Are We Outsourcing Humanity?

Image created by artificial intelligence (Google Gemini)

When it comes to technology, I am frequently behind the times. To say I am a Luddite might be an exaggeration, but I have certain tendencies that lean in that direction. In the early 2000s, my adolescent daughters had cell phones for three years before I finally bought one. When smart phones came out, I held onto my flip-phone for several more years. Andrea and I still maintain a landline, even though we use it to talk only with our respective mothers at ages 95 and 103. I reluctantly send and receive text messages, although I acknowledge it is the primary means of communicating with people under the age of 40.

My technological deficiencies notwithstanding, recently I have been trying to better understand artificial intelligence, its benefits and risks, applications and pitfalls. In planning a recent trip to the United Kingdom, I used Google Gemini to craft an itinerary that would allow Andrea and I to explore the important sights and experiences of London, Oxford, and Edinburgh, while also helping us navigate walking and public transportation, time parameters, and nearby restaurant options that would accommodate Andrea’s dietary restrictions. Gemini immediately put together an impressively organized itinerary that addressed all our concerns, asked useful follow-up questions, provided travel tips and advice, and seemed eager to please. Although I made modifications and additions, Gemini helped me develop a flexible schedule that guided each day of our trip.

Gemini has also become an important research tool. It provides answers to my questions within seconds. It places a universe of information and data at my fingertips. And it provides links to the sources of information relied upon, which allows me to verify and explore the answers more deeply.

As noted by Ezra Klein in The New York Times, artificial intelligence has already proven incredibly valuable in the fields of mathematics, medicine, and science:

An OpenAI model just disproved a conjecture that had eluded mathematicians for 80 years. A drug for pulmonary fibrosis just became the first fully A.I.-generated treatment with proven efficacy and safety in humans. A Mayo Clinic team developed an A.I. system that can detect pancreatic cancers on a CT scan up to three years before clinicians can see them. DeepMind’s Graphcast model appears to generate weather predictions both faster and more accurately than the supercomputer systems that are used now.

These accomplishments are only the beginning. There seems to be no limit to what artificial intelligence may eventually be capable of.

But sometimes artificial intelligence tries a little too hard to please, as if it trying to say, “Relax. Let me do all the work.” It is an issue that is top of mind for professors and teachers throughout the country, as they contend with students using Chat GPT to draft papers, essays, and reports. Just because we can do something does not always mean we should.

At what point do humans risk becoming too reliant on artificial intelligence? When do human beings stop thinking for themselves? These are not philosophical queries, but genuinely practical questions of urgency. If, for example, students are relying on AI to draft papers, book reports, and essays, why are they even in school? Teachers assign writing projects not so their students can regurgitate information but because researching and writing a paper or a report forces students to think and learn more deeply about a topic, struggle with how to synchronize, organize, and evaluate information, and effectively communicate thoughts, ideas, theories, and conclusions.

Writing, like education, is about process. It requires that we figure out through trial and error what we are trying to say. It may be true that outsourcing our thinking to AI systems is easier and faster and could free us up for other activities. Many businesses are using artificial intelligence to draft emails, reports, and memoranda on assorted topics. Although I have my doubts as to the accuracy and reliability of an AI-generated report, the use of artificial intelligence to perform such tasks is potentially more efficient and allows more work to be completed with fewer people. But is this really a good thing? Should we not proceed cautiously before incorporating artificial intelligence into every aspect of life and work?

I could have drafted this essay with the aid of artificial intelligence, but what would be the point? I write essays for “Ehlers on Everything” because it keeps me engaged, sharpens my mind, and keeps me curious. Writing helps me explore more deeply the issues or topics I choose to write about and keeps my creative juices flowing. Writing is an important part of my life, not because I have millions of readers (I do not) or because I make any money doing it (negative), but because it brings me great satisfaction. Writing requires me to think critically and creatively, to figure things out. It is hard and challenging work. That is the point.

The writing process often involves deleting an unsatisfactory paragraph and rewriting what I am attempting to say with more clarity. Especially when I start with a blank page and a vague idea of what direction I wish an essay to go, writing forces me to think, analyze, and evaluate. Anything that eliminates the arduous work of writing undermines my ability to think for myself. If that begins to happen regularly in school, or at work, or in science and medicine, or in how businesses interact with consumers and employees, it imperils the utility of humanity.

I have more questions. Will the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence lead to massive job losses? What if governments nefariously use artificial intelligence to conduct surveillance, or terrorist organizations use it to create bioweapons? How do we prevent a small group of powerful and wealthy billionaires (or trillionaires) from controlling how artificial intelligence is used and applied? How will the public benefit? And how do societies ensure that the public interest takes precedence over the powerful private interests seeking to become even more incredibly wealthy from their ownership and development of AI models and applications? And who decides?

More fundamentally, how will artificial intelligence impact humanity, our ability to think, create, and make us vulnerable? Will the wide-scale adoption of artificial intelligence stagnate and flatline the ability of human beings to think critically and creatively? Meghan O’Rourke, creative writing professor at Yale University, said in a recent New York Times essay, it is “easy to imagine that in a world of outsourced fluency, we might end up doing less and less by ourselves, while believing we’ve become more and more capable.”

Pope Leo XIV addressed some of the above concerns and questions in his recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. I found the Pope’s encyclical to be a thoughtful guide for how humans should proceed in a world increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence and other forms of advanced technology.

Pope Leo acknowledges that artificial intelligence offers valuable applications in science, medicine, business, and other areas of life. But he rightly points out that AI models and applications are not morally neutral. He warns against the tendency to measure every decision based on how it impacts efficiency and profits. The most powerful technologies are not necessarily the best. If used unethically, or solely for profit and market dominance, the use of artificial intelligence risks undermining human dignity and the common good.

