Our Unappreciated Elections

American women were given the right to vote about the time my mother reached maturity. She immediately registered to vote and most likely voted in every national and local election since then as long as she lived. My father also voted regularly, and as far as I know, never attempted to influence my mother’s vote, nor she his. In one presidential election, they voted for different candidates, but I don’t recall any bickering between them.

As civic-minded citizens, they served as poll workers during many elections, providing help with setting up the tables for registering voters and other chores related to turning our school cafeteria into a polling place. Watching them and my neighbors in friendly conversation, I gained an appreciation for the American version of democracy.

Since that time watching those voters in my childhood, I served overseas with the U.S. State Department. Once a citizen of another country who worked with me wanted to see my recently arrived absentee ballot because he was interested in what a ballot in a free election looked like, as he didn’t have the privilege of that kind of election in his country. That’s probably when I actually realized what a privilege we have.

The path to true democratic elections was sullied by some of our history: slavery and later by blacks being refused the right to vote, to name two. A third would be today’s reported threats against elected officials. Nevertheless, most of us still vote easily, even if by mail instead of in person.

One change I’d like is a constitutional amendment abolishing the electoral college and allowing for election by popular vote.

But at least we have a Constitution and the possibility of change.

 

Sabbaths

I was raised in a church-going family—every Sunday, rain or shine, we attended at least two gatherings of our church. We made friends there. As a young person, I spent the greater part of my social life within its activities.

I’m aware that Sunday is no longer part of public consciousness as before, even if one was an atheist. Friday, Saturday, Sunday or whatever holy day the religious favor, all of us more often choose to use that day for other pursuits. We ignore both the larger community and thoughtful contemplation.

But we don’t just forget to rest one day a week—whether sacred or secular resting. We go full stop all seven days of the week. Our stores are open every day.

If religion sometimes led to bigotry and persecution, the secular alternatives are no better. Capitalism can be an efficient way to order our economic activities. When it becomes our god and our religion, it corrupts us. A country ruled by a capitalist cabal, divided into haves and have-nots, is just as harmful as a state ruled by religious fanatics.

The early Hebrews were enjoined not only to keep one day a week for rest and worship but also to proclaim a Year of Jubilee every 49 years. Family property, sold to strangers, now would be given back to the original family. We might call the system compassionate capitalism., capitalism with limits.

Neither Sabbath nor Jubilee was kept as intended.

When the Hebrews finally were carried off into exile, their prophets told them to consider those years of exile as the Sabbaths and the Jubilees they had neglected to keep.

Perhaps those recently passed days when we were kept by Covid from many of our communal activities were a kind of forced rest.

Is Secularism Necessary to Keep the Religious From Killing Each Other?

Did the rise of secularism in the West finally end Europe’s religious wars of the 1600’s?

Today we in democratic nations rejoice when Middle Eastern nations become more secular. Secularism encourages more religious freedom. A strong middle class may develop, influenced by material wealth rather than religious dogma. Nations with secularist trends are not likely to fight religious wars.

On the other hand, secular nations also have produced wars and brutality, as in the First and Second World Wars.

Religion is not necessary for evil to flourish. The desire to eliminate those we don’t like or to make them second class citizens so we can grab their wealth and cheap labor is embedded in our DNA.

The problem with religion is the problem with whatever humans touch. Religion can become a weapon, but so can national pride (Germany in the first half of the twentieth century) or desire for wealth (the invasion of Africa by European nations).

In addition, politicians can manipulate believers through granting special favor to one particular religion. Religious leaders may be tempted to use the power of the state to advance their beliefs, even to force them on others.

The United States was founded as one of the most secular nations in the world. To the astonishment of Europe and its state churches, religion flourished in the former colony.

Unfortunately, as Christianity became more influential, the old temptation to use it for power asserted itself. Though some political leaders certainly practiced a sincere religion, others less honest began to play the religious card to get elected.

Better to earn converts the old-fashioned way. Forget using the government as a tool to bolster your personal religious beliefs. Live your religion so people find it attractive.

