front porch of empire, the biggest in history. If the reflecting pools look tired, America looks tired. If the fountains sputter, democracy itself seems under-hydrated.

Our president is gearing up to build a grand new ballroom here. He cleared out the ramshackle backyard left by previous administrations months ago, remember? Now shouldn’t the fountains and the fireworks match it? Have you no clue how many new multi-billionaires there now are in America? They love this administration and they’re thick as thieves around here these days.

A president needs proper space to entertain his influencers. They have important missions to discuss on our behalf. Some are still grieving the loss of Jeffrey. Even if you are not personally wealthy or having a ball, surely you can take some comfort in knowing that those you elected to Washington and their friends are.

So thank you, President Trump, for keeping our national priorities straight. Let the wild places have their rocks, trees, trails, and deferred maintenance. Here in Washington, we have appearances to maintain.

“I would submit that Israel did not steal anybody’s land. The Jews have been in that area of the world since about 1200 B.C., way before the first Muslim or Arab walked the earth, a thousand years before. I mean, Jerusalem was their capital. Okay, so if it’s just about who got there first, it’s not even close.”

Those words are from comedian Bill Maher on “Real Time with Bill Maher”, May 28, 2021. A friend reposted them recently and invited response.

A quote like that remains relevant because it is not a new thought, and because sloppy history is not harmless. When Palestinian history is minimized or erased, it becomes easier for Americans to treat Palestinian suffering as secondary, to arm one side without asking hard questions, and to look away from the devastation in Gaza.

Maher is right to push back against simplistic caricatures of Israel. Jews are not strangers to the land, and any honest account has to recognize the ancient and continuous Jewish connection to it. Jerusalem was central to Jewish religious and political life long before Islam existed.

But unfortunately, Maher answers one caricature with another.

Palestinians are not historical latecomers who can be dismissed as nonexistent before the seventh century. The people now called Palestinians include families and communities with deep roots in the land across many centuries: Muslim, Christian, and otherwise. The history of the land is layered, not cleanly divisible into “first people” and “later intruders.” Britannica notes that the region long known as Palestine has had fluid boundaries and a long succession of peoples, empires, languages, and religious communities.

Maher is especially wrong to use the emergence of Islam as though it marks the beginning of Palestinian history. That erases Palestinian Christians, many of whom belong to historic Christian communities in the land of Jesus, including Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. Estimates vary, but the U.S. State Department has reported roughly 50,000 Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, with a much smaller and declining Christian presence in Gaza. These communities are often invisible to Western Christians, millions of whom visit the Holy Land without noticing that living Christians are there too, not as museum pieces, but as fellow believers with a story of abandonment, pressure, and perseverance.

Maher’s “first Muslim or Arab” line is also historically careless. Islam began in the seventh century, but Arab peoples and Arab identity did not begin with Islam. In any case, present-day rights cannot be settled by treating modern peoples as if they are merely stand-ins for ancient categories.

The forebears of Israelis and Palestinians are intertwined. Ancient Jewish presence is exceptionally well documented and deserves full recognition. But Palestinian rootedness is also real: historical, familial, cultural, political, and religious. Some Israeli extremists have made a persistent effort to erase or minimize that rootedness, but evidence remains. Neither people’s claim disappears because the other people also has a claim.

Maher is right that Jewish history must not be erased. But he is wrong if he thinks Jewish history gives anyone permission to erase Palestinian history.

The conflict cannot be solved by asking who was there first. The only humane way forward is to ask how two peoples with real claims can live with security, dignity, political rights, and firm limits on domination.

Christians of the world have important reasons to feel viscerally connected to both of these lovely peoples. We lose something precious - and betray people who have reason to expect our support - when we allow ourselves to hear and support only one side of this tragic story.