The Pope notes that AI models may become increasingly capable of imitating and simulating a human being, but these systems are not, and never will be, human. They do not possess a moral conscience, empathy, or relational and spiritual capabilities. “[H]umanity - in all its grandeur and woundedness - must never be replaced or surpassed.” While we should “embrace the technological progress that alleviates suffering and unlocks new possibilities,” we must “not abandon the very essence of our humanity, namely the capacity for relationship and love.” (¶ 126).

The Pope’s encyclical also addresses other areas of profound importance, including how artificial intelligence threatens to negatively impact the dignity of work; the environmental devastation and accelerated energy consumption required to build large, community-disruptive data centers; and the implications of using artificial intelligence in warfare (“Any technology that facilitates attacks without seeing the face of human beings lowers the moral threshold of conflict.”) (¶ 199). But all of it comes down to our need to remain human, and to not accede our humanity to automated systems of technology, no matter how capable those systems are.

In a 1981 commencement address at Colorado College, the late historian David McCullough said what I hope we never lose sight of:

Understanding the real world, being part of it and enjoying it, has mainly to do, I believe, with being a real person. That’s the point. It means taking an interest in other people, all kinds of people. It means enjoying people and trying to understand one another. It means kindnesses. It means doing what we can to move civilization forward, to make the world a little better place because we are in it.

When McCullough spoke those words 45 years ago, he had no way of knowing how radically transformed the world would become with the advent of computers, the internet, smart phones, and artificial intelligence. Despite these advances, McCullough continued to write all his brilliant books and speeches on an ancient Royal typewriter. He had no use for computers and artificial intelligence. And while McCullough may indeed represent a relic of the past, a remnant of what now seems like a slower paced, more genteel life, there remains wisdom in his words.

Susan Sontag, during a speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2003, said, “A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.” As the Yale professor Meghan O’Rourke suggests, “This attention to the world is worth trying to preserve: The act of care that makes meaning - or insight - possible. To do so will require thought and work. We can’t just trust that everything will be fine.”

I do not claim to understand all the intricacies of artificial intelligence. Few of us do. That is part of the problem. Artificial intelligence and large language models like Chat GPT have the potential to replace humans in many tasks that, until now, required work and thought and trial-and-error. I worry that relying on artificial intelligence will undermine our ability to understand, to figure things out on our own. Indeed, this is already happening. Human individuality flows from the life of the mind at work. For the sake of humanity, and for the future of our children, we must preserve the profound human need for individuality, connection, love, and struggle. We must never lose our capacity to pay attention to the world and to each other.

Profiles in Courage and Heroism in the DRC

Dr. Richard Lokuda, Director of Mongbwalu General Hospital
(Photo: Arlette Bashizi, New York Times)

Great journalism does not simply report facts and events as they occur. It allows us to understand another person's reality, empathize with their suffering, recognize when doing nothing is no longer an option. A well-written news story informs. It touches our emotions and allows us to ask deeper questions. But rarely does a newspaper article leave me sitting in silence. A story in the May 30 edition of The New York Times is one of those rare pieces.

The Times recently sent its chief Africa correspondent, Declan Walsh, and photographer Arlette Bashizi to the village of Mongbwalu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This is the epicenter of the Ebola epidemic that is spreading fear, tragedy, and death throughout this grief-stricken region of the world. In words, photographs, and a nine-minute video summary, the article takes you inside the understaffed and under-resourced hospital that is trying in vain to treat growing numbers of Ebola patients in Mongbwalu, all at great risk to the doctors, hospital staff, and aid workers directly in harm’s way.

Accompanied by heartbreaking photography, Walsh’s writing paints a personal, touching, and frightening story to which the world urgently needs to respond:

In the cramped, dilapidated Ebola ward, a 5-year-old boy languished on a bare mattress, a tissue stuffed into his nose to stanch the incessant bleeding. His father stood over him, eyes clouded with worry.

A few beds away lay the body of Christiane Bahati, 21, who had died seven hours earlier but had not yet been taken away. Her shoes were still tucked under the bed, her wailing relatives gathered outside the ward doors.

The body, covered by a thin sheet, was highly contagious. Yet hardly anyone in the ward was protected. Relatives came and went, carrying food and water to ailing patients because the hospital had none to give them. A few wore rubber gloves or pulled a scarf across their mouths. Most had nothing at all.

In the next ward lay the hospital’s laboratory technician, also sick. Seven other hospital workers had already died from suspected Ebola. Few of the staff members had ever been trained to fight the disease, and the most rudimentary equipment was in dangerously short supply: tests, protective suits, goggles, masks, even drinking water.

Outside, the sound of hammering broke the hushed silence. Aid workers from Doctors Without Borders were racing to erect isolation tents and disinfection stations.

… arriving patients who do not have Ebola risk being infected by those who do. In fact, it is hard to know who has Ebola because test results from the regional capital, some 50 miles away, take four days or more to arrive, said the hospital director, Dr. Richard Lokudu.

By then, many patients have already died.

Dr. Alex Bogole, a Congolese doctor in the hospital’s intensive care ward, expressed anger at the world’s indifference, neglect, and inadequate response to the crisis.

The virus had been spreading for months, virtually unimpeded, “and this is the best we can do?” he said, the frustration pouring through his protective gear.

The medical staff at Mongbwalu General Hospital are completely overwhelmed. Three weeks before The Times published this story, the hospital’s anesthesiologist died. A day later, the hospital’s surgical assistant died. Over the previous 12 days, the hospital experienced more than 30 deaths. Many others died in their homes in Mongbwalu, where fear, dread, and confusion overwhelm its residents.

Meanwhile, misinformation proliferated on social media as many townspeople refused to accept that the virus was real. They instead blame the hospital, its doctors, and staff.

Some said the outbreak was a moneymaking plot concocted by Congolese doctors and foreign aid workers. Others called it a curse. Often, doctors say, the early symptoms of Ebola resemble other ailments, like malaria or typhoid, so by the time patients go to the hospital, many are already very sick and die quickly, heightening suspicion and distrust.