“I Hope You Give My Money to Some Nice Country”

That quote came from an older American, years ago, during the height of the cold war. Our foreign aid program was increasing, due to Soviet aggression in eastern Europe and a changing China in Asia. Perhaps our aid could be seen as enlightened self-interest. We were paying for a stronger defense that included nations on the periphery, hoping that our aid might swing the balance our way.

Perhaps much of our foreign policy can be seen as a mixture of self interest and true altruism. Particularly in the years immediately following World War II, altruism was foremost. Remember those old pictures of children waiting for American food drops after the Berlin Wall isolated eastern Germany? People were literally starving as countries suffered from the results of broken trade and bombed out cities.

Perhaps our evolving foreign aid was a step up from the wars Europe was saddled with for centuries, wars for obvious conquest. Still, it’s not always certain which attitude is paramount in our aid. Help for needy populations or one more weapon against our enemies?

Also, what influence in other countries will our colleges and universities continue to have, dependent on the numbers of young foreigners coming for higher education in the United States? We are becoming aware of how much our foreign students have contributed to paying for our schools. Now, less aid to higher education, in the form of halting grants and tax breaks threatens those schools. We have seen some of the most influential medical research in the world coming from scholars, paid for by federal grants. What will happen if such grants are decided by how much deference is given to our political parties?

Political parties and election grandstanding are inevitable. Certainly, public tax money should be subject to review. However, grants that serve obvious public good, such as medical research, need the certainty that public funds will allow continuation in the public good until finished, not subject to political whim.

Searching for “thou”

Somewhere along the language path, English lost thou. That is, we who speak English lost the way to speak to an individual in the second person singular.

We can follow this change in our English versions of the Christian Bible. Early versions, such as the King James version, differentiate between a singular and plural version of “you.” The KJV quotes one of Jesus’ early disciples saying of Jesus: “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God . . ..” The Revised Standard, however, records: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God . . ..” Our modern English no longer differentiates between a familiar you (one person) and a plural you (more than one person.)

Various segments of the English speaking world have ways to mark that plural “you.” In my native Tennessee, I learned to say “you all” if I was addressing more than one person (or the contracted word “y’all.”) To this day, I stumble if I’m addressing more than one person. I may say something like “you folks” to avoid using a simple you to address more than one person. It just doesn’t sound right to me.

I’m more concerned, however, with our growing inability to communicate effectively within our politics. Some of it is regional, divided up into interests according to the general views of where we live: east coast, west coast, Midwest, south, plains, and so on.

Immigration is particularly divisive: how many and where from. We also have different views depending on our political backgrounds, academic standing, economic class, etc.

The idea of people, and not an elite class, ruling a country is, taking in the long sweep of history, still a new invention. Hope comes from insuring that the next free and fair election is guaranteed.

That includes reasonable discussion, dissenting from a majority if one is led that way, and, especially, regard for someone to say that with which I disagree.

Thus, I give thee permission to peaceably disagree with me.

Hunkering Down

Growing up in Middle Tennessee, I remember huddling under the covers of my bed when one of those powerful summer thunderstorms rolled through the area at night, loud flashes and crackling booms waking me from sleep.

My parents, in their bedroom down the hall, seemingly never stirred, but I was terrified of those storms, sure lightening was going to strike the house, immolating us in our beds.
None ever did, but I breathed a sigh of relief when high summer was replaced by a cooler, drier late summer, followed by the welcome colors of autumn.

For a period during that time, stories terrified me of other horrors: nuclear warfare and the possibility that whole continents would be devastated. I remember the silence of the audience as we left “On the Beach,” a movie about the world as a fictional nuclear war destroyed all life except in the far south, Australia and New Zealand, even as radiation slowly made its way there.
Then the Soviet Union vanished. Some nuclear warheads were dismantled. Was it possible that we had dodged the bullet of nuclear annihilation?

But now I again feel at the mercy of forces I have no control over: forces that kill little children in their beds in the Middle East, exploding drones and bombs, shifting safe places that disappear. Alliances and the possibility of peace talks change from day to day. Those in high government offices attend meetings, but fighting goes on.

