When is debt an investment?

Education is free for American schoolchildren, but salaries for teachers are paid for by taxes. They are part of the public “debt.”

However, most of us would agree that the country benefits from an educated population. Isn’t the money we pay for those free schools more of an investment than a debt?

After secondary school, education generally is not free. In fact, over the past few decades, colleges and university have grown beyond the ability of many American families to afford.

Writes novelist Marilynne Robinson: “As state financing fell, tuitions rose, involving many students in burdensome debt. For generations people had, in effect, prepaid their children’s and grandchildren’s tuition and underwritten the quality of their education by paying taxes. Suddenly the legislatures decided to put the money to other uses, or to cut taxes, and families were obliged to absorb much higher costs.” (What Are We Doing Here? Essays)

Learning, Robinson points out, no longer fits into the economic equation.

But, of course it does. It’s one of those long term costs not addressed when only material costs are calculated.

Polluted streams in Montana are a cost passed on to ordinary people. If they drink the water, they will sicken, perhaps die. If the government pays to restore the streams, the costs are passed to citizens in the form of higher taxes. The companies, who mined but did not pay for preventing pollution. get off with more profit now paid for by citizens.

Mariana Mazzucato, author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy writes: “For too long, governments have socialized risks but privatized rewards: the public has paid the price for cleaning up messes, but the benefits of those cleanups have accrued largely to companies and their investors.” (“Capitalism After the Pandemic,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2020.)

Mazzuecato suggests a long term view for our economic policies. Stakeholders in our economy, the workers, who also are consumers, need help to weather economic downturns and again be able to both work and consume.

In these and other instances, government “debt” is more of an investment.

The Loner and the Pandemic

No doubt most of us, including myself, an admitted introvert, are craving an end to our pandemic isolation.

For our children, we desperately want to open our schools. We want to bring them back to a classroom, learning under the physical presence of a teacher. We want them to interact with other children. Indeed, one of our most pressing needs, whenever classrooms do return, is dedicated help for those children who lacked the resources for learning away from the classroom.

I suspect, though, that a few children may have learned a bit better at home, with remote supervision. These are the decided introverts, who tend to be distracted in the presence of others.

Even as some workers would like to continue at least some working from home when the pandemic ends, so perhaps would a few children.

This is not a plea for either children or workers to always learn or work in isolation. Children, even inward turning ones, benefit from social interaction.

However, one gain out of this deadly time may be an understanding that we work and learn and grow in different ways with different surroundings.

Perhaps we can encourage varieties of both working and learning.

We Fear the Unworthy

We are afraid that unworthy Americans will receive entitlements they don’t deserve. Food, perhaps. Or medical care. Or housing.

In my own life, I have received many good things that I did not, in fact, do anything to earn.

I was born into a loving household. We were healthy and needed no unusual medical care. I was born at a time when unemployment was low. Both my parents were able to work and afford comfortable housing for their family.

At the time, a college education was still possible for those of ordinary means. My brother and I profited from four years of college.

Again, I came of age in boom economic times and never wanted for employment—with health insurance—whenever I needed to work.

Thus, I’m not bothered by the fact that in a wealthy country no one would go hungry. I’m not thinking of steak dinners—just basic food for all who are hungry.

I wish all working Americans had access to affordable housing, including janitors and home health aides. I’d like to see adequate resources for the mentally ill and help for the drug addicted to recover meaningful lives. I wish no child to suffer homelessness.

I wish all America’s children had access to adequate education, no matter their parents’ standing in life.

I wish all Americans could receive basic health care.

I’d like to see a fairer tax system—one that taxes wealth as well income—to underpin meeting these basic needs.

Of course, these views are selfish. Healthy, educated, well-housed Americans ultimately benefit the entire country, including me.

Creaky Democracy

We sometimes forget that our American democracy is the beta test for modern democracies, the early model.

The U.S. Constitution was ratified in the last decade of the 18th century. Men were still wearing waistcoats and breeches. Women wore long dresses and caps.

The idea of the people completely ruling themselves still wasn’t trusted even by the writers of the Constitution. They appeared to hedge their bets on this new form of government, with straitjackets that still constrain us today.

