And Then Someday Was Yesterday

Around nineteen years ago, on a springlike day in early March, my daughter Jen, as part of a high school photography project, accompanied Hannah and me to a local baseball field, where she told me to relive my youthful days as a high school baseball player. As she snapped photos on her 35-millimeter camera, I recreated a moment of transcendence in the long arc of my life when I played baseball as if it were the most important thing in the world. From age seven to eighteen, from Little League through High School, I played the game with youthful abandon, and dreamed, like millions of other young American boys, that someday I would play in the major leagues.

Jen was inspired by a scene in the movie Field of Dreams (or, for literary purists, the novel Shoeless Joe) when Ray Kinsella talks with Archibald “Moonlight” Graham late at night and asks about his short-lived baseball career. Doc Graham was an old man at this point, but fifty years earlier, he had been a talented baseball player. He played three seasons in the minor leagues before the New York Giants called and allowed him to achieve his lifelong ambition of reaching the big leagues. In his short stint with the team, he played only one inning, as a defensive replacement in right field, and never got the chance to bat.

In Field of Dreams, Graham was portrayed by Burt Lancaster, who told Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) that, at season’s end, rather than enduring another year in the minors, he hung up his cleats and returned to his hometown of Chisolm, Minnesota, to become a family doctor. (In real life, Graham played four more seasons in the minor leagues, even as he pursued his medical degree). When Kinsella asked Graham what it was like to come so close to his dream and then have it pass him by, Graham answered, “We just don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening. Back then I thought, ‘Well, there'll be other days.’ I didn't realize that that was the only day.”

For me, that was the most impactful line of the film, because it captured the improvidence of youth when we fail to recognize that the seemingly uneventful decisions we make early on influence much of our life’s journey. Every choice we make, every path we choose along the way opens and closes doors of opportunity. This is not necessarily unwelcome or undesired. For Doc Graham and the people of Chisolm, Minnesota, his choosing medicine over baseball improved the lives of hundreds of families for the next fifty years.

Kinsella later asks Graham, “If you had one wish, what would it be?” As Graham contemplated the question, one sensed that his mind wandered back to a time when, for a fleeting moment, he followed his dreams. Graham replied:

I never got to bat in the major leagues. I would have liked to have had that chance. Just once. To stare down a big-league pitcher. To stare him down, and just as he goes into his windup, wink. Make him think you know something he doesn't. That's what I wish for. Chance to squint at a sky so blue that it hurts your eyes just to look at it. To feel the tingling in your arm as you connect with the ball. To run the bases - stretch a double into a triple, and flop face-first into third, wrap your arms around the bag… That is my wish!

The scene acknowledged the human capacity to dream of what might have been, even when the choices we make improve our outcomes. For every path we take, there are lost dreams and lost opportunities.

Jen used the quote in her photography project and had me play the role of Doc Graham, a man past his prime who contemplates the lost opportunities and dreams that passed him by. It was an easy role for me. My baseball life was more short-lived and less successful than Doc Graham’s. Although I intended to play baseball in college, when I went off to Wittenberg, my priorities changed. I began to value academics and other pursuits. Baseball was suddenly less important. The world became larger, and I wanted to see what was there.

Not unlike Doc Graham, my decision to bypass baseball worked out well, leading to a fulfilling career in law, government, and business for which I am grateful. But nearly fifty years later, I can still feel occasional pangs of regret, not because I continued to harbor hopes of becoming a professional ballplayer—I knew better by then—but because I missed out on four more years of playing baseball with fellow travelers and sharing a sense of camaraderie and purpose that only a true lover of the game can appreciate.

Later in life, amidst the stresses and anxieties, challenges and excitement of a professional legal career, my thoughts sometimes wandered to more carefree days when my brother and I invented differing versions of backyard baseball, from sock ball to wiffle ball to groundball games played on bumpy brown grass on hot summer afternoons. And I sometimes questioned my decision at the age of eighteen to not even try for a few more years of enraptured joy, the feeling a ballplayer experiences as he anticipates that day’s game and throws a ball with a teammate to loosen up before the start of play. Had I forgotten the smell of freshly cut grass and dirt, and the pure sound of the ball landing firmly in the pocket of my first baseman’s mitt? Did I no longer appreciate the air, wind, and sun pounding my face as I endured the challenges and setbacks, losses and failures and occasional triumphs, which are the beautiful American game? In my rush to adulthood, did I too easily dismiss the wonderment of baseball in my life?

I never thought much about growing old when I was young. Few of us ever do. I can still recall, at seven years old, impatiently wishing I were an older version of myself. I ached for responsibility, to prove myself worthy. When at the age of twelve my dad finally shifted summer lawn-mowing duty from my brother to me, I considered it a step toward manhood. Every Saturday, weather permitting, I filled the lawnmower’s gas tank, checked its oil, and pulled the chord (usually two or three times before it started) to begin this important task, which I assumed was essential to the security of the free world. And I did so with pride. The more sweat, dirt, and grit, the better.

In later years, only when I had to cut the grass at houses of my own, did I start to question why I had so enthusiastically embraced this tiresome and time-consuming chore. Now, it was simply something that had to be done during the precious few hours every weekend when I could relax. Eventually, I sold my lawnmower, hired a landscaper, and recaptured some lost time.

In my youth, I looked forward to the future, believing the best of life was ahead of me. I dreamed of exploring places that would expand my horizons beyond the limited confines of suburban New Jersey and southern Ohio. Armed with a college education that opened my mind to economics, history, and literature, I wished to experience life’s diversity and compete in the arena. And for the past forty years, I have done my best to live life with passion and gusto.

Like Doc Graham, although I would have liked to have stared down a big-league pitcher, I could not now imagine a different life, one that did not include law school, a career as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and later as a managing director of a prestigious consulting firm, where I investigated police departments, corporate malfeasance, and the high profile problems confronting university presidents. My career has affected the lives of many people and invested in me responsibilities I never imagined as a sixteen-year-old first baseman picking rushed throws in the dirt from fellow infielders. I am blessed and grateful for the life I have led, and for the life, love, and family I have. For those choices, I have no regrets, and would not change anything.

But whenever I come across a local high school or college game at the park near our house, I stop to watch, if only for a few minutes, so I can take in the sights and sounds of the game as it was played when I was young, with innocence, pure joy, and a love for the game. “If this sounds like a romantic or foolish impulse to us today,” wrote Roger Angell in Let Me Finish (Harcourt, 2006), “it is because most of American life, including baseball, no longer feels feasible. We know everything about the game now, thanks to instant replay and computerized stats, and what we seem to have concluded is that almost none of us are good enough to play it.”

When we are young, we think the future is ours for the making, that time is unlimited. We look forward to someday, when we will master the art of life, accomplish important things, better the world, leave our mark, and build a legacy. “Someday,” I used to tell myself, “I will write the great American novel.” “Someday, I will travel the world and embrace new countries and cultures and ways of life.” And when I was still young enough to dream, I said, “Someday, I will play professional baseball.” And then, one day I woke up and realized that someday was yesterday. Where time was once on my side, suddenly it vanished.