The South African leader against apartheid, Desmond Tutu, was quoted as saying he was a prisoner of hope. Well to remember, even as white South Africans today are welcomed as immigrants to this country, and darker skinned intending immigrants are turned away.
What gives us hope in this mixed up fun house we now inhabit?

We always have a choice to hope and continue to work, even if we may not see the end of things in our lifetime. We make choices according to our principles. Things have changed and can change again.

Perfection Never Arrives; Better to Look for Wisdom

Waiting for perfection is like the dilemma pictured in Waiting for Godot. Perfection never arrives, like the never–arriving title character in the play.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said, “The insistence on absolutes . . . is a prescription of inaction.”

Waiting for a perfect time to act may mean we miss the best time to act, a time which may never come again. Instead of perfection, better to look for wisdom. Wise leaders who know history can better lead in those imperfect times. Yet, Kissinger complained, we tend to prefer “charismatic leaders over crafty statesmen.”

To prefer charismatic leaders encourages politicians to choose a Hitler, as happened in Germany during the 1930’s. Blaming problems on the threat to a mythical “Aryan” race and espousing a desire for a kind of golden age, led to concentration camps for Jews, confessing Christians, the handicapped, and others considered enemies of this new order.

A perfect leader is a myth. Instead, choose the wisest imperfect leader.

Do I Really Want to Grow Old?

“Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”
–Robert Browning
“Rabbi Ben Ezra”

As one now experiencing growing old, I reread the Browning poem. Should I look forward to old age as he appeared to do? What kind of old age am I likely to have?

My mother’s side of the family exemplified the optimism expressed by the poet. They often lived into their 90’s, typically in good physical and mental health, and also, because of real estate investments in a growing California, with adequate income. My mother spent some of her teen years with them, but returned to Nashville to her birth family to finish high school, eventually marrying my father. She died in her mid nineties, in generally good mental and physical health.

My father’s family members tended to die at younger ages, more often belonging to the working poor, with less access to medical services. My father died suddenly at age 53 of heart problems.

Perhaps I have been the inheritor of my mother’s optimism and my father’s health. No, thankfully, I don’t, so far, have heart problems. I have, however, been given to understand that I can’t be guaranteed that my mental health will be like hers. Indeed, so recent tests indicate, I already am experiencing present memory problems.

Obviously, this discovery is not good news. What do I do with it?

Thankfully, I am, so far, still able to enjoy the activities I’ve always enjoyed: reading, writing stories, walking, church activities, family meals.

I’m a Jesus follower, so I check with how He might lead in a situation like this. He died young, so I don’t have examples of how His actually living in old age would be.

Somebody once asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is. His answer: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37-40.)

How do I do that? Perhaps I begin with developing that inner spiritual life: private time with God, public worship and study with others who seek to grow in His ways.

Then? Serving others? To answer that, I come back to doing what I have done since I made up stories as a three-year-old. Writing stories for others, as much as I’m given time and ability to do this.

Perhaps that will do as a beginning. We’ll see where God leads while I’m able to serve.

Palestinian Christians: The Other Side of the Wall

Munther Isaac is a member of a Christian group that we American evangelical Christians have sometimes ignored. He’s a Palestinian Christian. I’ve recently read his book The Other Side of the Wall, A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope.

When I was a teenager, I was enamored, as were many of my Christian friends, with the movie Exodus. Stars included Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, and Sal Mineo. Included in the plot is the story of the founding of the modern state of Israel, which included many survivors of the Nazi Holocaust attempt to destroy the Jewish race.

That a nation with many Christians allowed the Nazi regime to come to power should warn us of how insidious is sin—including the power of sin to tempt us to categorize any group as “bad” or “good,” instead of taking care to see individuals and avoid the trap of labeling.

I think I came away from that movie, and my later reading of the novel, however, with no nuance about the actual inhabitants of Israel. I didn’t realize that Palestine includes Christian descendants of churches going back to the early days of Christianity, as well as practicing Muslims.