Two nights earlier, assailants had burned down an isolation ward in the hospital, shortly after Doctors Without Borders put it up. In the chaos, 18 patients suspected of having Ebola fled their beds and vanished into the town, potentially spreading the virus even more.

Fear understandably drives community perceptions. Faced with a sudden surge of deaths, some townspeople irrationally believe the hospital is the cause and not the solution to the outbreak. “We’re here to save them,” the hospital director Dr. Richard Lokudu told Walsh. “They think we want to kill them.”

Still, the medical workers and staff risk their lives every day. This includes the doctors and their assistants who directly care for the patients, administer intravenous fluids, monitor vitals, help alleviate patient suffering, and wash and sanitize bottles and protective gloves so they can be reused. It includes the Red Cross volunteers who transport the bodies of patients who die and then attempt to enforce protocols to ensure safe burial practices, as traditional funerals are a major vector of disease transmission. They all contend not only with the threat of a deadly virus, but also the possibility of attacks from their own community. They are the heroes of this story.

The information gap between the medical community and the general populace is one of the biggest obstacles to stopping the spread of the virus. As seen in the photos and video documentation, the doctors (and The Times reporter and photographer) wore full protective suits and gear. But the family members who brought food and water to patients were mostly unmasked and unprotected. They appeared almost unaware of the risks while understandably preoccupied with their loved ones’ survival.

It would be wrong to dismiss the people of Mongbwalu as ill-educated, uninformed, and ignorant. As Dr. Edward Blau, a retired physician, explained in The Times’ comment section:

The same thing happened during the worst of the COVID pandemic in this country during the height of the pandemic. Frightened and willfully ignorant patients led astray by … reactionaries and conspiracy theorists claimed the virus wasn't really that dangerous, was a myth, and falsely claimed quack drugs would cure them. Close to five thousand health care workers died here taking care of the sick, and there was never a national tribute to them, or a word of official thanks. Do not look at the pictures here and think we are better than them, because we are not.

As Walsh and Bashizi were leaving, Doctors Without Borders were sealing off the hospital and establishing a proper isolation ward. It is likely the virus has already circulated undetected for the past two months and penetrated deep into the surrounding communities. The true scale of the outbreak is thus unknown and frightening to contemplate. To protect overwhelmed health systems and prevent further transmission, the families and communities in the region urgently need access to reliable health information, early detection, and safe burials.

The inspiring stories of courage, compassion, grit, and kindness in the people caring for these vulnerable patients are what true heroism looks like. This is a story that demands attention. The Times article is worthy of a Pulitzer. The journalists covered it at great personal risk. Their words and photographs brought me to a place with which I would not have the courage to go. My deepest respect to Declan Walsh and Arlette Bashizi for bearing witness to suffering with such honesty, dignity, and compassion. The world needs more reporting like this. And a little more humanity.

*     *     *     *

Dr. Lokuda treating a patient
(Photo: Arlette Bashizi, New York Times)

According to experts at the World Health Organization (WHO), a vaccine against this species of Ebola will take six to nine months to develop. But Ebola is stopped on the ground by trusted local health workers, protective equipment, proper specimen transport, isolation units, and rapid response. Tragically, these are the very capacities profoundly weakened by the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which affected billions of dollars in grant money for thousands of programs and nonprofit organizations around the world.

President Kennedy established USAID in 1961 to exercise American “soft power” in the form of financial resources, technical expertise, and humanitarian assistance to under-developed countries. In 1964, the agency's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) was created to "save lives, alleviate human suffering, and reduce the social and economic impact of disasters worldwide." For the past six decades, human need, not politics, drove USAID’s foreign disaster relief efforts, which received bipartisan support. Within hours of learning about the first signs of the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014, USAID drove in 28 trucks of personal protective equipment. President Obama deployed thousands of U.S. military personnel to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone to build treatment centers and train local healthcare workers. And he secured from Congress $5.4 billion in emergency funding, the largest single-nation contribution to an infectious disease outbreak in history. These efforts played a tremendous part in stemming the spread of the virus and eliminating the danger to the rest of the world.

But in early 2025, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and his team of 20-something “whiz kids” thought it would be a clever idea to eliminate USAID, the agency most equipped to help with foreign disasters such as the Ebola outbreak. USAID staff in Washington who had dedicated their careers to the OFDA received emails informing them they were fired and had fifteen minutes to exit the building. Security personnel escorted them out. Also terminated were thousands of USAID employees across the globe.

The dismantling of USAID has been exacerbated by America’s withdrawal from the WHO, substantially reduced funding for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and politically motivated cuts to science and medical research facilities at the nation’s universities. Clueless people who "move fast and break things" do not belong anywhere in government. It is a recipe for a world catastrophe.

Collectively, these actions significantly disrupted and slowed the world’s response to the Ebola outbreak. As reported in a May 20 New York Times report, the WHO first learned of a cluster of unexplained deaths on May 5, 2026. “The organization promptly alerted the International Health Regulations, a legal framework for disclosing outbreaks. But the United States withdrew from the W.H.O. earlier this year, cut funding to the organization and rejected the framework, and American officials no longer talk regularly with their international partners.” When the U.S. government finally received confirmation of the Ebola outbreak on May 14, the virus had already infected 250 people, caused 80 deaths, and begun to spread across international borders.

The United States used to fund robust disease surveillance networks that maintained emergency teams who could respond rapidly to public health crises like the current Ebola outbreak. That all ended with the shutdown of USAID. CDC funding cuts further resulted in the loss of hundreds of experts, including in the DRC, who could have helped contain the epidemic. Moreover, as The Times noted:

Numerous positions in the U.S. government created to help detect and respond to global health threats remain vacant. The coordinator for global health security, a position created by Congress in 2023 to oversee preparedness to biological threats, is unfilled. The White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, established by Congress in 2022, is also unstaffed.