The direct election of senators wasn’t allowed by the Constitution until 1913. Women couldn’t vote until 1920.

Many of us have been shocked in the past few elections to learn that we the people do not directly elect our president and vice-president. The person sitting in the oval office directing our domestic and foreign affairs may rule by favor of a minority of voting Americans.

Writes Larry Diamond: “Our election systems were not built for the modern era.” (“When It Comes to Democracy, the U.S. Is Showing Its Age,” The New York Times, 1 Nov 20)

How do we move to a more democratic form of government? How develop a judicial system freer from political favoritism?

These are questions we must wrestle with if we want a truer democracy in the coming years. How do the people obtain the power when a minority will have to cede that power?

That Abortion Question

Many evangelical Christian voters would never consider voting for Donald Trump if he hadn’t taken them hostage with the abortion question. Many of them otherwise despise much in his personal life and in his administration.

Now he’s appointed a judge to the Supreme Court who may upend the decision many evangelicals hate: Roe v. Wade.

However, even a judiciary sworn to overturn all abortion will not stop abortion any more than the 18th amendment (the only amendment to be repealed) stopped the drinking of alcoholic beverages.

Abortion is becoming easier. Soon an abortion pill or two, guided by advice over the telephone may mean the end of abortion clinics with marchers attempting to shut them down.

Abortion pills can be passed to those desiring them much easier than bootleg liquor was passed to those overcoming the prohibition of alcohol.

Jesus, whom evangelicals profess to follow, refused to accept the political way of bringing in his kingdom. He refused the crown. He chose the much harder path of discipline and sacrifice.

Throughout the centuries, when Christians have chosen to use state powers to advance their religion, this choice has led to the corruption of Christianity and its loss of both followers and moral power to change society.

Evangelical Christians have chosen to fight abortion too late in the game—after a baby has been conceived.

Young women and men have been lured by our current self-centered entertainment trap. Sexual decisions are governed by the same lifestyle that gives us the obesity trap: eat all you want of whatever you want.

Discipline of physical desires is not the condemnation of physical desires but the better use of them.

Passing through the school of self discipline is not a belief in “someday you will enjoy a mate and have it all,” but something far more meaningful. A few are called to be celibate for life; most are not. All young people, however, need a period of learning and growth and discipline.

Young women, especially, need to find their directions in life irrespective of their relationship with men.

What if English Loses Out?

English is the language most Americans have been speaking for centuries. Due to many factors, including the country’s success in both war and trade, that language has become a world language.

Immigrants have flocked to this country both to escape persecution and to find jobs. Those jobs have included fruit picking in Washington state, tech jobs at Microsoft, and prestigious teaching jobs in universities.

American students have benefitted for decades as students from other countries have paid full tuition to gain a degree from a U.S. university.

A significant percentage of American winners of the Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, and medicine have been immigrants to the United States. According to a study cited in Forbes magazine (October 14, 2020), over a third of these prizes since 2000 have been awarded to immigrants to the United States.

But what happens if the United States closes its doors to the immigrants who have contributed so greatly to its success?

Nicholas Ostler has written a history of languages, Empires of the Word. Beyond question, English is at present a world language. But, as Ostler shows, no magical reason exists for the major language of the United States to continue in its current position.

Writes Ostler: “A language does not grow through the assertion of power, but through the creation of a larger human community.”

Americans been slow to realize how much they owe the country’s strength to the foreigners who have contributed to its businesses, its universities, and its influences.

The advantage that Americans enjoy because their major language is a world language is not a given.

Voice of America for Russians—and Americans

A statement by Michael R. Pompeo, U.S. Department of State, on 10 August 2020, expressed regret at Russia’s recent tightening of restrictions on Voice of America:

“The United States is deeply concerned by the recent draft decree published by Russian authorities targeting U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM)-funded entities in Russia. For more than 70 years, Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) have been vital sources of independent news and information for the people of Russia. . . . We remain troubled by the ongoing crackdown on independent press in Russia . . .”

Indeed, Voice of America has always prided itself on providing fact-based independent news for audiences in countries where news is often controlled by the government.