Today, whenever I am at a major league game, I pay attention to the players between innings, when the first baseman tosses groundballs to the infielders, the pitcher throws his warmups, and the outfielders play long toss. I sometimes imagine what it must be like to play at that level, and how I would have loved to have had that chance. But then I realize a painful and obvious truth, one understood by all of us dreamers and recognized by Roger Angell more than sixty years ago for The New Yorker, “that we never made it. We would never know the rich joke that doubled over three young pitchers in front of the dugout; we would never be part of that golden company on the field, which each of us, certainly for one moment of his life, had wanted more than anything else in the world to join.”

The First Rough Draft of History from Berlin: Appreciating Sigrid Schultz

Sigrid Schultz, Chicago Tribune reporter in pre-War Berlin

Speaking with a group of foreign correspondents in London in 1963, Philip L. Graham, the legendary publisher of The Washington Post, contended that the role of journalists was to engage in the “impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of history that will never be completed about a world we can never really understand.” It was an apt description of a news reporter’s job to educate and inform the public in a fast-paced, ever-changing world. Good journalists may not get everything completely right in their “first rough drafts of history” but, when done with care and integrity, their work is essential to an informed citizenry and functioning democracy. Graham’s description succinctly captures the importance of deadline journalism to help us understand world events as they happen before we can fully comprehend how today’s events will impact our lives tomorrow.

I thought of Graham’s comment while reading The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany (Beacon Press, 2024) by historian Pamela D. Toler. The book details the life and career of Sigrid Schultz, a trailblazing female journalist who witnessed and wrote about the rise of Hitler and fascism in Germany during her time as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune from 1919 to 1941. Toler gives a vivid account of Germany’s turmoil and volatility, which Schultz experienced as the Tribune’s central European correspondent and Berlin bureau chief during the roaring twenties, the Great Depression, and the start of World War II. Schultz provided more news about what was really happening in Germany and Europe than any other journalist of her time. Her context and analysis warned readers back home about the threatening storms brewing in Germany and why they should be taken seriously.

Born in Chicago, Schultz became an American ex-pat at the age of eight, when her family moved to Germany in 1901 so her artist father could seek commissions painting portraits of wealthy Europeans. The family later moved to Paris, where Schultz pursued her education, before returning to Germany in 1913. Schultz taught French and English in Berlin during World War I, and she would spend most of the next thirty years there. Fluent in French, German, and Norwegian, her experiences shaped her understanding of history and growing fascination with politics and world events. Notwithstanding the disadvantages of her gender during that era, she was ready-made to be a journalist.

Before the start of World War I, most American newspapers did not invest in on-the-ground foreign news coverage. That all changed once the United States entered the war in April 1917, when dozens of American newspapers sent hundreds of reporters to Europe. When the war ended in 1919, several papers, including the Chicago Tribune, established news bureaus in the major European cities. Dick Little, a veteran war correspondent for the Tribune, became the paper’s first Berlin bureau chief. Little hired Schultz as an interpreter and cub reporter. Schultz proved to be a quick study, and with her grasp of languages and understanding of German politics and history, she soon became Little’s “number two man in Berlin.”

As it happens, Berlin was a mecca of news in the spring of 1919. As Schultz explained years later, “all the elements of the next twenty, thirty years were right there, visible.” As noted by Toler, Berlin at that time was a “political hot spot … marked by repeated economic crises, constant street battles, and frequent, occasionally violent, political challenges” from the most extreme elements on the left and the right. Schultz had personal contacts that no other reporter in Berlin could match. And Little, as one of the most skilled and experienced reporters around, taught Schultz the importance of accuracy and precision when reporting the news, including the need to corroborate information gleaned from sources. “No proof, no story.”

In 1925, Schultz became the first woman to head a foreign news bureau when the Tribune appointed her as Berlin bureau chief. While increasing numbers of women were becoming journalists, with a few notable exceptions most were confined to reporting “soft news” such as fashion and society news. Schultz was the only female bureau chief of any news organization until after World War II.

When she first became bureau chief, Germany was in the middle of the “Golden Twenties” enjoying an artistic and intellectual blossoming. The economy was on its way to recovery, the German mark had stabilized, and at least on the floor of the Reichstag (German parliament), the political landscape was relatively calm. The National Socialist Party was not yet a political power.

In 1929, Germany’s illusion of stability began to crack, first with a severe cold wave in February that caused widespread food and energy shortages, and then with the start of the Great Depression following the stock market crash in October. Soon, the German economy spiraled downward, unemployment skyrocketed and, as Toler notes, “the hungry, the frustrated, and the desperate sought solace in the promises of political parties at both extremes.” The Communist Party’s membership more than tripled from 1928 to 1932, while that of the National Socialist Party increased tenfold. As Schultz reported based on first-hand observations, Berlin’s workers, who had previously looked to the Communists and Socialists, were now being drawn to the promise of a nationalist utopia coming from the Nazi Party.

Schultz’s reporting helped her readers understand the differences between the various political factions that dominated German events in 1930. Unlike her competitors at other newspapers, she repeatedly brought home that the National Socialists threatened the future of Europe and should be taken seriously. As Toler notes:

[O]n August 31, 1930, with the elections for the new Reichstag only two weeks away, Schultz analyzed the position of the seventeen parties then on the German ballot in a long article in the Tribune. She told her readers bluntly that the outcome of the election was important to the entire world. … she made clear what Hitler and his followers wanted and how dangerous they were. The Fascists wanted to overthrow the government and establish a dictatorship of ‘truly Germanic men,’ she wrote. They openly threatened pogroms against Jews and ‘other alien elements in Germany.’  They had proved over and over that they were willing to club down political opponents when they couldn’t argue them into submission.

Despite Schultz’s reporting, even astute political observers in 1930 failed to take the Nazis seriously. Schultz knew better. The number of stories Schultz filed about the actions of Hitler and his followers increased in frequency throughout 1931. She continued to explain the larger social and political context when writing about Depression-era Germany and described the Nazis as a growing political force. She introduced readers to Hitler’s Brownshirts, and as early as November 1931, reported on Hitler’s “terror plan” to force Jews out of Germany.

For the next two years, Schultz reported on every stage of Hitler’s campaign, including political and physical attacks on Hitler’s opponents. As Toler described, “over and over, she hammered home her belief that” the increasing acceptance of Hitler and the Fascists “was a matter of life and death for the Weimar Republic.” Anyone who read Schultz’s articles knew not to underestimate Hitler’s growing power.

After Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, Schultz reported on Hitler’s abuses of power, how he removed his political opponents from all levels of government, banned opposition parties, dismantled labor unions, and arrested thousands of members of the Communist Party. Within his first year, Hitler and the Nazis destroyed the political landscape of Germany and tore the society apart. In one of the earliest references in an American newspaper to German concentration camps, Schultz wrote in March 1933 about the government’s plans to detain 5,000 Communists at Dachau.

From 1933 to 1940, Schultz wrote hundreds of articles exposing the enactment of antisemitic laws and growing violence against Germany’s Jewish population, and she openly reported on the Nazis’ fanatical hatred of Jews. She warned of Germany’s efforts to re-arm and return as a military power, wrote of government attacks on Christian churches, and exposed the Nazis’ eugenics-based policies designed to strengthen the German “gene pool.”