The C.D.C.’s emerging disease center has lost about 700 staff members and contractors, including the head of the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens, which covers hantavirus and Ebola. The C.D.C.’s Global Health Center has lost hundreds more employees, including many who helped African health ministries manage disease outbreaks.

… the C.D.C.’s Congo office has seven vacant positions for American staff, including the deputy director of the global health protection program and director of the H.I.V. program. (Staff from all programs would typically help in a large outbreak like this one.)

C.D.C.’s country office in Uganda likewise has at least four vacant spots, including the leaders of the global health protection and H.I.V. programs.

The Trump administration has instead prioritized a close-the-border approach to the current crisis. Although it recently committed slightly more than $200 million to the Ebola response in the DRC and Uganda, most global health experts consider this inadequate, especially considering the structural dismantling of foundational healthcare systems and long-term funding cuts inflicted by Musk and Trump over the past fifteen months. It reflects poorly on us as a nation. We can and must do better.

The mining town of Mongbwalu
(Photo: Arlette Bashizi, New York Times)

Let me close with a prayer for the medical workers and Red Cross volunteers who do God’s work every day at significant risk to themselves, while the world sits mostly in silence. These men and women are on the front lines combatting a frightening disease, widespread ignorance, and misinformation. They deserve our heartfelt thanks, praise, and support. Doctors Without Borders and other organizations assisting with these valiant efforts deserve our generous financial support. Human beings should never have to suffer like this. The world must respond.

The Power of Words and Duty to Country

Richard Goodwin (left), Jack Valenti, and President Johnson
January 12, 1966 (The White House/AP Photo)

Richard Goodwin, who was among the most talented and prolific speechwriters in American history, dedicated his life from 1960 to 1965 to two American presidents—John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He understood the power of words to move a nation and, more importantly when it came to legislation, move Congress. Goodwin was a “Kennedy man” with a Harvard pedigree, but following Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, Johnson persuaded Goodwin to remain on the White House staff. For the next two years, Goodwin crafted the words behind Johnson’s most impactful speeches on civil rights, voting rights, and the Great Society, giving voice to the president’s determination to raise America to unreached heights of equality and fairness.

“I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country. To right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.” Starting with these simple and powerful words, spoken eight days after “Bloody Sunday,” when state troopers violently attacked a group of peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, Johnson spoke before a Joint Session of Congress to urge passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The nation had before endured “moments of great crises,” Johnson declared, “[b]ut rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself.” Johnson’s words were direct, morally compelling, and set forth what was at stake – “the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation.”

The issue, of course, was the imperative of equal rights in the nation’s electoral process, and the need for Black Americans to “secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.” If America and the Congress were not up to the task, “we will have failed as a people and as a nation.” The cause of Black equality, Johnson insisted, was a cause all Americans should embrace. “Because … it’s all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

Johnson’s speech was powerful and impactful. His words spoke to the moral conscience of the entire country. They persuaded a bipartisan Congress to push America closer to the ideals of liberty, justice, and equality on which the nation was founded.

I have been reflecting lately on the power of words to inspire Americans to reach for its better angels, to more closely become the idealized vision of democracy to which we aspire. This is what leadership is supposed to be about. LBJ spoke with a Texas drawl and lacked the refinement of JFK. But he was an intelligent and deeply informed politician, and he knew that as the leader of a great nation, his public statements, speeches, and pronouncements required thoughtful deliberation, and sometimes poetry. This is where a talented speechwriter like Goodwin could be of service, to put into words why the country needed civil rights, voting rights, aid to education, protection of the environment, and medical care for the poor and the aged, not merely to improve the lives of some, but to allow all of America to reach its full potential.

The importance of dignified public leadership, and of words spoken with dignity by a nation’s political leaders, were driven home during my recent trip to the United Kingdom. While watching the local British newscasts, two things became apparent. First, the level of public discourse in Britain far surpasses what you see and hear every day in the United States. Political debates and competition are as ruthless in the UK as anywhere, but there are few if any gratuitous insults thrown about, no accusations of treason and sedition hurled at the opposition or the press for disagreeing with the prime minister. 

Second, when British journalists question public officials, they expect direct answers. Prescribed talking points result only in sharp follow-up questions until an answer to the original question surfaces. Talking over someone rarely occurs. Even when an unadmiring reporter asks tough questions, in Britain and most of Europe it is rare for anyone to shout at or insult the questioner. The British have a long tradition of high-level, high pressure, public debating. But as competitive and hard-nosed as political life can be in the UK, there remains an underlying sense of duty and dignity in its public discourse.

President Trump frequently boasts that he has restored respect for America around the world. But if my observations over eleven days in the UK have any bearing, nothing could be further from the truth. People outside the United States do not admire Trump’s undignified approach to leadership. Indeed, to the extent they even pay attention to him, the British public and press dismiss Trump’s daily social media posts and asinine comments as the undiplomatic rantings of an unstable man unfit for the office he holds. When he recently accused one of the world’s most respected national security correspondents, David Sanger of The New York Times, of treason and sedition—for reporting well-sourced U.S. intelligence assessments that sharply negated Trump’s assertions that the U.S. had achieved “total victory” in the war with Iran and questioned the extent of the damage caused Iranian missile capacity—the UK public recognized Trump’s insults for what they are: a desperate president’s attempts to suppress the truth, impose his will on inconvenient facts, and attack the messenger. These traits are not respected, anywhere. Anyone in the current administration who fails to see this is blind to reality.

When a nation’s leaders speak thoughtfully, when their words are principled and spoken in good faith, and when they convey a genuine concern for the nation and all its citizens, only then do people listen and engage in reflective consideration. Only when our leaders appeal to shared values over self-interest and base instinct can their words transform division into unity, elevate our moral imagination, and inspire us to reach for the stars.

As an American traveling overseas, it was embarrassing to contrast the comparative levels of discourse between the Trump White House with the statements of presidents, prime ministers, and members of parliament of most European countries. It is crude vs. dignified, uninformed vs. intelligent, crass vs. sophisticated. Maybe the American electorate wanted it this way when they voted for Trump in 2024; after all, Trump has always been transparent that he cares only about ego gratification, power, and economic self-interest.

But it should not be this way. We have lost our sense of purpose and the values to which President Johnson spoke in 1965, a moral clarity that all Americans knew, deep in their hearts, was right. A sense of right and wrong, an ethical concern for the public interest over private self-interest, and the knowledge that America can always do better and be better. Perhaps our appointed public officials have forgotten for whom they work and where their loyalties lie.

As recounted in An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who was married to Richard Goodwin for 42 years before he died in 2018, all the good Johnson accomplished during his first two years began to unravel as he escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War. Goodwin became increasingly dismayed by Johnson’s war policies and resigned in September 1965 (briefly returning only to assist with Johnson’s State of the Union speech in January). Johnson and other members of the administration never forgave Goodwin for what they perceived as an act of disloyalty, especially when Goodwin came out publicly against the war. As Doris Kearns Goodwin recalled, “[w]ords such as ‘traitor,’ ‘unpatriotic,’ and ‘disloyal’ were bandied about.” But Goodwin was right about the war, and despite his past partnership with Johnson, his duty was to his country, not his president.

This experience prompted Goodwin to write an essay on the loyalty of dissent, the words of which are well worth studying today. Goodwin wrote in part:

The government of the United States is not a private club or college fraternity. Its policies are not private oaths or company secrets. Presumably a man enters public life to serve the nation. The oath taken by every high officer of the nation, elected or appointed, is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not an Administration, a political party, or a man.

Dissenters are sometimes accused of demeaning the presidency. That office should demand respect. Its dignity, however, flows not from private right or title or the man who occupies it, but solely from the fact that its occupant is chosen by the people of the United States. It is their office, and if they, or any among them, feel that it is wrongly used, then it is their obligation to speak.

It should be apparent to everyone that these words possess exceptional resonance today. Each day’s news brings stories of corruption and conflicts of interest at the highest levels of government, and an utter disregard for ethics, law, and morality that is rampant throughout this administration. But I hope the tide is turning. Now more than ever it is time for responsible members of the Trump administration, the Republican Party, and those employed by the federal government, to heed the call and insist on decency and honesty in all public affairs. The American citizens deserve as much, and the rest of the world will respect us for it.

On God and Baseball

The Cathedral of St. Louis (Busch Stadium for the uninitiated)

Like Annie in the movie Bull Durham, I believe in the Church of Baseball. Religion and baseball may have nothing to do with each other, but baseball frequently operates in the same domain as religion. Watch any game during the defining moments of a pennant race and you will see hundreds of fans in the late innings with their eyes closed, hands folded in prayer, seeking heavenly blessings for their beloved players and teams. The players themselves appear to sense that God has a stake in the outcome of their games. They cross themselves as they step to the plate. They point to the heavens when they hit a home run or strike out an opposing batter. Certainly, God is not neutral in the affairs of baseball.

I am a rational human being. I accept scientific truths and accumulated knowledge of empirical research. Although my religious upbringing instilled in me a belief in God, as an adult my religious leanings are full of doubt and skepticism. And yet, while I cannot explain it, there are times in my life I have felt God’s presence. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “The moment we utter the name of God we leave the level of scientific thinking and enter the realm of the ineffable … which by its very nature lies beyond our comprehension.”

All of this leads to a fundamental question: Is God even a baseball fan? Certainly, God has no love for the powerful Yankees, the money-drenched Dodgers, or any of the evil teams that oppose the Cardinals and all their inherent goodness. In a just world, would not God intervene to ensure my beloved Cardinals won the World Series every season?

I know for certain that God was asleep at the switch when he (or she) allowed the Boston Red Sox to break the Curse of the Bambino in 2004. I did not object when God allowed the Red Sox, down three-games-to-none, to miraculously win the last four games and defeat the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series. But I can only conclude that other worldly matters distracted God when he allowed the Sox to sweep the 105-win Cardinals in that season’s World Series. Now, some people claim the Red Sox won because they played better baseball than the Yankees and Cardinals over that eight-game stretch. But you don’t really believe this, do you?

I am kidding, of course. I know God has nothing to do with how the Cardinals do on any given day or season. But I am convinced that each game’s outcome is determined by the coffee mug I choose to drink from each morning. When I open the kitchen cabinet and reach for that day’s mug, I think carefully about which one will provide the magic to help my team win that night. So far this season, I have chosen correctly 13 of 21 times, pretty good for a team not expected to do a whole lot of winning this year.

Is it possible that my lifelong attachment to the St. Louis Cardinals, a team for which I have no geographical or familial connection, arises from the same aura of ineffability to which Rabbi Heschel attests, that inexplicable, spiritual dimension of human experience that touches the core of our existence? I have been pondering such questions ever since reading Baseball as a Road to God (Gotham Books, 2013) by John Sexton and watching Baseball: Beyond Belief, the companion documentary, which aired recently on FS1.

Sexton is the former President of New York University and Dean of NYU Law School, who also holds a PhD in history of American religion. His book originated from a seminar he designed on baseball and religion, which contends that “baseball can show us more about our world and ourselves than we might have thought” and “can demonstrate the benefits of living a little slower, of noticing a little more, and of embracing life’s ineffable beauties.” Sexton does not literally contend that baseball provides an avenue to God, or that we should take too seriously the connection between baseball and religion. But he does seek to show parallels between baseball, faith, and spirituality.

Baseball, like religion, is full of sacred places and sacred times. Ballparks are cathedrals, a place where the faithful gather and commune. And much like the devoutly religious among us, the baseball fan’s innermost thoughts are filled with elements of faith, doubt, the hope for miracles, a belief in superstitions and myths, blessings and curses, saints and sinners, and a longing for community.

As noted by Sexton, just as the world’s great religions mark significant events on their holiest of days—Passover and Yom Kippur in Judaism; Christmas and Easter in Christianity; Ramadan in Islam—baseball has Opening Day, a time of rebirth and renewal, when every team gets a fresh start and the sins of the past are forgiven in the hope of new beginnings. Most religions point to an ultimate destination, the Road to Damascus, the Promised Land, the search for eternal salvation. In baseball, the postseason playoffs are baseball’s high holy days, and the World Series is the Promised Land. The only way to get there is to overcome adversity and be tested along the way. It is why all 30 major league teams play a long, drawn-out season of 162 games.

Within each season there are moments of heightened awareness, memorable events that become part of baseball mythology; a come-from-behind win, a walk off home run, a remarkable catch. These are the shared experiences of parents and children, brothers and sisters, and close friends that become sacred stories of baseball memories. In any ballpark, Sexton writes, “magic can happen, and the fan can be transported to a space and time beyond, to an experience we know profoundly but cannot put into words.”

Some of the oldest and most historic parks are considered especially sacred spaces, including Wrigley Field in Chicago, Fenway Park in Boston, and Yankee Stadium in New York. Yankee Stadium also contains Monument Park, where the Ghosts of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe Dimaggio, and Mickey Mantle are forever memorialized. On the University of Pittsburgh campus is the remnant of the outfield wall of old Forbes Field, marking where Bill Mazeroski hit the walk-off home run that defeated the Yankees in Game Seven of the 1960 World Series. To this day, people gather at the historical marker every October 13 and play a recording of the radio broadcast to relive that memorable moment in time.

Baseball, like religion, is also about community. After September 11, when the Yankees reached the World Series, it helped unite a city in pain and allowed a period of national healing. Even though the Yankees lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks, that series demonstrated baseball’s power to bring people together and celebrate America.

In Baseball as a Road to God, Sexton tells the story of when he and his best friend Dougie ran home from Catholic grade school on October 4, 1955, to catch the end of the seventh game of the World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees. As they put on the radio at Sexton’s house, they both placed their hands on a crucifix, got down on their knees, and prayed as they listened to the play-by-play. For the final three innings, they stayed on their knees until the Dodgers recorded the final out and became World Champions. For Sexton, it remains one of the most significant days of his life, an occurrence he only half-jokingly refers to as one of the twelve greatest events of world history. For him, it is a sacred memory.

Of course, as Sexton suggests, what is sacred for one person is not sacred for another. For Muslims, the Dome of the Rock is revered as the site of Prophet Muhammed’s ascension to heaven. Others see only a beautiful work of architecture. For devout Catholics and liturgical Protestants, bread and wine represent the body and blood of Christ as symbolized in the Eucharist. For the non-religious, it looks like the makings of a romantic picnic by the lake. Baseball is no different. For me, there is nothing special about the Dodgers, Brooklyn or otherwise, winning a World Series (apologies to Professor Sexton). But if the Cardinals ascend to the mountaintop, well then …

One thing all baseball fans share is a belief in miracles. Even the hard-core atheist understands that remaining loyal to one’s team in challenging times involves a leap of faith that, in any season, the impossible may occur. “A leap of faith,” writes Sexton, “is an embrace of feeling over logic, a willingness to loosen one’s dependence on the purely rational.”

My father experienced a leap of faith in 1951, when his New York Giants overcame a 13.5 game deficit in August to win the National League pennant on the final game of the year by Bobby Thomson’s walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. For long-standing Giants fans, that season is still remembered as the Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff. The 1969 Miracle Mets and the “Ya Gotta Believe” 1973 Mets are two more examples of the impossible occurring. Ask any Mets fan old enough to have experienced those two seasons and you will hear similar and deeply embedded memories from all of them. And who can forget Kirk Gibson’s pinch hit home run in the 1988 World Series when he came off the bench with two crippled knees to win the game on one swing of the bat, leading to Vin Scully’s legendary call: “In a season that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.” The fans of these teams, I dare say, believe in miracles to this day.

Speaking of miracles, can it be denied that the forces of destiny, or divine intervention, were in play when David Freese hit the game-tying triple with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in Game Six of the 2011 World Series that propelled the Cardinals to a miraculous, come-from-behind World Championship? I think not.

Of course, in religion and baseball, faith and doubt go together. As Sexton explains, “Doubt is at the core of baseball, touching every player and every fan. And doubt is central to the religious experience. They are not separate, they coexist. In baseball as in religion, doubt and faith are intertwined.” As a Cardinals fan, doubt is the essence of my existence. During my lifetime, I have seen too many blown saves in the ninth inning, too many times the Cardinals have blown three-game-to-one leads in the playoffs and the World Series, to ever allow confidence or a sense of calmness to enter my thoughts. When the Cardinals take a lead into the ninth inning, I think of all the different ways things can go badly. And far too often it happens. You aren’t paranoid if they really are out to get you.

And yet, the antidote to doubt is hope. Without hope, the fan cannot survive. I may doubt the Cards will pull out a win each game, but that is a psychological defense mechanism to fend off the dark clouds of despair that lingers should my hopes be crushed by a series of walks and hits and wild pitches resulting in a Cardinals loss. Hope may be deeply embedded in my soul. But only when the Cardinals record the final out and win the game can I finally exhale and experience a sense of calm and inner peace. At least until tomorrow night’s game.

There are certain events that lead to prolonged suffering and the belief in the minds of some fans that their teams have been cursed. Most of the great baseball curses arose from excessively long championship droughts, highlighted by a groundball through the first baseman’s legs (e.g., Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series) and similar occurrences. Before the 2004 World Series, the Red Sox went 86 years without a World Championship. Did it really have nothing to do with the owner selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $125,000 after the 1919 season? Did the Curse of the Billy Goat, inflicted on the Cubs by Billy Sianis after he and his beloved pet goat were removed from Wrigley Field in Game Two of the 1945 World Series (due to the stench caused by the goat), really have nothing to do with the Cubs not reaching the World Series for another 71 years?

Yet again, other teams can lose for even longer stretches of time without any talk of curses. The Philadelphia Phillies did not win a championship for the first 97 years of the team’s existence, and no one in Philadelphia ever talked about The Curse of Connie Mack or anything of the sort. Phillies fans simply chalked it up to a century of bad baseball. And if any team deserved a curse, it was the Chicago White Sox, whose best players threw the 1919 World Series after accepting bribes from gangsters. Not until 2005, 88 years after their last championship, did the White Sox again win a World Series. And yet, fans on the South Side of Chicago accepted that, win or lose, it is about baseball, not curses. Oh, ye fans of little faith.

Baseball, of course, does not really provide a “road to God” and Sexton does not suggest otherwise. But baseball, writes Sexton, “calls us to live slow and notice.” Baseball is a timeless game. It proceeds at its own pace. It teaches us to breathe, to develop a heightened sensitivity to the specialness of our lives. For three hours each day, it forces us to slow down, to set aside the noise and speed of everyday life. Our lives are never slow for long, yet baseball “can awaken us to a dimension of life often missing in our contemporary world of hard facts and hard science. We can learn, through baseball, to experience life more deeply.”

Perhaps in the end, the former President of Yale University and commissioner of major league baseball, A. Bartlett Giamatti, best explained the essence of baseball as a spiritual journey, when he wrote:

Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home.

Baseball is about going home, and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need. It tells us how good home is. Its wisdom says you can go home again but that you cannot stay. The journey must always start once more, the bat an oar over the shoulder, until there is an end to all journeying. 

The Death of a Great American Newspaper

I began reading The Washington Post in the summer of 1982 when I moved to Washington, D.C., to attend law school. Ben Bradlee was then Executive Editor, and I immediately fell in love with the paper. After Bradlee retired in 1991, Leonard Downie, Jr., and later Marty Baron filled Bradlee’s shoes with equal competence and skill. When I moved to Philadelphia at the end of 1995, I missed The Post as much as anything else about Washington.

The Post’s reporting was hard hitting and fair, the writing excellent, its political analysis and coverage of domestic politics and government the best in the world. With foreign bureaus in twenty-one countries, The Post’s international coverage rivaled that of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. But what I most liked about The Washington Post was its well-rounded and comprehensive coverage as a hometown newspaper. Its first-rate national and international reporting was supplemented by one of the best Sports sections in the country, with writers like Thomas Boswell, John Feinstein, Sally Jenkins, Christine Brennan, and the legendary Shirley Povich. The paper had a vibrant Metro section that provided detailed coverage of local affairs in Northern Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. And the Style section, the first of its kind when created in 1972, introduced literary journalism through innovative and imaginative articles on culture and the arts, profiles of engaging personalities, and interesting aspects of life that provided energy and elan to the daily news and inspired lifestyle sections in newspapers across the country.

The paper became famous in 1971 when it published the Pentagon Papers, the 7,000-page study commissioned by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The historical import of the documents was explosive, for they proved that the government’s official pronouncements about American involvement in the war were incomplete and untrue. The Post’s decision to publish occurred days after the Department of Justice obtained a court order prohibiting The New York Times from further publishing the documents on the grounds that it threatened national security. Katherine Graham, Ben Bradlee, and The Post’s leadership courageously defied the Nixon administration’s threats to prosecute the Washington Post Company for publishing in alleged violation of the Espionage Act. The paper risked everything and won a seminal Supreme Court victory along with the New York Times in defense of the First Amendment.

Of course, it was The Post’s single-handed pursuit of what became the Watergate scandal that cemented its reputation as a world-class newspaper. Following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972, two young and inexperienced Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, relentlessly investigated every aspect of the case. Through their hard work, and with the support and guidance of talented editors, we learned of illegal surveillance activities, cover-ups, and corruption that implicated the top levels of government. The Post’s reporting exposed the abuses of power that led to Nixon’s resignation. By digging for facts in the early stages of the story, before it became a scandal and when it seemed almost no other news outlet wanted to touch it, The Washington Post stood alone and proved that courageous journalism, combined with thorough fact checking and high ethical standards, is essential to a thriving democracy.

Two of the best journalism movies of all time are All the President’s Men, with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman portraying Woodward and Bernstein during the Watergate scandal, and Spotlight, about the unflinching investigation by The Boston Globe into the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse coverup in the early 2000s. The Globe investigation occurred under the editorial leadership of Marty Baron, who would later become Executive Editor of The Washington Post. Both films revealed the unglamorous side of the news business, the drudgery of reporting, everything that occurs before an article is published—fact checking, running down leads, reading through old court filings and phone books (when they were still a thing), dead-end phone calls and door knocking, the difficulty of persuading reluctant sources to talk, and typing up a story late at night on strict deadlines, only to have the editor question the reliability of sources or the soundness of the reported facts. And the films showed why important news stories require time, resources, and a publisher willing to let reporters and editors do their jobs.

Good journalism not only searches for the truth and provides facts about key events, but also explains things, embraces ideas, and places the news in context. Apart from The New York Times, for the past half century no U.S. paper has been better at this than The Washington Post. After I left Washington in the mid-1990s, I continued to read The Post whenever I could find a copy at a local newsstand. In 2014, I subscribed to the digital edition of the paper. By then, like most papers throughout the United States, The Post struggled to make a profit. But despite financial constraints, under the stewardship of the Graham family, the paper continued to provide world-class reporting and writing and remained a full-service, all-around great paper with some of the best writing on domestic politics, the workings of the federal government, foreign affairs, sports, books, and culture.