However, our own current U.S. administration appears to take lessons from the very government it has chastised: “On June 4, days after the FSJ [Foreign Service Journal] reported on unprecedented White House attacks on Voice of America, the Senate confirmed documentary film maker Michael Pack as chief executive officer of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the U.S. Agency for Global Media.”

Pack’s nomination to head the agency overseeing Voice of America has been controversial. Pack has fired seasoned officials of the agency, replacing them with himself and five other individuals. At least one had previously provided “caustic responses to questions about Trump’s disputed decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine.” Some worry that the revered VOA will become a mere voice for Trump propaganda.

The United States will lose a valuable witness for democracy if VOA becomes merely a mouthpiece for a presidential administration rather than a freely reporting news agency. Do we really prefer a propaganda piece like the Soviet Union’s old Pravda?

Wandering Jews and Christians

Polls tell us that fewer and fewer people today, especially young people, identify as religious, including as Christians.

Christianity has lost its majority following before, usually after too many people calling themselves Christians followed gods other than Christ. Nazi Germany is one example.

Wesley Hill is a professor of biblical studies at Trinity School for Ministry. He uses Chaim Potok’s books about Jews in America, struggling to keep their faith, as an example for American Christians. (“Chaim Potok’s Wandering Jews, Holding to Faith in a Critical Age,” Plough Quarterly, Autumn 2020.)

Hill writes: “A religiously observant life is less and less accessible or intelligible to modern Westerners, yet many of us remain haunted by its possibility.”

Despite many who leave organized Christianity, others, like Hill, continue in the faith, perhaps in altered form from their childhood.

“Like Potok’s characters,” Hill writes, “I went away to university and experienced something of the wider world beyond the confines of my Baptist, Republican childhood. . . . I am now a member of the Episcopal Church, which, to my childhood eyes, was barely a church at all.”

And so he remains, as do many of us. “. . . “I can’t be the Christian I used to be, but I want sill, very much to be a Christian.”

But isn’t that the story of the Christian church? Over and over again, dying, then finding rebirth as a more humble but risen faith?

Those Who Don’t Know History—

Margaret MacMillan has studied the lessons of world history from the 1930’s to the present. In a sober assessment of our current times. (“Which Past is Prologue?” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020)

MacMillan, a professor of history at Oxford University, writes: “The promise of the 1920’s was cut short by the Great Depression. . . . The result was the growth of extremist parties on both the right and the left.”

Then, she wrote, World War II followed because of “powerful leaders deliberately seeking confrontation.”

U.S. President Trump, MacMillan indicates, is a poor student of history and under him, “the United States has lost much of its moral authority.”

He has renounced arms control, pulled the United States out of the World Health Organization in the midst of a pandemic, flattered dictators, and weakened alliances that have benefitted the U.S. since the end of World War II. He attacks the free press and attempts to demean anyone who criticizes him.

Could his dance with dictators mirror the appeasement of Hitler by world leaders, leading eventually to the war?

At the end of her article, MacMillan writes of leaders at a crossroads: “Wise and brave ones may guide the world through the storms. Let us hope the last group has read some history.”

Of Gods and Men

I recently watched the movie CD Of Gods and Men, in French, with English subtitles. The story is loosely based on the kidnaping in 1996 of eight Cistercian monks by fundamentalists in the north African country of Algeria. The monks had lived as a community, ministering to the people of the area.

Algeria has suffered one of the bloodiest struggles among former countries colonized by European powers. French settlers, some of whom had been there for generations, were forced to leave by native Algerians who wanted their country back.

Early governments after the French expulsion were managed by former Algerian fighters but ended up themselves corrupt. As is often the case, fundamentalist Islamists saw an opening and began a campaign of terror to gain power.

Fear gripped areas where government forces now fought the fundamentalists. The monks attempted to minister to all in need, which included a wounded fundamentalist fighter, brought to them one night. This action made them suspect by the national army forces.

The fundamentalist soldier was later captured by the army and allowed to die, the army soldiers joying at his suffering. The commander of the government forces then brought in the leader of the Cistercians to identify the dead fundamentalist soldier. The monk, named Christian, does so.

Christian prays over the dead fundamentalist. The army leader is angered—angered that sympathy would be shown to this man, who has probably killed and perhaps tortured some of the commander’s men. As the army is now responding in kind. No doubt the commander believes that torture must be met with torture—leading, of course, only to more torture . . .