During the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Schultz witnessed the temporary cover-up of this reality by removal of “Jews Not Welcome” signs from restaurants, hotels, and other public places. She observed the government transform Berlin into a theme-park version of itself. Schultz was dismayed by American visitors who arrived for the Olympics impressed by the false perception of Germany the Nazis had created for them, and who left skeptical of newspaper reporters who told a different story.

When the Olympics ended and the tourists returned home, Schultz reported that the antisemitic signs reappeared and the persecution of Jews and political dissidents resumed with increased intensity. In a Tribune article on September 11, 1936, Schultz described a speech by Joseph Goebbels as one of the “fiercest anti-Jewish proclamations yet delivered in the Nazi drive against Jews.”

By this time, reporting the truth from Berlin was becoming increasingly dangerous. Germany had become a surveillance state, and German laws suppressing the freedom of the press made it unlawful to report negatively on the Reich. Although Schultz and the Tribune took precautions, behind every story was the threat of deportation, arrest, or the concentration camps.

To protect Schultz from retaliation, she and the Tribune used the pseudonym John Dickson with datelines in Copenhagen and Paris for her most hard-hitting articles. Writing under the Dickson byline, Schultz told readers about Hitler’s murder campaigns against political rivals, filed investigative reports on the existence of concentration camps and growing persecution of Germany’s Jews, provided an inside look at the Hitler Youth movement, and described how the Nazis kept a card index on every German citizen.

On the night of November 9-10, 1938, violent attacks against Jews erupted across Germany in what became known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. Rioters destroyed hundreds of synagogues and desecrated Jewish cemeteries. Members of Hitler Youth smashed the windows and looted thousands of Jewish-owned stores, and the Gestapo arrested 30,000 Jewish men and sent them to concentration camps. As Schultz informed her readers, it was the largest antisemitic attack in Berlin history. For several days, Schultz reported the full extent of violence and arrests.

After Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and with the outbreak of World War II, reporting from Berlin became increasingly difficult. By the end of 1940, it was clear Schultz needed to leave Germany, which she did in January 1941. She did not return until April 1945, when General Patton’s troops liberated the death camp near Buchenwald. The Tribune sent Schultz and a photographer to cover it. As described by Toler, Schultz was “greeted by soldiers with horror-stricken faces, who had marched into Buchenwald only hours before.” She was given “an unfiltered view of the camp’s atrocities. … Soldiers showed the reporters the gallows hooks on which dying prisoners hung for hours and the elevator on which their bodies were transported to the rows of incinerator ovens.”

Because of Schultz’s multi-lingual fluency, she experienced Buchenwald on a more personal level as she interviewed many of the former prisoners in French and German. In one touching scene, a group of liberated Norwegian Jews were delighted when they learned Schultz could also speak their language. Schultz learned that they were part of a group of eight hundred Norwegian Jews forced to march to Buchenwald as the Russians drew near. Only the five of them survived. 

When Schultz sought to interview some French prisoners at the hospital in Buchenwald, she observed the most gruesome images she had ever seen.

Three tiers of bunks held dying men. … There was nothing she could do to make them more comfortable. All she could do was call out to them over and over again in French, “You are free.” After a while, she added, “I have just come from Paris. The chestnuts are in bloom in Paris.”

One man sat halfway up and reached a hand toward her. She went over and took it.

“Is it really true?” he asked.

“It’s really true. You are free. American planes are coming.”

“The chestnuts are in bloom?”

She nodded. And then he was gone.

Following the war, Schultz covered the Bergen-Belsen trials at Luneburg, which preceded the Nuremberg trials. A British military tribunal had charged forty-five Germans who worked at the Auschwitz and Belsen camps with war crimes. Schultz reported on witness testimony describing mass deaths at Belsen, the gas chambers at Auschwitz, and the cruelty inflicted on prisoners by the prison staff. The international news coverage of the trials gave the world its first extensive look at the savagery of the death camps.

Ultimately, Schultz’s life in journalism faded into oblivion. Although one of the most knowledgeable and fearless reporters to have honestly chronicled the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany during the 1930s, she never won the Pulitzer Prize or any major awards for her writing, was never recognized as a major media figure, and is little remembered by the news consuming public.

Yet, the life and career of Sigrid Schultz is a testament to the power of good reporting to uncover the best and worst in society. She exposed the unvarnished truth about what was happening in Germany in the years leading up to war, and she helped her readers understand the context and development of history as it occurred. It was not always glamorous work, and she received little credit or recognition. But for more than twenty years she used her command of languages, her sources, and her knowledge of German society to warn the world about the rising threat of fascism in Europe.

With authoritarianism once again on the rise at home and abroad, the search for truth and the importance of ethical, reality-based journalism that holds power to account is as important as it was in Sigrid Schultz’s time. When leaders of nations threaten reporters with treason, call them “enemies of the people” and cry “fake news” whenever a journalist reports a story that reflects negatively on them, the foundations of democracy and freedom are degraded and weakened. Only through the dedication and commitment of hard-working journalists like Sigrid Schultz, who carefully cultivate sources, fact-check and verify, and persevere in the face of threats, intimidation, war zones, lies and deceptions, can news organizations bring us a “first rough draft of history” that informs, educates, and helps us understand today what the world will look like tomorrow.

Politics with a Moral Conscience

Texas State Rep. James Talarico on the Ezra Klein Show

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred… but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another. – Robert F. Kennedy

In The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (Random House, 2018), the historian and writer Jon Meacham argued that the history of America is an ongoing conflict between the worst and best impulses of its leaders, between those who appeal to fear, racism, and intolerance, and those who appeal to hope, progress, and inclusion. At their best, our leaders rise above partisan division and inspire the "better angels" of our character. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln ended slavery and provided moral clarity to the country in the darkest period of American history. Leo Tolstoy said of Lincoln, “His greatness consisted in the integrity of his character and the moral fiber of his being.” It is a good standard by which to judge our leaders.

The lack of moral leadership in the United States today is heartbreaking. With Donald Trump as president and the world turned upside down, people are desperate for leaders with character and integrity who can provide moral guidance and lead by example. Great leaders, said the late Jewish theologian Jonathan Sacks, “make people better, kinder, nobler than they would otherwise be.” Indeed, the most influential voices in American history, from Thomas Paine and the nation’s founders to Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Reinhold Neibuhr, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and Robert Kennedy, inspired the nation’s spiritual and civic life by appealing to our moral conscience and better selves.

I was heartened by a recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show, which introduced a refreshingly new and original voice in American politics. His name is James Talarico, a 36-year-old Democratic state representative from Texas who is running for U.S. Senate. Talarico is an unusual politician in part because he is a progressive Democrat who speaks openly about his faith and the need for moral principles to guide public policy. He has served in the Texas State House of Representatives since 2018, and is currently a student at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, a theologically liberal seminary within the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.

Guided by his faith and theology, Talarico is intelligent, thoughtful, and not afraid to use moral language to convey his care for humanity on matters of public policy. His moral conscience stands in sharp contrast to a presidential administration and political culture that thrives on incredible cruelty. Despite his liberal politics, he appeals to a broadly diverse segment of the population because he listens and speaks to humanity’s need for connectedness, kindness, and what he calls a “politics of love.”

“I believe love is a force as real as gravity,” he said during a lengthy interview on Klein’s podcast last week. “Love to me is the most powerful thing in the universe. It is not weak, it is not neutral, it is not passive. It doesn’t paper over disagreement.”