I was concerned when Jeff Bezos, who had no prior experience with newspapers, bought The Post from the Graham family in 2013. But his wealth offered a means to restore financial stability and expand the paper’s news coverage at a time when public accountability and transparency were suffering due to hundreds of newspapers failing across the country. When Bezos bought The Post for $250 million, which then represented one percent of his net worth of $25 billion, he promised to maintain The Post’s high-quality reporting and ethical standards. When he met with the paper’s staff shortly after purchasing the paper, he predicted a new “golden era” for The Post and said:

The values of The Post do not need changing. The paper’s duty will remain [with] its readers and not [with] the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads…. Journalism plays a critical role in a free society, and The Washington Post—as the hometown paper of the capital city of the United States—is especially important.

For the next eleven years, and throughout Trump’s first term as president, Bezos maintained a hands-off policy and financially supported the paper’s mission. He did not interfere in the paper’s editorial decisions or news coverage. I remained impressed with the paper’s resolute and in-depth reporting even in the face of President Trump’s lies, unfair verbal assaults, and threats of lawsuits and adverse regulatory actions.

As the 2024 elections approached, and as a second Trump term became a real possibility, things began to change. In October, Bezos overruled The Post’s editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris ending The Post’s long-standing, well-considered history of endorsing presidential candidates. Bezos’s decision to censor the Harris endorsement so upset the paper’s readership that 250,000 people almost immediately canceled their subscriptions. Although I was angry at Bezos for his cowardly act to appease Trump, I remained a subscriber. There were still excellent reporters employed there who I wished to support.

Following the election, The Post’s news coverage remained first-rate. The paper reported daily on the administration’s actions and executive orders that threatened to radically alter American life and the traditional workings of government. It published detailed and thoroughly fact-checked reports on Trump’s efforts to financially and corruptly benefit from his office, outlaw diversity, equity, and inclusion from American life, cut life-saving medical and scientific research, reverse sixty years of U.S. “soft” power abroad by shutting down USAID and other foreign aid agencies, attack free speech on college campuses, weaponize the Justice Department and seek retribution against his political adversaries, fire thousands of dedicated government workers and impose loyalty tests on those who remained, threaten our closest allies, and overturn the rules-based international order.

Unfortunately, Bezos made clear by his actions that his personal wealth and commercial interests were more important than protecting the reputation and survival of a great American newspaper. In early 2025, he imposed a new editorial policy: Henceforth, Washington Post editorials would address only issues touching upon personal freedom and free markets. The well-respected opinion editor, David Shipley, abruptly resigned, as did the paper’s best political opinion writers, including Ruth Marcus, Jennifer Rubin, Philip Bump, Jonathan Capehart, Eugene Robinson, and Catherine Rampell. Bezos hired a new, conservative opinion editor. So much for his hands-off policy. And despite contributing $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and spending $40 million on the making of the vanity film Melania, Bezos then implemented deep budget cuts that threaten The Post’s long-term existence.

The cuts imposed by Bezos were devastating. He fired hundreds of reporters, including most of the paper’s foreign correspondents. He eliminated bureaus in the Middle East and Ukraine, which included four Pulitzer Prize finalists and reporters who risked their lives in conflict zones. He ended the Metro and highly revered Sports sections. Although he kept the Style section, he fired its excellent arts and culture critics, eliminated the stand-alone Books section, and limited The Post’s primary focus to covering politics and government, although his drastic spending cuts have significantly compromised that coverage. Because of the financial and editorial decisions imposed by Bezos, the paper has become a shadow of what it used to be. By September, I had enough. Despite my love for this revered paper, I cancelled my subscription.

Violating all his promises, Bezos has destroyed one of America’s great independent newspapers. NYU journalism professor Adam Penenberg has written that “journalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It depends on institutions willing to support it, audiences willing to listen, and journalists willing to take risks.” Sometimes, the most impactful stories “are hiding in plain sight, buried in archives, waiting for someone to connect the dots.” Although Bezos is among the five richest people in the world and currently has a net worth of $224 billion, he has chosen to treat The Washington Post as a run-of-the mill business rather than the public trust he acquired. His failure to protect and nurture an institution whose independence he promised to uphold when we need good journalism more than ever to hold the powerful to account, and as the president of the United States and his cronies are engaged in the most sustained attack on a free press in American history, is heartbreaking.

Legally, Jeff Bezos is free to do what he wants with his money, even if it leads to The Post’s demise and destruction. This is the essence of capitalism, after all. But is there not a better way? Does Bezos believe in a free and independent press of which he spoke at the time of his purchase? Does he believe in The Post’s official slogan, created under his watch, that “democracy dies in darkness”? If not, why did he buy The Washington Post in the first place?

By simply committing a tiny fraction of his wealth, Bezos could easily restore The Washington Post to the great newspaper it once was. If he has lost interest in the cause of democratic accountability, he has other options. He should either sell the paper to someone who wants to nurture and sustain it or commit $2.5 billion (approximately 1.2% of his net worth) to establish a foundation that will operate the paper as a non-profit.

“[T]ruth alone isn’t always enough,” wrote Adam Penenberg. “The bigger battle … the one we’re still fighting today, isn’t just about getting the story. It’s about making sure there’s still a place to tell it.” Legacy should be an important consideration for Jeff Bezos, for his will define how people remember him and whether his life had meaning. He will be remembered not for the money he earned, but for what he created or destroyed along the way.

If things stay on their current path, Bezos will go down in history as the person who destroyed a great American newspaper. That he did so to protect his commercial interests by appeasing a narcissistic and irrationally hateful president will be his legacy. Bezos has the power to restore The Washington Post as a great institution of American democracy, one with a rich history of informing and educating the public and helping millions of people understand the key events that affect our country, our lives, and our futures. With immense wealth and privilege comes great responsibility. Mr. Bezos, what will your legacy be?

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.