That scene so poignantly illuminates for me the absurdity of war. One should not show sympathy toward one’s enemy. The only way for war to take place is to inspire hatred for the other.

But, of course, killing and torture, once loose, keep escalating on each side.

Meanwhile, ordinary people, to whom the Cistercians have ministered, suffer the consequences of a reign of terror.

We don’t know exactly what happened to the Cistercians after their capture. Their deaths were announced a couple of months later by an armed Islamist group. Their heads were found three years later, but we don’t know the circumstances in which their deaths took place.

No matter. The examples of those who defy hatred live on after their deaths to inspire us.

The Last Time We Gathered.

I saved a church bulletin from the last time my church gathered physically: March 8, 2020. As I write, it’s now early September.

Did we even begin to know in March that half a year later we would still be meeting by Facebook and Zoom?

We thought perhaps until the end of May—then June. But, no, here we are in the beginning of autumn, school starting—whatever that means anymore—we still don’t feel free to physically gather.

Pastor Noel Van Niel sums up our feelings of loss in “The Church Is Other People” in Plough Quarterly, August, 2020. Talking of the church and ministry, he says “we are primarily in the people business . . . . God is to be experienced more fully in community and connection.”

And so we experience this deep sense of loss: “. . . we are left with a desire that cannot be met. An absence that cannot be filled. A yearning that is perpetual.”

Yet, Van Niel says, we may now better understand “those who live in a perpetual state of longing for what is denied them—peace, justice, equality, safety—all those whose deepest needs remain unmet.”

Perhaps our own unmet needs prepare us “for an even fuller future than we could have imagined before we had to close our doors.”

We wait with faith and longing for the day when we can gather. Not only those of us who, until the pandemic, were free to gather without fear. We also wait with those who have never been able to gather with complete security.

Democracy for Them but Not Us

For decades, the United States has pushed dictatorships to change. We have encouraged nations to accept a democratic form of government—our form, the best kind, we say.

Read a recent U.S. foreign policy statement concerning the country of Belarus. The people there are demonstrating against a dictator who has ruled the country for 26 years. Declares Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, in an official statement (August 10, 2020): “The United States is deeply concerned about the conduct of the August 9 presidential election in Belarus, which was not free and fair. . . . the Government of Belarus must prove through action its commitment to democratic processes and respect for human rights.”

Yet Pompeo used a U.S. government sponsored trip to Israel as the backdrop for a political speech for Donald Trump at the Republican nominating convention. This action was in direct violation of the Hatch Act, which forbids politically appointed government employees from engaging in political activity while on duty.

But, one official said, with surprising honesty: “No one cares about that.”

In times of deep political divisions, temptations to forgo democracy increase. Write Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman: “. . . those who favor a return to earlier boundaries of civic membership and status may be convinced that they must pursue their goals even if democracy is curtailed in the process.” (“The Fragile Republic,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020)

Of course, such fraying of democratic institutions leads those with power to seek to retain that power. Write Mettler and Lieberman: “When government responds primarily to the rich, it transforms itself into an oligarchy, which better protects the interests of the wealthy few.”

That’s a good description of what Belarus and Russia and other countries, momentarily freed from the old Soviet Union, have become.

To have democracy, you have to play by the rules of democracy, even when the temptation is to do otherwise. Even in the United States.

Saving the Churches?

Religion is declining, according to an article in Foreign Affairs (“Giving Up on God; The Global Decline of Religion,” Ronald F. Inglehart).

Among Christians in the United States, church attendance is down. Some churches are closing. Religious schools are cutting staff. Will the Covid-19 pandemic finally sound the death knell on religion, including Christianity?

Inglehart touches on many reasons for religion’s decline including replacement by newer, more inclusive sets of values. He cites “human rights, tolerance of outsiders, environmental protection, gender equality, and freedom of speech.”

Yet, reaching these goals is not a given were religion to become extinct. Plenty of non-religious people fail to practice them.

Perhaps, as G.K. Chesterton is often quoted: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

When we come close to trying Christianity, we may find the results casting doubt on its uselessness or actual harm.