As a lifelong Democrat, I become dispirited at times by the skepticism and hostility that many liberals and progressive manifest towards people of faith. And yet, I understand and share in this skepticism when the loudest and most dominant religious voices support policies that are incredibly cruel, inhumane, and antithetical to the very religion—Christianity—those voices so loudly and self-righteously proclaim. Indeed, it is impossible to reconcile the intolerance and callousness of the Christian Right with the “God is love” and “love thy neighbor” principles that formed the foundation of my faith growing up. The false piety espoused by many self-proclaimed Christians, lately amplified within the Republican Party and Trump administration, betray a fundamental lack of understanding of their alleged faith.

Armed with a formal theological education, Talarico forcefully challenges how conservative Christians interpret and apply their faith in the political sphere. He refers to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 25, where Jesus commands his followers to treat "the least of these" among us--the poor, suffering, and marginalized--with compassion; and to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and welcome the stranger, as “Christianity 101”. Talarico contends that, in these passages are the two most essential commandments of Jesus – to “love God” and to “love our neighbors.” For Talarico, “loving God” drives his faith, while “loving our neighbors” drives his politics.

Talarico’s voice is a refreshing change at a time when religion is repeatedly perverted and corrupted by politicians who falsely proclaim the United States a Christian nation while espousing values that grossly distort and dismiss the central tenets of Jesus' teachings. These same politicians routinely oppose health care for the sick, food assistance for the hungry, and a living wage for the poor. As Talarico explains, the religious right wants “to base our laws on the Bible until they read the words of Jesus: Welcome the stranger, liberate the oppressed, put away your sword, … and give the money to the poor.”

For the past fifty years, says Talarico, the religious right has convinced its followers that abortion and same-sex relationships were the two most critical issues with which they should be concerned. “It’s remarkable to me that you have an entire political movement using Christianity to prioritize two issues that Jesus never talked about.” That they then ignore Jesus’ commands to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and welcome the stranger “is just mind-blowing.” Economic justice is mentioned thousands of times in both the New Testament and Hebrew Scriptures and “is such a core part of our tradition, [but] it’s nowhere to be seen in Christian nationalism or on the religious right.”

A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a master’s degree in education from Harvard University, Talarico formerly taught public middle school in one of his state’s poorest districts. Since becoming a member of the Texas State House, Talarico sponsored and helped enact legislation to allow incarcerated minors to earn a high school diploma, cap pre-K class sizes, and implement sweeping improvements to early childhood education. He also championed bipartisan legislation that limited the out-of-pocket costs for insulin to $25 a month. In 2021, Texas Monthly magazine picked him as one of the top ten legislators in the state. His more recent legislative initiatives included supporting a $15,000 pay raise for public school teachers, closing the remaining child prisons in Texas, allowing Texans to buy their prescription drugs cheaper in Canada, prohibiting surprise ambulance billing, and providing tax relief to childcare centers.

Talarico is a pro-choice Democrat who firmly defends the separation of church and state and believes deeply in religious pluralism. In 2023, he fought a Republican-sponsored law to post the Ten Commandments in every public-school classroom. “This bill is not only unconstitutional and un-American, it is deeply un-Christian,” he said in the Texas Capitol. As he told Klein:

I’ve often wondered, instead of posting the Ten Commandments in every classroom, why don’t they post “Money is the root of all evil” in every boardroom? Why don’t they post “Do not judge” in every courtroom? Why don’t they post “Turn the other cheek” in the halls of the Pentagon? Or “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven” on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange?

The genius of Christianity, observes Talarico, is that God was revealed in Jesus, a “humble, compassionate, barefoot rabbi in the first century, someone who broke cultural norms, someone who stood up for the vulnerable and the marginalized, someone who challenged religious authority.”

Talarico understands that Christianity at its core is a radical religion, a countercultural force that challenges the established order. But the religion has been coopted by those who would justify a politics that glorifies military power, seeks domination over nations and people perceived to be weaker than us, vilifies immigrants, and shows a fundamental lack of caring and compassion for humanity. “Christians in the halls of power are blatantly violating the teachings of Christianity on a daily basis and hurting our neighbors in the process,” says Talarico. “[T]hey’re using my tradition — they’re speaking for me — and so I think I have a special moral responsibility to combat Christian nationalism wherever I see it.”

One need only look at the Trump administration’s brutally harsh and inhumane immigration policies that are ruthlessly implemented by ICE and Border Patrol agents against people who have come here to escape violence or to better their family’s life. For Talarico, you simply cannot claim allegiance to Christian principles and then justify treating other human beings with the unmitigated cruelty demonstrated by Trump’s policies. “You can’t love God and abuse the immigrant,” says Talarico. “You can’t love God and oppress the poor. You can’t love God and bully the outcast. We spend so much time looking for God out there that we miss God in the person sitting right next to us, in that neighbor who bears the divine image. In the face of a neighbor, we glimpse the face of God.”

Can a liberal Democratic politician who speaks so openly about faith and spirituality, and who practices a “politics of love” succeed in 2026? The answer may be different in a state like Texas than it is in the coastal states. But there is a refreshing authenticity in Talarico’s approach that reflects the centrality of faith in his life. “I’m honest about that,” he says, “even when it bothers people in my own party, which it does a lot. … But it is who I am. I can’t be anybody else. And so, I think showing up as the person you are and then saying something real, saying something honest about the world — that is refreshing to people in this moment.”

He may be onto something. In 2018, Talarico won in a district that voted for Donald Trump two years earlier and which no one in the Democratic Party thought was winnable. And in 2022, the same year Greg Abbott, the right-wing Republican governor of Texas, won his third term, Talarico won the district with 77% of the vote. In 2024, Talarico won again, this time with no opposition. Talarico contends that his success is due in part to his willingness to listen to people on both sides, to build relationships and establish trust, even “with people who aren’t with us yet.” As he told Klein, “We have a moral imperative to win in a democracy. Because if you don’t win, you don’t get power. And if you don’t get power, you can’t make people’s lives better.”

People want to be inspired. And when someone comes along who can move and inspire people in positive ways, it is worth noting. Especially in the Age of Trump, which thrives on appeals to fear, hate, and anger to move society backwards. To move people forward, to help society advance to a better, more inclusive place, you need someone who can motivate, excite, and cultivate hope. In my lifetime, Presidents Kennedy, Reagan, and Obama were the most effective at appealing to aspirational ideals of the American spirit while attempting to inspire hope for the future. Although they differed in ideology, their ability to inspire the American people allowed them to win decisive elections.

“If we are going to defeat Trumpism,” insists Talarico, “it’s going to require putting forward a new vision of what a different kind of politics would look like.” Ever the theologian, Talarico suggested to Klein: “If we actually treated all of our neighbors as bearers of the image of the divine, how would our discourse look? How would our public policies look? To me, that is the primary question that we should all be asking.” Talarico’s question reflects the kind of politics we currently lack, and the kind people are searching for.

I do not know if Talarico will be successful in his run for U.S. Senate. He may be a long shot. But he represents something we desperately need in today’s political environment. “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice,” said Martin Luther King, Jr., “and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” King’s words should serve as a powerful reminder that the “politics of love” can defeat the politics of hate, fear, and division. It is something all of us know at our core, and perhaps James Talarico can help us enable it.

The Trump Doctrine: We Can Take Anything We Want

(Attribution: Times of India)

Call it gunboat diplomacy. Call it imperialism. Call it bullying a weaker country within our “sphere of influence.” All are accurate descriptions of what occurred on January 3, 2026, when U.S. military forces attacked Venezuela in Caracas, bombed buildings (including at least one apartment building), killed dozens of Venezuelan security forces and civilians, and seized Nicolas Maduro and his wife, who were flown to the United States to face alleged drug trafficking charges.

Many Venezuelans are understandably happy to see Maduro removed. He was a thug, a corrupt despot who ruled through repression, and a man who, along with Hugo Chavez before him, destroyed the Venezuelan economy and caused nearly one-fourth of the country’s citizens to flee their homeland. But the ends do not justify the means.

First, the attack on Venezuela violated international law. It was an illegal and unilateral military action against a nation with which we were not at war, and which had not attacked us. We conducted the attack without international consultation or support in violation of the rules-based international order established by the United States and Europe after World War II. The United Nations Charter, of which the United States was a key architect, provides that no country may invade or attack another country unless authorized by the U.N. Security Council or when acting in self-defense. This has been a bedrock principle of international law for the past 80 years.

As Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School and president-elect of the American Society of International Law, told The New Yorker, “[if] a President can just decide that a leader is not legitimate and then invade the country and presumably put someone in power who is favored by the Administration … that’s the end of international law, that’s the end of the U.N. charter, that’s the end of any kind of legal limits on the use of force.” 

Although the Trump administration has suggested that the United States must defend itself against drug smugglers, any claim of self-defense is ludicrous. As the former national director of the ACLU and Columbia law professor David Cole explained in The New York Review of Books, “self-defense applies only in response to an actual or imminent armed attack, and whatever else drug smuggling might be, it is not even conceivably an armed attack.” Venezuela was not at war with the United States and, whatever the evidence may show with respect to Maduro’s complicity in smuggling cocaine (which in the case of Venezuela is mostly destined for Europe), neither Maduro nor the alleged drug smugglers ever engaged in armed attacks against the United States. As Cole rightly notes, “The only nation with a self-defense justification here is Venezuela.”

Second, the U.S. military action violated U.S. law. The U.S. Constitution explicitly reserves to Congress the right to declare war or authorize military force, and the War Powers Act requires the president to notify Congress before engaging U.S. troops in military action. Trump boasted at the press conference following the attack that he neither sought congressional approval nor consulted in advance with any members of Congress or the intelligence committees (though he shockingly said the next day that he consulted with oil company executives in advance of the attack). Although this is not the first time a U.S. president has ordered military action without full congressional authorization, Trump’s actions here, taken without any congressional consultation, were brazenly unconstitutional. These are the actions of an oligarchy, not a democratic republic.

Nor was the attack on Venezuela, as claimed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a “law enforcement operation” to arrest Maduro and his wife on the pending drug charges. Invading a country to seize and remove their leader is an act of war, not law enforcement. Imagine if the United Kingdom charged Trump with a financial crime and then sent its special forces with air cover to enter the White House, arrest Trump, and forcibly remove him from the country. Would anyone consider that a “law enforcement operation”? In any event, Trump demolished Rubio’s explanation when he stated that the United States intended to “run the country” indefinitely “until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.” That sounds to all the world like regime change, not law enforcement.

Was our illegal military action at least motivated by noble ideals, like restoring democracy to Venezuela? Unfortunately, of the conflicting justifications provided by the administration for attacking Venezuela, restoring democracy was not one of them. Trump dismissed outright any thought of transitioning Venezuela’s presidency to the popular opposition leader, Nobel Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who Trump falsely claimed did not have the support of the country (her party won the 2024 election illegally suppressed by Maduro). He instead chose to leave the remaining members of Maduro’s regime in power if they are willing to “play ball” with the administration.

Of course, what the administration means by “play ball” is allowing the United States and its large multinational corporations to reassert control of Venezuelan oil reserves, which Trump contends the Venezuelan government “stole” from the United States decades ago when Venezuela nationalized its oil industry. And, Trump exclaimed, “we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so,” cementing his overt imperialistic ambitions.

Thus, Trump’s goal in capturing Maduro was entirely about “getting back” the oil, and he ordered U.S. military action for the benefit of fossil fuel executives and an industry that donated heavily to Trump during past elections. By doing so, Trump falsely conflated U.S. national interests with the private interests of a few select corporations, whose primary objectives are to maximize profits for their wealthy shareholders.

Trump does not pretend that he wants to make the world a better place, or improve our alliances, or protect the stability of international law. He simply wants to assert his power, show how tough and strong he is, and enrich U.S. billionaires and companies. He holds our European alliances in disdain. He despises democracy and praises autocracy. It is why he has always respected and admired people like Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban, Mohammed bin Salman, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping. He envies the power wielded by dictators, rejects international law, and refuses to follow the rules and diplomatic norms that might impede his ability to do whatever he wants.

As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told Jake Tapper on CNN on January 5, “We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” According to Miller (and Trump), international law and treaties that protect the sovereignty and independence of the world’s recognized nations are merely “international niceties” that mean nothing in the “real world.” To Trump and Miller, the rule of law be damned. “The United States is using its military to assert our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere,” said Miller. “We’re a superpower and under President Trump we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. … The future of the free world depends on America being able to assert ourselves, our interests, without apology.”

I cannot imagine that any person of intelligence takes Stephen Miller seriously, but he is a powerful behind-the-scenes official in the Trump administration with a significant say over U.S. policy. And Miller, like Trump, believes firmly in a world in which the United States can overthrow governments with impunity and take control of another nation’s resources so long as it advances what Trump subjectively believes is in America’s national interest.

At the January 3 press conference, Trump invoked the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which as modified by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, proclaimed U.S. supremacy in the Western Hemisphere and the right of the United States to militarily intervene into Latin American affairs to ensure stability and maintain regional dominance. In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt effectively replaced the Monroe Doctrine with the Good Neighbor Policy, which stressed non-intervention, mutual respect, and collaboration with Latin American nations on hemispheric security. The United States in 1948 also co-founded the Organization of American States, which emphasized shared security and respect for sovereignty among the nations of North and South America. This approach was consistent with the post-World War II system of international law designed to prevent countries from disrespecting the sovereignty of their neighbors and unilaterally solving conflicts through war.

Welcome to the Trump Doctrine, which ignores international law and the post-war system of restraints and alliances, and says to the world that we will do what we want, when we want, and unless you are powerful enough to stop us, there is nothing you can do about it. Or, to paraphrase Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, “F--- around and find out” – the FAFO doctrine.

If you think this is hyperbole, think again. Shortly after attacking Venezuela, Trump warned Colombia’s president to “watch his ass,” said “we’re going to have to do something in Mexico,” and Cuba “is ready to fall.” Marco Rubio, who has long called for regime change in Cuba, said, “If I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I'd be concerned - at least a little bit.” When asked by Jake Tapper to rule out U.S. military force against Greenland, Stephen Miller responded, “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.” Trump has double- and triple-downed on these statements over the past few days.

Russia and China are paying close attention. The idea that the world is a place that powerful countries can carve up to suit their interests fits directly into their worldviews. Countries within their respective spheres of influence, including Ukraine and Taiwan, are feeling especially uneasy today. The United States will have little ground to stand on when our adversaries inevitably flex their muscles to invade or dominate nearby, weaker nations.

Trump does not read much, and he knows almost nothing about history. But the world was a more dangerous and bleaker place when strong countries were able to dominate and exploit weaker countries at will. Following the bloodbath of World War I, the death of sixty million people in World War II, and the advent of nuclear weapons, the nations of the world finally agreed that we needed a rules-based international order to lessen the likelihood of another world war and the possible destruction of the planet. The United Nations and other institutions of international diplomacy have not always succeeded in preventing wars and foreign conflicts, but they have been crucial to preventing another catastrophic world war.

The one thing on which I agreed with Trump all these years was his recognition that the U.S. war and subsequent occupation of Iraq during the first decade of the 21st century was a complete and utter disaster. Not having a plan for the day after, for Page Two of what at first appears to be a successful military operation, automatically turns success into failure. Trump offered no plan for Venezuela beyond our taking over its oil reserves. I hope for the sake of the Venezuelan people that the country will soon transition into a vibrant democracy that can protect human rights and rebuild what was once a robust economy. But I am afraid the odds are steep. Chaos and instability, civil strife, and further repression are the more likely outcomes, and even oil companies will have little appetite to invest in such an environment.

The president’s lawless and brazen decision to go-it-alone in Venezuela, and his mafia-like threats against other nations of the region, including our friends and allies, is a return to the gun boat diplomacy of the Gilded Age, when the strong ruled the weak. Trump loves to assert and project power, and there is no easier way to do so than by waging imperial wars. Unless Congress and the American people reestablish the balance of power and reign in Trump’s lawlessness, international diplomacy and the rule of law will irreparably suffer, powerful oligarchs will rule the world within their “spheres of influence,” and the world will be a darker, more dangerous place. 

On the Lost Art of Letter Writing

The First Snow of Winter, December 14, 2025

“Time moves slowly but passes quickly.” These words by Alice Walker are ever so prescient the older I become. As another year ends, and as the first snow of winter has come and gone, I am astonished by the passage of time.

A few years ago, I boxed up my dad’s papers from two old filing cabinets in the garage of the house he and my mom shared during the final fifteen years of his life. In them were notes of all my dad’s sermons from fifty years of ministry as a Lutheran pastor, several folders of correspondence, news clippings that captured his attention, and a collection of his letters to the editor that were published in the local newspaper in Hendersonville, North Carolina, where my parents retired in the summer of 1991.

I did not get around to looking through these files until the day after Christmas, when my attention was immediately drawn to several file folders that covered the years 1997 to 2008. My dad apparently saved a copy of every letter he wrote and received during that time frame. I imagine my dad sitting in his study for two hours each morning, taking the time to draft just the right note of thanks, congratulations, friendly advice, concern for one’s loss, or a simple note to say “I was thinking of you recently” followed by three or four paragraphs of memories, updates, and encouragement.

While looking through these files, it occurred to me that letter writing is a lost art. Entire books have been written about the approximately one thousand letters that John and Abigail Adams shared between them during their lifetimes, letters that expressed their love for each other and documented the founding of a new country. The famous correspondence between Jefferson and Adams during the final years of their lives from 1812 to 1826 allowed them to discuss the unfinished business between them and to explain how and why they came to fundamentally different conclusions about the meaning of the American Revolution. Great letter writers in history also included, among others, Voltaire, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Queen Victoria, and Emily Dickinson.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is one of the most impactful letters in American history. In it, he explained why civil disobedience and nonviolent demonstrations were so important to social and political progress in the movement for racial equality. It also explained his frustrations with the moderate white clergy who were sympathetic to the cause of integration but unwilling to risk action. And it expressed King’s “hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all of their scintillating beauty.” Fifteen months later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.

I do not suggest that my dad’s letter writing skill was equivalent to any of the historic figures cited above, but he took it seriously. In reading these letters, I gained insight into his thinking, his friendships, and the care and concern he had for so many people. Each letter he authored provides a glimpse of his extraordinary outreach to the people he knew and touched throughout his life.

The letters included correspondence with his close confidants—the Lutheran pastors I met during my high school years, when my dad was Bishop of the New Jersey Lutheran Synod. These letters brought back memories of the people and places of my youth, meaningful conversations about life, social concerns, and laughter. My dad laughed with special ease when he was around his close friends and colleagues, who all made it a point to include me and express genuine interest in me as a person. Today, sadly, so many of these people, including my dad, are no longer alive. But their impact on my life and development as a young man searching for guidance and answers to life’s big questions stuck with me over time.

Many of my dad’s letters are notes of thanks and encouragement, sent to people he had known over the years. It is incredible, really, to see how thoughtful and careful he was with each letter. With few exceptions, all were typed, single-spaced, filling most of the page and sometimes more. In each letter, he made sure to uplift the other person, impart his individual touch, and express his admiration for them.

I found a few letters to people my dad met through me and, until now, I did not know he had ever independently corresponded with them. One such letter expressed gratitude to a young woman who had encouraged me to serve on the Board of the service organization she directed. “You were indeed a major part in [Mark’s] motivation to serve in this important way during the years he lived and worked in Washington. Thanks for being that kind of ‘witness’ to him.”

Other letters discussed issues of social and political importance, such as one he wrote in September 2008 to the then Bishop of the Virginia Lutheran Synod: “This is just a quick note to express my personal gratitude to you for your comments which I read on the ELCA News Service last evening—as part of the ‘fighting poverty’ prayer vigil on the Capitol steps.” Attached to the letter was an article quoting the Bishop’s remarks as part of an interfaith coalition of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders calling on members of Congress to address poverty through enhanced funding for food stamps, unemployment insurance, child support enforcement, health care, and home energy assistance. My dad thanked him and said he had “needed to hear some prophetic words from a bishop whom I know and respect.” Many letters to others were similar expressions of thanks and gratitude for acts of service and “witness” to people in need.

In the late 1990s, like many mainline Protestant denominations in the United States, the Lutheran Church debated resolutions that proposed making the church community more open and inclusive to the LGBTQ community, and which eventually moved the Church to ordaining openly gay and lesbian pastors and allowing clergy to perform gay marriages. My dad heartily endorsed these resolutions, which caused at least three close friends to consider leaving the church. One of these friends, who my dad had known since they attended seminary together in the early 1950s, told my dad he could not be friends with anyone who disagreed with him on this issue. In a series of heart-felt letters to this person, my dad passionately defended the necessity of the resolutions, shared deeply painful stories of two young men he had counseled over the years who later committed suicide, in part due to their inability to reconcile traditional church teachings with their sexual orientation. In one case, my dad painfully acknowledged that he had mishandled his counseling of the young man (in the early 1960s) and he blamed society’s and the Church’s lack of compassion and misunderstanding of sexual orientation for much of the suffering experienced by the LBGTQ community. He explained that he came to more fully understand that one’s sexual orientation is pre-ordained and the application of outdated biblical precepts was profoundly contrary to God’s love, compassion, and understanding of all humanity. I am proud of my dad’s compassionate advocacy for a more welcoming and inclusive church community and his willingness to risk long-standing friendships over such a critical issue years before the Lutheran Church and society fully evolved on the issue.

My dad also was a prolific writer of letters to the editor, in which he sometimes praised and frequently criticized an opinion expressed in the Op-Ed section of his local paper. The theme underlying most of these letters was anger at insensitivity, injustice, and self-righteousness, a genuine concern for humanity, and a lifelong pastor’s frustration with people misunderstanding what Christian witness is all about, especially in the Bible Belt South.

In one such letter, he responded to a previous letter writer who claimed that “the choice between rich and poor is ours for the making” and that those who “choose to be poor” deserve the consequences they suffer. My dad would have none of it:

Can you imagine how those folks on the lowest end of the economic scale feel when they read that kind of ideological trash? Can you imagine how single mothers, working a 40- or 50-hour week at minimum wage, struggling to pay for the children’s day care … and living in substandard housing, must have felt when they read [that letter] in the Sunday newspaper? What about the elderly living only on Social Security, struggling to pay rent and medical bills? Imagine how the hardworking family breadwinners, also earning just above minimum wage, wondering how they will pay the rent, feed their family, and gas up the car to get to work, must have felt in reaching such an insensitive letter?

God forgive us for our self-righteousness in the midst of our plenty. …

On another occasion, my dad wrote in response to a heartfelt commentary from one of the paper’s regular columnists, who had courageously revealed his struggle with alcoholism. In a letter praising the columnist that also reflected Dad’s frustrations with those who had been critical of him, my dad wrote:

This letter is to express thanks to [Stephen Black] for sharing, with both his admirers and his critics, his struggle with alcoholism over these many years. He has truly shared with the readers of the Times-News the story of God’s loving grace in a much more convincing way than all of the nasty and self-righteous letters (often with biblical quotes totally out of context) which often are printed in the “Letters” section. He understands what it means to have been “through the valley of the shadow of death”, and his expressions of gratitude to God, to his family, to the medical community who ministered to him, and to his good friends who stuck by him, are models of thanksgiving which all of us can imitate.

…Stick it to us, Steve, when we get too pompous, too uncaring about our neighbors who may be different than we are, too self-satisfied, too nasty or unloving toward those less fortunate than we. … Please keep those columns coming!

The letters I most enjoyed, however, were the personal ones that displayed my dad’s sense of humor. Upon learning in May 2008 that his longtime friend and colleague, the Rev. Dr. Glenn Rudisill, was about to celebrate his 90th birthday, my dad wrote:

Dear Glenn:

My mother taught me just a few years ago that I had to treat my elders with respect. While I have never known anyone quite as old as you are, this letter will be my attempt to communicate with the elderly.

Actually, you are an amazing guy! … My hope is that, thirty years from now, when I turn 90, I will be half as sharp as you are.

Dad was two months shy of his 80th birthday when he wrote this. Of course, my dad spent the remainder of that letter reminiscing and praising his good friend’s life, work, and “magnificent family” who reflected his “love, graciousness and commitment,” adding that Glenn had “been a marvelous colleague."

In an August 2008 letter to the Rev. Dr. Herluf Jensen, an accomplished theologian, pastor, and prophetic leader of the church during the volatile 1970s and 1980s, my dad wrote to congratulate him on the 40th anniversary of his ordination. In prior years, Jensen succeeded my dad, first as pastor of a church in Moorestown, New Jersey, and later as Bishop of the New Jersey Synod. The letter reminisced about their four decades of mutual counsel and respect, and recalled, with a tinge of pastoral humor:

Following my resignation as [Bishop] of the synod, what a delight it was for me to chair that meeting when you were elected to be my successor again! When I escorted you to the rostrum amidst a standing ovation, you asked me: “What do I do now?” My response was “Pray!”

Although he was a serious and highly respected theologian, I imagine Jensen laughed when he read that.

A letter from my dad to Rev. John Steinbruck in March 1997 also caught my attention. I have previously written about Steinbruck’s life and theology (here and here). During his time as senior pastor of Luther Place Church in Washington, D.C., Steinbruck and his wife Erna established the N Street Village, a four-story complex of shelters and clinics that offers food, clothing, housing, medical care, and social and mental health services to homeless women and their children. Dad wrote to congratulate Steinbruck on his impending retirement and to express gratitude for Steinbruck’s life of service on behalf of the most vulnerable members of society.

Your ministry … has been a gift for which we are all thankful. Whether you realize it or not, you have been one of my “heroes” in ministry. Indeed, led by God’s Spirit, you took what could have been an average urban congregation and enabled it to become a servant people in a city which has a reputation for taking itself too seriously. While I know that you will shy away from such praise, you need to know of [my] gratitude for the major role which you played in making this all happen.

There are so many more examples of letters and notes my dad saved that incorporated his experiences, concerns, and thankfulness for the people he had the opportunity to know over his 86 years of life. All his letters reflected his love for humanity, his caring nature, and his genuine interest in everyone to whom he wrote. I am thankful that he saved these letters, for they represent the memories, prayers, and laughter that filled my dad’s life. It is truly a gift to have them.

The digital age is upon us, and we have lost the special art of letter writing that more thoughtfully documents our friendships, appreciation, and concerns over our lifetimes. As we end one year and begin a new one, my wish to all of you is to enjoy life in all its dimensions. Let your friends and family know how much you care for them in written letters. Someday in the not-too-distant future, absent our letters, writings, and photographs, we will exist only in the memories of the people we have known and touched along the way. Peace to all and happy new year!

Edwin L. Ehlers circa 1990, McLean, Virginia

A Question of Character and American Values

U.S. military strike of civilian boat off Venezuelan coast, October 3, 2025

When he ran for president in 2020, Joe Biden described the election between he and Donald Trump as “a struggle for the soul of America.” It was an eloquent phrase from a politician not known for his eloquence, but the sentiment resonated with me for one simple reason: it was true.

Men and women make history, but they are incapable of knowing how history will turn out. This was true of the American patriots who fought in the revolution and the men who wrote, debated, and agreed upon the Constitution. It has been true of all the people who have fulfilled positions of leadership throughout American history. It is why, since its inception, the ultimate success of the American experiment has remained precarious and uncertain, and why Abraham Lincoln asked at Gettysburg “whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”

The men who founded and molded the early American republic were deeply human and possessed profound moral shortcomings, yet they were the greatest collection of political minds in history. Despite their strong disagreements, personality conflicts, regional rivalries, and conflicting interests, they held the union together during a vulnerable and turbulent time. The leadership they provided to a young and not yet fully formed nation helped shape the character of the political institutions that we rely upon to create and enforce our laws, protect our liberties, and implement the checks and balances set forth in the Constitution. In their public statements and proclamations, the leaders of our newly formed nation spoke with an eloquence frequently lacking in today’s political discourse, because they knew their reputations and legacies rested on the judgment of history.

A nation’s leaders transmit values across generations that determine and influence its national character. David Brooks has written that human beings “are social and spiritual creatures whose souls are either ennobled or degraded by the systems, cultures, and behaviors in which we are enmeshed.” In examining the policies and actions of a government, it is fair to ask, “Does this moralize or demoralize the people it touches? Does this induce them to behave more responsibly or less?” It is not possible to separate policy making from moral character. It is why America’s founders believed so strongly in the concept of public virtue.

As the historian Joseph J. Ellis noted in Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, the United States is “the oldest enduring republic in world history, with a set of institutions and traditions that have stood the test of time.” That is true in part because “the fate of the American experiment … required honest and virtuous leaders to endure.” Honor and character still matter. Without leaders who exemplify these traits, the American project cannot survive.

I have been thinking about honor and character lately, particularly as we learn more about the President’s military campaign against civilian boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. At the orders of the President and Secretary of Defense, small vessels suspected of carrying illicit drugs are blown to bits with laser-guided missiles and military-grade munitions. In most cases, everyone aboard the vessels is killed immediately. In one violent drone strike on September 2 that killed nine people and split the boat apart, a second strike forty minutes later killed two defenseless men while they desperately held onto a floating piece of debris to keep from drowning.

In none of the approximately twenty-two strikes to date, which have killed at least eighty-seven civilians, has there been any attempt to arrest and prosecute the individuals on the boats or to seize the drugs allegedly being transported. Indeed, in one strike in October, two survivors were detained and repatriated back to their home countries (Colombia and Ecuador). Why they were not detained and brought back for prosecution raises a host of questions. Were there no drugs on the boat? Was there insufficient evidence that these two individuals were connected to a drug smuggling operation? We do not know because the government has provided no explanation or evidence.

These killings have no legal or moral justification. Blowing up boats operated by civilians, even ones suspected of committing a serious crime, is murder, not justice. These are attacks against citizens of a country with which America is not at war. The individuals on these boats are not enemy combatants, but people suspected of drug trafficking, a crime which, even if supported by evidence (we have at present only the President’s and Secretary Hegseth’s unsupported statements), is not a capital offense. Because the government has disclosed no evidence, we know nothing about the targeted individuals, what they were doing, what was on their boats, or where they were destined.

Trump and Hegseth have claimed that they are seeking to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States, which has been responsible for a surge of drug overdose deaths over the past few years. But the targeted boats, if they are indeed trafficking drugs, are almost certainly carrying cocaine and not fentanyl, which comes mostly from labs in Mexico. Will Trump start ordering military strikes on Mexican drug mules? He implied as much recently when he said: “And now we’re going to do land, because the land is much easier.” Is that to be the legal and moral justification for the undeclared war killings of non-combatants?

If Trump is so concerned about illegal drugs entering the United States, why has he pardoned or commuted the sentences of over one hundred convicted drug traffickers? And why did he recently pardon the former president of Honduras, who was convicted last year in U.S. federal court of conspiring to import more than four hundred tons of cocaine into the United States?

The military strikes on the civilian boats in the Caribbean are unjustified killings under domestic law, international humanitarian law, and the U.S. Code of Military Justice. Most or all these killings would constitute war crimes under the law of armed conflict, but that does not apply because the people targeted in these boats were not at war with the United States or engaged in armed conflict with us. Even if they were members of drug cartels (or “narco-terrorists” as Trump calls them), and we have no evidence to know either way, no drug cartel is engaged in armed conflict with the United States. That they may be engaged in criminal activity (again, we have seen no concrete evidence) does not justify the lethal force inflicted. (For a thorough analysis of the clearly illegal nature of the military strikes on the boats, see "Expert Q&A on the U.S. Boat Strikes” from Just Security).

Americans understandably have strong feelings about drug trafficking. I served for eighteen years as a federal prosecutor during which I prosecuted and convicted hundreds of suspected gang members and drug dealers. I have no problem with aggressive interdiction efforts that intercept, arrest, seize, and prosecute the individuals responsible for smuggling drugs into the United States. But drug trafficking is a crime to be managed pursuant to our democratically enacted laws, just like any other crime.

The United States is supposed to be a nation of laws, and we cannot simply kill anyone we suspect of committing a crime, even a serious one. As stated by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY): “There is a difference between being accused of being a bad guy and being a bad guy. It is called the presumption of innocence. It is called due process. It is called, basically, justice that our country was founded upon.” Respect for human rights, the rule of law, and constitutional safeguards are what separates democracies from the authoritarian regimes of the world.

America today is experiencing a crisis of values. How else to explain that large numbers of Americans appear indifferent to the President’s and Secretary Hegseth’s callous indifference to human life and the rule of law. Trump and Hegseth think that enough Americans will admire their toughness that they will not ask the challenging questions. But the soul of America, the character of our nation, demands better than that.

As former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) wrote in a recent essay in The Atlantic: “Citizens can support firm action while still holding on to their humanity. Death inflicted on the helpless is never an act of strength; it is what remains when strength forgets its purpose.” If extrajudicial killings of non-combatants are allowed to proceed with no oversight from Congress and no apparent accountability to the rule of law, we will have forfeited public virtue and lost the battle for America’s soul.

When, in 1776, the signers of the Declaration of Independence agreed to "mutually pledge to each other … our sacred Honor," they knew that the fate of the new republic depended on the honor and character of the men and women who would eventually be called upon to lead and represent the American citizenry. They did not demand perfection. And they understood that we cannot always expect people of impeccable moral character to lead the country. But public virtue, public honor, and public character have always mattered.

What message does it send to American citizens and the world when the statements and social media posts coming from the White House and many of the people serving in this administration, from Pete Hegseth to Stephen Miller, consistently appeal to the worst, most vile instincts of the body politic? These are people who routinely dehumanize immigrants, attribute the worst in everyone they fear or oppose, mock concepts like diversity and inclusion, despise the poor, openly discriminate against the LGBTQ community, and show resentment to the historical achievements of women, African Americans, and Latinos. They give little thought to how their policies impact real human beings, the communities in which they live and work, and the values they convey to American society. Their answer to every problem is to shift the blame to the prior administration and to accept responsibility for nothing.

What national values does the president convey when he orders the military to perform extrajudicial killings of civilians on the high seas? For that matter, what is the character of a nation that allows masked agents to racially profile Latinos, pull men and women from their cars as they head to work, ignore pleas that they have valid work permits and are here legally, and in some cases are U.S. citizens? What is the character of a country that, on the flimsiest of evidence and without due process, sends hundreds of immigrants to a notorious El Salvador prison known for its cruel treatment of inmates and human rights violations? What message does a country send when the president and his family members make billions of dollars on crypto investments and real-estate deals with foreign governments without regard for government ethics, the rules against conflicts of interest, and the laws against bribery? These are the actions of authoritarian governments and dictators, countries that are run by men and not laws.

The United States is better than this. As James Madison wrote in 1788, if our leaders lack sufficient “virtue and wisdom … we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of government can render us secure.” It is up to “We the People” to restore virtue and wisdom to American governance.

As Noah Webster wrote in 1835, “If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted.” We have had moments in our history when principled leaders of good character were not in charge, and the nation suffered. But we are today at a crucial turning point. How much longer can we endure under the current regime? The character of the nation, the “soul of America,” demands more. It is up to Congress, the Courts, and all of us, to ensure that the rule of law, and the checks and balances embedded in our Constitution, are upheld. If not, it is doubtful “whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”