Some Arab extremist groups have committed atrocities against their Jewish neighbors but we commit a further sin if we label all Arabs as members of these groups. Arabs have suffered from Jewish extremists as well. And Arab Christian churches have a long history of perseverance and endurance over many centuries.

The Jewish prophet Jonah had to learn a bitter lesson before he understand that God cared for Nineveh just as much as he cared for Israel.

I invite you to read The Other Side of the Wall, by Munther Isaac. He has also made appearances on various interview shows.

The Neighbor Parable

Story telling is an ancient art. Aesop told parables in long-ago Greece. Various ancient tribes passed down stories around the campfire. For centuries, parents and teachers have encouraged virtues with stories based on moral teachings.

No wonder Jesus taught with parables, a time-honored way to make a point.

A listener once asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus replied that he must first love God with all his heart and secondly love his neighbor as he loved himself.

“And who is my neighbor?” The listener asked.

Jesus then responded with the story about the man known as “The Good Samaritan.” An unfortunate traveler, after an attack by thieves, languished in need of care to save his life. A couple of pillars of the religious and political communities ignored him, passing by and leaving him. He was finally saved by a member of a minority group.

Jesus’ story made several points, of course, as effective parables often do. Those with power and resources sometimes choose to ignore those in need, caught up with growing their own bank accounts, not caring enough to share their resources with those we term “the less fortunate.”

Those in need surely would include children who don’t have enough to eat or proper medical care or adequate education. They would include many adults who work in jobs without health insurance. And surely, if we are to follow Jesus’ example of helping, we would include those who have made poor choices with their lives and end up homeless on our public streets.

Public funds should be adequately monitored to prevent fraud, of course. That anyone in our rich nation lacks food, medical care, and basic housing, however, surely puts us in the category of those who passed by the man who fell among thieves.

It may require tough love for those who have made poor choices—perhaps having them choose between supervision or entering a treatment program after too many public drug offenses. Or perhaps we may find better ways to offer treatment.

The fact that solutions are not easy does not prevent us from tackling the problems. We are called to do so.

Study the Ones Who Don’t Get Into Trouble

Or, to state it more positively, study those who succeed.

We are rightly concerned for the troubled young people who have problems—those who use drugs, those who are troublemakers in school, and those who run away from home and wind up on the streets. Of course, we should be.

Along with these rightful concerns, however, perhaps we could also spend some time studying those who do well in school, those who enjoy healthy friendships, those who show interest in causes outside of themselves. Not just “why did these young people go wrong,” but also “why did these other young people succeed?”

Perhaps we could increase what works along with correcting what doesn’t.

The Great Divide: What Money Can Buy

Someone has suggested that what encourages inequality is not money itself but what money can buy.

They weren’t thinking of material possessions—classy houses or cars or clothes. They meant the non-material possessions—a good education, time to parent one’s children, health care.

My mother worked as an elementary school secretary, home for my brother and me in the afternoons. My father sold insurance and made an adequate income but was more interested in family and community.

Our neighborhood was fairly diverse, including both working and middle classes. The high level of community spirit infused the schools. Motivated teachers generally were caring and academically qualified to start us on the road to learning.

My parents also raised my brother and me with a sense of right and wrong, within their own loving relationship. They provided us a college education, less expensive than today. Our health needs were within my parents’ modest income to provide: regular checkups, medicine if we were ill.

Shouldn’t all parents be able to make a decent living with time to raise their children? And shouldn’t all our children have access to quality education and adequate healthcare? Should we be against public money being spent to insure these blessings to all our children?

It’s in our own interests to do so. These gifts enable children to give back to society when they reach adulthood, not simply struggle to survive or make choices harmful to them and those around them.

Getting What We Deserve

We tend to subscribe to the idea of good things going to those who deserve them. People who earn high salaries should earn them. People who receive charity should be the “deserving poor,” in need only because of a bit of bad luck. Politicians who win elections should be the best qualified.

We know, of course, that it doesn’t always work that way, but we want the rules to favor the deserving as much as we can make them do so.

Many of us, however, did not earn a good many of our blessings.

I did not choose my parents, who loved each other as well as their children, and worked hard to buy and maintain a home for us. That home, wonderful for the love in it, also eventually provided, when it was sold, the financial help my brother and I needed to start toward home ownership ourselves. Even more important, of course, were the good habits instilled by our parents in terms of managing money.

The idea of “no free lunch” has merit in that we should earn our own way, not be dependent on handouts we didn’t work for. However, should little children, having no part of their parents’ lifestyle choices, not have enough to eat or a safe home because of choices they had no part of?

I don’t suppose I have a definite answer to the question of how financial blessings should follow at least some baseline rules, yet that all those who cannot take care of themselves be taken care of.

However, we could ensure that no powerless person is unable to meet basic needs, be they children, adults with physical or mental conditions they had no part in causing, or those struck by momentous events they did not cause.

Jesus Christ did not seem concerned about how deserving were the people he ministered to. Jesus once called a man back to life simply in pity for the man’s bereft mother, a widow. He also healed a Roman centurion’s beloved servant, even though the Romans were overlords of Jesus’ people. Once, on the way to heal a religious official’s little daughter, he stopped to assure healing to a sick woman accidentally placed in his way.

And, as another example, our public school systems are ones we generally desire, without thinking about it, to benefit all children, those of the undeserving as well as the deserving.
The idea is not to sanction public money ripped off by the undeserving. It is, as much as possible, to see that a country as blessed as is this one, will provide all with certain minimum care and possibilities.

And we can all support private groups, including our religious communities, known for providing hope and care to “the less fortunate.”

“I Wish For You a Most Successful Administration”

These words were written to Franklin D. Roosevelt by Herbert Hoover on Roosevelt’s overwhelming win over Hoover in the 1932 presidential election. The country was experiencing the Great Depression, when unemployment was over 20 percent, one of the highest in U.S. history. One might have thought Hoover would have been somewhat bitter over his loss. Yet he reacted as most losing candidates in the United States are expected to do. He congratulated his opponent and wished him a successful time in office.

Indeed, that’s what Biden did on losing to Donald Trump in 2024: “President Biden expressed his commitment to ensuring a smooth transition and emphasized the importance of working to bring the country together,” the White House said.

Yet after Biden’s win in 2020, Trump was quoted as saying, about Biden’s win: “He won because the election was rigged,” even though evidence indicated the election was fair and Biden’s win uncontroversial.

Strife and controversy appear to have overtaken much of our government lately. After the latest election, government workers have been fired and are supposed to stay away from their jobs. No, they haven’t been fired and are supposed to report to work. But if they try to obey and come to work, can they get in? Are the offices open? What part will an unelected Elon Musk play? Court cases have begun in an attempt to sort out the mess, but that will certainly take time.

Meanwhile, much of our foreign policy appears to be on hold. What about Ukraine? What about the Israeli/Palestinian fighting? What about tariffs? Canada does not appear amused about suggestions that they become a part of the United States and have strengthened their ties to Europe, not the U.S. What about the Panama Canal?

It’s hard to be optimistic that Congress might offer help, since the Republicans barely have a majority and would have difficulty even being united themselves. The Supreme Court appears slightly more unified than in the past, but court cases also take time.

The only thing I can think of is prayer for healing from anger and hatred and pride.

Rootless Times

According to an article in The Economist (“Gen Z has faith,” March 1st 2025, p. 22) “a long decline in the number of Christians has levelled off.” The article says the slight increase in Christians is found among Gen Z’ers, now entering or into their twenties.

Perhaps the Covid-19 epidemic contributed to the modest change, although Covid-19 is more likely to carry off older people than younger ones. Just the fact of a greater chance of dying, however, might be more unsettling to the young than to the old, who may be more likely to have accepted their ultimate mortality.

Perhaps the unsettled political times have contributed. Aging American presidents may give younger voters less faith in our political systems. Political alignments also are shifting all over the world. The United States is no longer as popular and perhaps doesn’t appear to be as firmly committed to political freedom for all as in the past.

Also threatened are the possibility of change through education and a job market seemingly made for bright young people, now becoming chaotic. Elections sometimes lead to power for unelected titans. Elon Musk appears to be a very powerful person, despite holding no elected office.

Perhaps the fact that more people, including younger ones, lack committed family ties is taking a toll. The drug epidemic surely is harder to avoid when one has fewer emotional supporters.

The Christian faith has gone through multiple lows, especially following periods of prosperity and geographical change. Yet, it has usually not only survived, but found new ways of ministering, finding in its namesake such values as purpose, meaning, and care for others.

The teachings of a genuine moral leader who not only lived but died for his teachings, summed up in “love God with all your being and your neighbor as yourself,” perhaps is simple enough to inspire in an age betrayed by the worship of technical toys.

Early and Late Bloomers

In the play 1776 (later made into a movie), John Adams and Ben Franklin visit Thomas Jefferson, who is struggling to compose a declaration of independence for the proposed new nation. Adams and Franklin inspect the writing.

“This is awful, Tom,” one of them says. He reads a part of it. It sounds like something a grade school child might compose. Eventually, after Jefferson spends time with his wife, whom he has missed terribly in Philadelphia, he writes the Declaration of Independence that we know today.

Sometimes my writing reads like this fictional Jefferson’s first efforts with the Declaration. Really awful. About as able to move the reader as a nursery rhyme. No, a nursery rhyme is better.

I hate the first writing of a novel. It’s forced, and I don’t know what I’m doing.

I love editing and rewriting. That when I experience the high of writing that moves me. I begin to know what it’s about.

This understanding applies to other parts of our lives as well, and not only for writers. Some of us run well right out of the gate. Others of us have to prod ourselves to keep going until, finally, we find our pace and our joy.

Hints Followed by Guesses

“. . .These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.”

(From T.S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages”

It seems several of earth’s lifetimes must have happened between 1990, the year I joined the U.S. Foreign Service, and today. The early 1990’s were an exciting watershed. The Soviet Union fell apart, and it seemed the old Cold War had ended without the devastating world war all feared. East and West Germany unified. The Berlin Wall between East and West Germany was destroyed, and tourists grabbed pieces to take home. The Baltic countries declared their independence.
Iraq invaded Kuwait, but the invasion would lead to the Gulf War the next year, with the U.S. and its allies sending troops to defeat Iraq.
In South Africa, Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
China was coming out of the destruction following the Tiananmen Square protests.
Democratic values, it seemed, had triumphed world wide.
In the technical world, though, technical advances would soon overturn our ordinary lives. The internet was on the horizon.
What happened as tech and the rest of the country overcame those bright beginnings?
Even as the world appeared militarily safer in the decades following, it seemed that in the U.S., people and their government became more and more divided between political parties and beliefs, leading to a deeply divided country.
Politically, we seem now to have found our way to chaos. Government agencies mandated by Congress fall at the drop of a hat—especially Elon Musk’s hat.
In these pessimistic days, it seems impossible that any sort of spiritual discipline could break out. Indeed, religious disciplines seem abandoned by more and more Americans, only a few practicing active religion these days.
But could those “dry salvages” or cargoes surprise? Is this salvage, a name for something preserved, waiting somewhere to be discovered?

Too Rich to Care?

Maybe we grew too rich to care. That is, enough of us became too rich to care. That is, to care for the less well off—in our town, in our country, in our world. Anybody walking down an urban American street may understand that plenty of people need help.

Our drug addicts need help. Who desires to be addicted to drugs or see their loved ones become addicted? Yet, in one of the richest countries in the world, we were unable to overcome the forces that decreased the ability to stay off drugs. We’ve heard a lot about stopping drugs from coming in—but if more of us had a purpose in life that involved contributing to society, we might never consider something like drugs, including alcohol.

When we gave the rich more ways to opt out of paying income taxes, we had less money to fund social security or deal with our ever increasing national debt. Or indeed, to fund programs to help addicts kick drug habits.

We also desire both less immigrants and less children. While our birth rate drops, we build walls to keep out migrants who could help make up for our decreasing births. That means, of course, less taxpayers for our increasingly elderly population—or to fund our military or programs to help recovering addicts.

We have increasingly seen our government as set up to help those who already have plenty to grab more. Eventually, though, those who don’t have, will outnumber those who do.

After the Second World War, our country was blessed with a flood of immigrants from countries devastated by that war. They worked in our factories—and also consumed the goods from those factories, contributing to a rising standard of living.

Immigration needs to be controlled, removed from the hands of traffickers, but immigration itself is an asset. It means growth, not only physically, but in new ideas and art as well as new workers and consumers. If we close off immigration entirely and see it as a curse to be overcome, we will die from a lack of growth in ideas as well as people.

We Need Immigrants

The United States, like many developed nations today, is facing population decline within its native born population. Fortunately, lots of people would like to immigrate here. Many of them have skills we need, such as nursing skills for an aging population and agricultural workers for our farms. Some have computer and other skills for higher level jobs.

Meanwhile, paths for legal immigration are narrow. The desire to immigrate, with no meaningful legal line to join for many, feeds irregular migration, leading to its control by gangs and sometimes drug dealers.

“States that focus on border restrictions, mass deportations, or the abrogation of legal protections for asylum seekers will fail to solve the problem. They will simply redirect it while creating a new host of problems that will, in the long term, feed the problem rather than solve it. They will empower criminal networks and black markets while leaving their own economies worse off. The system will continue to decay.” (“Migration Can Work for All; A plan for Replacing a Broken Global System,” Amy Pope, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2025.)

Our current system feeds irregular migration, as family members migrate irregularly to stay with those already in the U.S. “That so many migrants who are undocumented find jobs in the informal markets of their destination countries signals an imbalance between legal immigration pathways and economic need . . .”

The author suggests one approach is for countries with labor shortages, such as the United States, to set up programs within the refugee sending countries to train would be immigrants for jobs needed in the receiving country. This would include preparing them for legal migration.

If reasonable pathways to migration are in place, countries will have more justification for shutting down the illegal ones. The idea is not to stop migration but to channel it, then work to shut down illegal migration traffic.

Migration from places with less possibility for improving one’s life to ones of greater possibility has been the norm since civilization began. Better to work with it for good.

Never Taking Free and Fair Elections for Granted

My mother was born in 1900 in Nashville, Tennessee. At that time, neither her mother, nor any other woman, could vote in national elections. Women gained that right when the Nineteenth Amendment to the constitution went into effect in August, 1920. Earlier that year, Tennessee had cast the 36th vote for its passage, the number needed for ratification. Overnight, the number of voters increased dramatically, by about eight million, as women took advantage of their new privilege.

As far as I know, my mother regularly cast a vote in every election for which she was eligible from that time on. That included voting all four times for Franklin Roosevelt. My father did also, but they split on the Eisenhower/Stevenson election. (Mom went for Stevenson, Dad for Eisenhower.) They peacefully accepted their political differences. I remember political discussions in our household as interesting exchanges of ideas, including ones about local elections. That is probably why I’ve voted in every election for which I’ve been eligible, including several times when I lived in non-democratic countries, by absentee ballot.

Tennessee, a “border” state, could certainly produce some interesting elections, such as the one in which Lamar Alexander defeated Ray Blanton. Blanton is remembered as the one who began releasing felons from prison, for cash, just before he was due to leave the governor’s office. As I remember, both Democrats and Republicans cooperated in an early, unannounced swearing in of Alexander, effectively preventing Blanton from releasing more felons. I stood on the steps of the Tennessee capitol with a huge crowd as Alexander later took the public oath of office.

Recently, serious allegations about the influence of unelected advisors on President Trump are causing controversy. Practices once considered sacrosanct, such as birthright citizenship, also are being questioned. Migrants, our positions on Israel/Palestine, and our support for Ukraine against Russia are other areas of contention.

“A republic if you can keep it” is the legendary answer Benjamin Franklin gave to one who asked “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” following the 1787 constitutional convention, setting up the beginning government for the American states.

Democracy is a blessing but never cheap or easy or guaranteed.