For centuries, the cast down, enslaved, and violated, black Christians found the Christ that their white masters claimed to worship but did not know.

It’s no coincidence that the civil rights movement was led by black preachers. As long as injustices permeate a society, Christianity has the potential to be a worthy opponent.

Religion is not dying. It is reborn in the faith of black churches and all those treated unjustly. They are the ones who revive it.

Will a Russian Bot Steal My Vote?

Stacey Abrams, a black woman, ran for the governor’s office in Georgia in 2018. She lost by less than 55,000 votes.

However, the man who won was Georgia’s secretary of state. He had purged over 300,000 voters from Georgia’s voting rolls, the majority of whom were black.

In an article in Sojourners (“Unafraid to Hope,” Sept/Oct 2020), Abrams writes: “There are nine states where you can lose your right to vote simply because you didn’t use it. When I don’t go hunting on Saturday, no one tells me that I’ve lost my Second Amendment right, so why is it that I can lose my right to vote simply for not using it?”

The Voting Rights Act of 1969 prohibited racial discrimination in voting in the United States. But those who don’t wish certain classes of people to vote never give up.

Knocking people who are registered to vote off the registration lists simply because they missed a vote is one way.

An additional fault line for this year’s presidential election centers on voting by absentee and voting by mail. Wild claims are made about fraud in both cases. It’s alleged that foreign interests will inundate elections with fraudulent ballots.

Fifty states have charge of voting. In addition, the states include over 3,000 counties and local municipalities. In Washington state, I vote by mail in Island County. Ballots are received and counted in this county.

It would be difficult for an enemy, domestic or foreign, to cause much damage to the process itself, given the large numbers of municipalities they would have to deal with, although voting by machines is not as safe as voting by paper ballots.

Voting by mail and/or absentee also means the ballots are available for recounts and close scrutiny.

Yet, in an age of pandemic, some are trying to use the uncertainties of mingling in public places to attack voting by mail and/or absentee.

We should make it extremely hard to win public office by fraudulent means. That includes unfairly manipulating the vote registration process, as well as the vote itself.

Fixing Diplomacy

William J. Burns is one of the most respected retired American diplomats. As a career diplomat, he served in many diplomatic posts, including Moscow. He capped his service by serving as deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush.

In an interview with World Politics Review (June 10, 2020), he acknowledged the damage done to American diplomacy under President Donald Trump but said diplomacy had been adrift “for decades before that.”

Ambassadorial and department administrative posts given to political supporters has grown for several decades, but has increased under Trump.

As the investigation in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine has shown, inexperienced political appointees can cause serious damage to America’s reputation for leadership.

Unfortunately, Burns said, “It’s going to take a lot longer to fix the institutions of American diplomacy than it’s taken to break them.”

What’s been wrong with Trump’s diplomacy is not so much the direction it has taken with, say China. A push back against that country for certain predatory trade practices was justified, Burns said.

Instead of working with allies in that pursuit and in others, however, Trump attempted to go it alone. The president appears disdainful of such alliances and of the diplomatic efforts it takes to maintain those alliances.

Especially because the U.S. is no longer the only dominant player on the world scene, shoring up alliances is more important than ever.

Also, Burns said, the U.S. needs to look at the global problems, like climate change, that don’t relate to a specific country.

Summing up, Burns said, “The essence of employing enlightened self-interest is to see that our interests are going to be best served if we’re disciplined about our engagement overseas; that we can’t retrench entirely, but nor can we restore the role that we held uniquely in that first quarter-century after the end of the Cold War; that we’re going to need, in our own self-interest, to work with allies and partners, and reshape institutions. And that we still, at least as I look at it in the next couple of decades, have a better hand to play than any of our major rivals.”

“Openhanded to the Poor?”

“. . . there should be no poor among you . . . ” the Hebrew leader Moses states in the Christian Old Testament scriptures. (Deuteronomy 15:4 (NIV)).

But, Moses acknowledges, “There will always be poor people in the land.”

That being the case, he says: “Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.”

How were the Hebrews to carry out this command?

One way was debt forgiveness. In Old Testament times, land was the primary means of wealth. You grew crops for your family and sometimes to sell. If you accumulated extra money, you might buy the land of your neighbor and use it to obtain more wealth.

None of this was condemned in itself. However, it was understood that too much wealth could lead to unhealthy power for the wealthy. Ordinary citizens would become completely landless and at the mercy of the rich.

The answer was a year of debt forgiveness after every forty-nine years—the “Year of Jubilee.” Land was to be restored to the original families. The wealthy could accumulate more wealth for a time, but then the means of wealth was to be restored to all.

What are equivalents in modern times?

Suppose a financial recession, caused by dubious mortgage lending practices, wipes out the chief means of savings for many in the middle and working classes, the value of their homes? Lenders could be required to renegotiate mortgages into affordable payments for those affected.

When the price of higher education rises beyond the ability of ordinary families to send their children to college, state and federal governments could tax the more wealthy. The tax would subsidize the cost of higher education. After all, the owners of capital benefit from an educated work force.

When an unexpected medical emergency can send an ordinary family into debt for the rest of their lives, the government might consider an affordable health delivery system in which the chief object is healthy citizens, not millions for big pharma.

Unfortunately the ancient Hebrews failed to follow the practices laid on them. The wealthy began to “trample on the poor,” (Amos 5:11), God sent prophets calling them to change: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24)

When the Hebrews did not heed the warnings of Amos and other prophets, they were conquered by an enemy and went into exile for a season. They lost the land they would not share.

Shadow Network

In her book Shadow Network; Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. Anne Nelson writes in excruciating detail about a naked power play for American followers of Jesus of Nazareth. She writes convincingly of how some of them have been used cynically by an economic-political cabal.

American Christians, as do all Christians, supposedly follow a Jesus who gave his life in love for his followers. He rejected, according to the books and letters written about him, worldly power, riches, or fame. He chose, instead, the much harder path of love and caring and compassion.

Yet, writes Nelson: “. . . I discovered the rapidly evolving ties connecting the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives.”

If democratic practices stood in the way of their desire for power, they would abandon democracy. If they could win by playing unfairly, they would play unfairly.

Voters became objects to be manipulated by masters of computer generated slices of the electorate.

Eventually, leaders were elected who set up a tax system favorable to the rich and who fought attempts at affordable health care.

In a final summing up, Nelson writes: “But the 2016 election clearly demonstrated how the mechanics of democracy could be manipulated to produce antidemocratic results.”

Perhaps in the coming years, American Christians will decide if the Jesus they claim to follow can be trusted on his own teachings—-or, instead, choose the standards of the world that crucified him.

Delay Vote: Hong Kong and US?

Recently, President Donald Trump has suggested delaying the November election in the United States. He tweeted: “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

Trump claims to be concerned about mail-in voting. Could it actually be that he is just afraid he might lose the election if more people vote?

Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State, recently faulted the Hong Kong government for postponing legislative elections scheduled there for September 6. Apparently, China, who influences the government, is afraid the election might not go the way it wishes.

On August 1, Pompeo stated: “The United States condemns the Hong Kong government’s decision to postpone by one year upcoming Legislative Council elections originally scheduled for September 6.”

Something about the pot calling the kettle black?

Avoiding McCarthy

Eric Rubin, president of the American Foreign Service Association, reflected on the impact of the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1940’s and 50’s on U.S. diplomats. (“Foreign Service Duty,” The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020)

During those beginning years of the Cold War, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy led an investigation with unsubstantiated claims into supposed Communist infiltration of the State Department. McCarthy was later censored by the Senate. However, ruined careers from the hearings caused American diplomats to be cautious about their reporting and advice, not wanting to be tarred with accusations of being “soft” on communism and seeing their careers ruined.

Rubin quotes from Theodore White’s book In Search of History: Junior diplomats now “knew that prediction of a Communist victory would be equated with hope for a Communist victory. They learned to temper their dispatches of observation in the field with what their political superiors wished to hear.”

Thus, Americans may not have been warned of the dangers of the later Vietnam quagmire as they should have.

The example is a call, Rubin said, “to stay true to our mission and to tell it like is, in service to our country and to our fellow citizens.”

To do so may indeed require courage, even as the politicization of higher State Department offices and other departments of the government have increased in the last few years.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective