First principles 3.0?

I, Johan, "Mr. Dignity and Decorum," a.k.a. "your favorite blogger," am starting this EXCELLENT post with a confession:

I read the "Newsom University" post from California governor Gavin Newsom's press office via x.com, and was unable to suppress AUDIBLE MIRTH.

Two days ago, I had a chance to hear Howard Macy read his draft chapter on "Blessing Enemies" from his forthcoming book with the working title Living to Bless. This chapter of his book is based on Matthew 5:43-48, but not only: Howard traces the "love your enemies" theme throughout the Hebrew and Christian Bible.

Howard's full chapter is a compelling lesson in why and how we bless our enemies, while not denying the dangers they may pose. Here's the challenge for me: its teachings can be applied to our fractured world this very day, if we're willing. 

For example: Shouldn't we find ways to bless those in our own government and society who have apparently abandoned the constitutional mission to "... secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves [that is, "We the people"] and our posterity..."? Some of the people I'm referring to, and daring to classify as "enemies," engage in what's been called "gleeful cruelty"—the very opposite of blessing—and that public glee provokes in me (and apparently in Newsom's office) an almost irresistible temptation to RESPOND IN KIND.

Another case study: Among many other current calamities, we have the reality of Afghanistan, a nation whose Taliban leadership has gone out of its way to alienate much of the planet, is now in great need of assistance for the casualties of this week's earthquake. In so many places, the command to love enemies and bless those who harass us has immediate application.

In Howard's words,

Don’t answer in kind. Don’t make personal attacks, either directly or indirectly. Telling others about how rotten your enemy is seems like revenge. As does name-calling, even in your own thinking, since it keeps hurt and anger fresh. Certainly be careful with humor since, especially in our time, it is too often used to embarrass or demean. Importantly, living in love and blessing also frees us from the damage to ourselves that enduring bitterness and anger invite.

—Howard Macy, Living to Bless, chapter 8, "Blessing Enemies." Italics are mine.

Awkwardly enough for mirthful me, I've written something consistent with this on my own blog. Here is one of the "first principles" I republished upon Donald Trump's November 2024 electoral victory:

3. Resist the degradation of civil discourse. Do not use condescending mockery of anyone, or of their diets, appearance, or class origins. Don't mock their faith communities, although it's perfectly fair to propose contradictions between their publicly-proclaimed faith and their behaviors or policies.

Are those first principles adequate in an era of mutual trolling and unrestrained satire?

Another commentator, Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf in Berlin, is thinking along similar lines, but his specific concern is misuse of the label "fascist":

The ‘fight against the right’ is often portrayed by the left as a matter of life or death, as democracy versus fascism: if the fight is lost, then it would spell the end of democracy and fascism would reign again. That was the stark warning published in a global manifesto signed by 400 intellectuals.

But does this framing actually work? Will it help to defend democracy and win back lost voters? Probably not. In fact, it may do more harm than good. [See full article.]
...
In short, the best tool to defend democracy is open, calm debate rather than fear-driven fascism framing. We should specifically illustrate successes as well as the problems and dangers. Above all, extremists need to be included in these debates.

In the face of all this dignity and decency, however, Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi points out:

Newsom has grasped what so many other Democrats are loth to admit: you can’t keep playing by the same old rules when the other side has ripped up the rulebook.

A generation ago, George Lakoff was advising us not to let the opposition frame the argument; perhaps the use of salty satire helps break their frame? Or maybe there are two streams of rhetoric that should not be confused, because they're for different audiences:

• Honest (i.e., non-manipulative) rage and outrage linked to the violation of the standards we thought ought to prevail by virtue of our common citizenship and founding values: rule of law, due process, separation of powers, and government of, by, and for the people. Are we not to make our distress clear, and assure others that we are seeing the same crazy things they're seeing? Don't we need some of that righteous anger to fuel our efforts to get out on the street and prevent or at least witness the ICE dragnets?
• Direct expression, in our own diverse voices, of the values we uphold and intend to defend, and their Scriptural and civilizational bases, and our curiosity at what motivates our opponents to abandon those values. Doesn't our shared humanity, our commitment to "regard" others as we regard Christ, require us to make that effort, to express that curiosity, and to learn from them why they don't apparently see the need for mutual blessings?

But can we truly avoid confusing these two tracks? The danger with the first track, shared rage and distress, in its full range of expression (such as Newcom's trolling) is that it can fool us into thinking we can stop there—that outrage and mocking and mimicking the worst behavior of our opponents, somehow constitute positive resistance and activism, simply because we have the short-term pleasure of feeling like we've struck a blow for righteousness. Worse: for the sake of that gratification, we've reinforced the very alienation that got us into this mess in the first place.

What do you think? Where is the balance for you, if "balance" is even a valid goal? In our era of gleeful cruelty and mutual trolling, how do you handle honest distress without getting frozen into an "enemy" mentality?

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

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Related:

Tom Nichols: Gavin Newsom's parodies are riling people up....

Margaret Sullivan: Two can play at that game.

Regarding, part four: Closer to home.

The Beatitudes and Resisting Evil: this is a sermon by Becky Ankeny that has the same direct application as Howard Macy's chapters. After recounting a bloody period of Burundi's history, she continues,

You can see why I’m jumpy today about current events. I think about various possible scenarios and what I can or should do.  Maybe you folks do, too. So today, we will look at two of the Beatitudes, bearing in mind that Jesus spoke to an occupied people, ruled by the Roman emperor and his governors, and locally oppressed by the military. Any rebelliousness was mercilessly put down and the rebels crucified. Therefore, I believe these Beatitudes can help us negotiate our way through our realities.  

Matthew 5:6-7

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. 

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

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If you're in or near Bremerton, Washington, this Sunday, the Bremerton Friends Worship Group is meeting.

It's church coffee hour ... what's an introvert to do? (Review of Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture by Adam S. McHugh.)

This uncomfortable thought occurs whenever I catch myself plotting Sunday morning escape routes. Aren’t church gatherings supposed to offer a foretaste of heaven? McHugh might reply with reasonable alternatives to self-reproach: Perhaps, after worship, most introverts prefer holy silence, quiet prayer, or deeper dialogue to shooting the breeze in a noisy foyer.

Yet my own inward journeys of reflection suggest a less flattering answer: I don’t always love God’s people as I should. I treat them as roadblocks to reading books or watching Sunday afternoon football. 

Yair Rosenberg on the MAGA influencers rehabilitating Hitler.

How serious was the GPS outage that may have affected the EC's president Ursula von der Leyen's landing in Plovdiv, Bulgaria? Or is this a case of some of us wanting to believe the worst?

Nancy Thomas thought about simplicity and integrity while shredding paper.

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Once again in honor of the late Leonardo "Flaco" Jiménez... The Texas Tornados' version of "96 Tears."

More occupation shorts

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement-branded GMC SUV, left, and an ICE-branded Ford pickup are parked at the Capitol on Aug. 13. [Note the "DEFEND THE HOMELAND" tagline.] (Andrew Leyden/Getty Images via Washington Post; trimmed.)

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I'm sure you have more and better sources than this blog to keep up with the chronicle of malice, corruption, and ineptitude that is the USA's current presidential administration. But every once in a while, I want to note, for the record, how utterly bizarre it all is. And it's not just bizarre exhibitionism—you already know that real people are in constant danger, whether they are immigrants and children of immigrants, or targets of Russian guided bombs and drones, or in need of food, health care, shelter, and a safe environment. I'm not even counting those who had once experienced American care through USAID before being cut off by MAGA fiat.

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For me, today's trigger (not the most serious piece of news, but maybe the most ... spiritually symptomatic?) ... was this article in the Washington Post, concerning an urgent government purchase:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking to spend millions of dollars on SUVs and custom, gold-detailed vehicle wraps emblazoned with the words “DEFEND THE HOMELAND,” according to a contractor’s social media post and records that describe the decked-out fleet as urgently needed in President Donald Trump’s stated mission to improve safety on the streets of the District.

Screenshot from a Homeland Security video on X.

As the article notes, these purchases and decoration orders are not being made through competitive bids. But what really triggered my "occupation" nerves was the following detail. In addition to the vehicles for use in D.C., some specific purchases were made to enhance the image of ICE for recruitment purposes. Here's a quote from the end of the article:

The vehicles the agency proposed purchasing include two Ford Raptors, two GMC Yukon AT4s and two Ford Mustang GTs. ICE wrote in the documents that the Mustangs were “an immediate request by the White House, on Thursday August 7, 2025.” The Mustangs — which are set to cost $121,450 — will aid in recruitment “by serving as a bold, high-performance symbol of innovation, strength and modern federal service,” the documents say.

It all reminded me of the connections Kristin Du Mez has been making for years. For example:

My own research on masculinity focuses on just one facet of the evangelical worldview—but a foundational one. In many ways, gender provides the glue that holds together their larger ideological framework. For years I’ve been tracing evangelicals’ embrace of increasingly militaristic constructions of masculinity, which go hand in hand with visions of the nation as vulnerable and in need of defense.

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Earlier this year, I wrote a couple of posts about the Christian movement that is animating much of MAGA leadership: Are we agents of Lucifer? and Enthusiasm and politics.

Given the depth of religious enthusiasm displayed by these apostles and prophets, I can't help wondering whether they pray for the people they're arresting, deporting, and rendering with wild abandon. I tried putting variously worded questions to Google, along the lines of "Do dominionists pray for the people they arrest?" " Do MAGA Christians pray for immigrants?" Google's AI provides the vaguest of answers, mostly "it depends," with no examples.

I used the specific name of Sean Feucht with one of these questions, and found his prayer for Los Angeles on Facebook, with a fascinating string of comments. One specific prayer struck me right away, but it wasn't Sean's:

We pray God that your mercy comes upon those suffering from massive deportation and family separation, even though they have done nothing deserving of deportation. May your grace touch the hearts of those encouraging hate against immigrants, and turn them into a loving and caring heart....

Google also told me that Feucht has worked on behalf of refugees in the past, so this evident militancy may be part of his more recent MAGA profile.

Signe Wilkinson.

In any case, "What does the Bible say about refugees and immigrants?" The Bible makes no distinction based on what documents the immigrant is holding, but just in case that is the issue, the awkward truth is that Congress has been resisting immigration reform and providing adequate judicial resources for immigrants and asylum seekers for years—not just under Trump.

(One specific border-crossing incident in the Bible fascinates me: the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus. See Matthew 2:1-12. They came from abroad to follow the star to Bethlehem, and then defied King Herod by returning home without reporting to him.)

Finally, our Christian MAGA politicians should take note that many (most?) of those being arrested, deported, or rendered may be their Christian brothers and sisters. N.B. When Christians abuse power and mistreat non-Christians, it is just as awful as mistreatment of Christians! Maybe worse, since its gleeful and gratuitous cruelty compromises the reputation of the Gospel. Be warned!

See John Woolman's Journal, page 128. (Click link to chapter XII in table of contents.)

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Under occupation

Occupation shorts

Occupation: Myrtle Wright's experience

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Christian refugees caught in the crosshairs of U.S. immigration policy.

Litigation Tracker. When I mentioned this resource back in February, it was tracking 37 cases against Trump administration actions. Now it's tracking 381.

Judge Fred Biery rules against the Texas Ten Commandments law. (A side note: why aren't these Christian activists campaigning for the Beatitudes? Is it their deep interfaith sensitivity?)

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Is there a religious resurgence among members of Gen Z? Data may actually show a growing divergence between men and women.

George Orwell's son writes about his parents' collaboration on Animal Farm, and on why they had a hard time finding a publisher. (Anna Funder's fascinating book Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life may add some less flattering details to the picture of Orwell as husband and collaborator.)

What a small church in North Carolina did with its real estate, to the possible benefit of affordable housing in its area.

Nancy Thomas remembers an extraordinary, even life-shaping, vision.

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Kid Ramos with two late greats, Henry Gray and Lynwood Slim.

(Re)learning my mother tongue

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My first passport.

For me, a former language teacher, there's nothing more humbling than studying a language I thought I already knew.

Family lore says that I spoke three languages before kindergarten: Norwegian, German, and English. In my birth home, Oslo, in my father's parents' home, I was surrounded by Norwegian. Then I lived with my German grandparents in Stuttgart, and German came naturally. During my English-speaking growing-up years in the Chicago area, I often returned to both sets of grandparents and the languages of my earliest years.

Roughly seven decades later, I don't have the same level of confidence at all with those first two languages. So now, long after my language-learning window has closed, neurologically speaking, I'm determined to get some of that confidence back. At least in Norwegian.

Well, I do have a head start, a passive knowledge of probably several hundred words. (Just for context, and humility ... according to Google, the average English speaker knows 20-40,000 words, and even a five-year old might know 5,000!)

Continuing the theme of head start and humility, a whole bunch of those several hundred words are cognates or near-cognates:

• a ball - en ball
• a bank - en bank
• a boat - en båt 
• a book - ei bok
• a bush - en busk 
• a cake - ei kake 
• a cat - ei katt 
• a clock - en klokke
• a cow - ei ku
• a daughter - ei datter 
• a day - en dag 
• a door - ei dør 
• a fish - en fisk
• a flag - et flagg
• a garage - et garasje 
• a glass - et glass 
• a goat - ei geit 
• a hammer - en hammer 
• a house - et hus  
• a night - en natt 
• a plant - en plante 
• a sea - en sjø 
• a ship - et skip
• a son - en sønn
• a tree - et tre 
• a window - et vindu 
• grass - gress 
• paper - papir

Almost as close:

• an airplane - et fly
• a brother - en bror
• a dog - en hund (compare English hound)
• an enemy - en fiende (compare English fiend)
• a father - en far
• a horse - en hest
• a place - et sted (as in English bedstead, homestead, instead of)
• a morning - en morgen
• a mother - ei mor
• a shirt - en skjorte
• a sister - ei søster
• a skirt - et skjørt
• a stone - en stein 
• a word - et ord
• environment - miljø (compare with milieu)
• food - mat (compare with English meat, which once meant food in general)
• hi! - hei!
• goodbye! - adjø! (compare French adieu!)

See how much Norwegian you and I already know?! And don't those words sound sort of like an echo of an ancient form of English? Thanks to Bnorsk.no for many of these examples and many other cognates (verbs, adjectives, etc.) you can find there.

My head start only goes so far; it disappears when I start dealing with a noun's gender. Some Norwegians divide all nouns into two genders, common and neuter. But others prefer to observe the division of common nouns into masculine with the indefinite article "en" (a son - en sønn) or feminine with the indefinite article "ei" (a book - ei bok). In any case, I need to learn the noun's article along with the noun.

To compensate, Norwegian verbs don't conjugate according to subject or pronoun. Whew!

I'm delicately skipping over the subjects of pronunciation and tonality.

I have two different ways of working with my remnant of passive Norwegian. I read textbooks of varying difficulty (such as the three pictured above) and Web sites such as ntnu.edu/now; I enjoy the little bursts of pleasure that I get when I realize that I understand the texts, either by knowing the full words or by recognizing the root words and the word-units in compound words, allowing me to guess their meanings. Context helps, too; I'm more likely to understand political and theological texts than, for example, poetry. It's fun to pick and choose among the various methods and levels of those different resources rather than just sticking to one of them.

This works for increasing my reading and vocabulary abilities. However, I need more help with listening comprehension (this is the area we focused on when we lived in Russia, teaching English) and much more help in speaking. For that, I abandon all pretense of being an advanced learner, and drill myself in the very basics, using Duolingo. I patiently work through exercise after exercise of speaking into the microphone when so instructed, patiently constructing sentences with the right word order, and reviewing my mistakes. Note to self: the word "my" comes after that noun that is mine.

My grandmother Gerd Jakobsen Maurer. Above her,
my great-great grandfather Johan Fredrik Maurer.

There's a practical side to this activity, aside from the alleged benefit in preventing or postponing Alzheimer's disease: in a month I plan to be attending the combined Nordic Yearly Meeting in Stavanger, Norway. It will serve as an exam of sorts, and already serves as powerful motivation. 

But the best part of these efforts is the way I feel reconnected to my fascinating and very literate grandmother, with whom I spent many hours in conversation from my first years until her death in 1988.

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The photo of my grandmother comes from this post back in 2005. I still see her and my grandfather in my dreams ... where they're usually speaking English, which they both spoke very well.

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Another advantage of immersing myself in relearning a language: a respite from the day's news.

There's no respite in Ukraine.

Timothy Snyder on the reasons he moved to Toronto last year (and things that were not reasons).

Walter Brueggemann died today. The news and the legacy. Rest in peace!

Michael Marsh invites us to think about our deathbed prayer. (Not a morbid post at all.)

Britain Yearly Meeting's 2025 epistle ... "We are reminded that the central message of the New Testament is one of love." Good, I think so, too, but Mark Russ has a caution.

Three more days to register for the annual sessions of Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends. Location: Reedwood Friends Church, across the street from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. (Online attendance is possible for the main sessions and some of the workshops.)

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Austin John, "Long Distance Call." (The whole set is excellent.)

Patriotism revisited

A 2023 USA naturalization ceremony. Source.

It is my intention in good faith to become a citizen of the United States and to renounce absolutely and entirely all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which at this time I am a subject or citizen.

I am, and have been during all of the periods required by law, a person of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.

—Extracts from the naturalization petition form used at the time my parents became U.S. citizens.

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Last week I wrote about the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and how postwar migrations and displacements brought my parents to the USA, where they met as university students. About five years after their arrivals as students, they became U.S. citizens.

I've been thinking again about the theme of patriotism, which has fascinated me both as a patriot (at least to my mind!) and as a Christian political scientist and pacifist. I noted the language in the naturalization petitions submitted by both of my parents, renouncing all other allegiances and claiming to be "attached to the principles of the Constitution" and "well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States."

As a legal standard that would-be U.S. citizens must meet, these promises seem to me to form a defensible definition of patriotism. Note that there is no requirement to agree that the USA is a better, superior, grander, more perfect country than any other on the planet.

1953 Chevy. Screenshot from source.

General Motors begged to differ, in an advertising jingle I remember from childhood:

See the USA in your Chevrolet.
America is asking you to call.
Drive your Chevrolet through the USA.
America's the greatest land of all.

Of course the USA is not the only country in the world whose citizens, or at least some of them, believe they live in "the greatest land of all." And, they might even be able to explain why they believe this. In the case of the USA, my idealistic preferred explanation to justify claims of the USA's greatness is John Gunther's famous line that the USA is "a country deliberately founded on a good idea"—an idea whose most succinct expression might be the first three words of the U.S. Constitution: "We the people...."

As an aspiration it is powerful, and it's part of our notorious American exceptionalism, but in these fractious times, are "we" still "we"? And as for "the people," is our government still, in Abraham Lincoln's words, "of the people, by the people, for the people"?

One thing seems clear to me about American patriotism. If it becomes detached from that "good idea," then it degrades into cultish compulsory slogans, chiefly useful for attacking one's political enemies.

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Back in 2012, while I was reading Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands, I wrote a blog post with this question: What can Christians do to inoculate our nations against murderous and cultish forms of patriotism?

To me, the only healthy patriotism is functional, not mythological or tribal or cultic or anything involving ultimate loyalties that only God can claim. Functional patriotism treasures the mutual obligations of a nation's citizens, and gives us an investment in each other's success—not our own private aggrandizement. Functional patriotism promotes intelligent statecraft on the international stage, and the building up of institutions that promote trade and communication and prevent war. Functional patriotism encourages young people and newcomers to cherish the languages and cultures that we have the honor to host within our borders. Functional patriotism asks leaders to be as patriotic in deeds and sacrifice as those leaders want the rest of us to be. And functional patriotism understand that nations and empires come and go; they learn to recognize the limits that sustainability imposes so that the good things we stand for can last, and so the planet will flourish under our stewardship, not shrug us off on account of our abuse.

I'd love to think that we Christians can counter the blasphemies of cultic patriotism with the ethics of biblical discipleship and a style of participation that proclaims God's grace rather than our demands for privilege.

Here are some of my other blog posts on these themes.

On the roots of the USA's "City on a Hill" exceptionalism, and John Winthrop's "biblical modesty": Exceptional pride.
On being a "grateful immigrant": An immigrant/patriot revisits January 6.
On safety ... for whom? Safety and "the nature of the world in which we live."

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The last chapter of Clarence White's new book, I Changed My Mind About..., has a thoughtful chapter on what Christians' relationship to their country should be. Excerpt (with Clarence's permission):

Most people in this country who attend a church never struggle with the question of what the relation of a Christian to their country should be. This is a rich area to think about, and has its own constellation of tributary issues.

For most of my young life I did not question this either, until I went to seminary. As I learned to think theologically, my understanding of what is involved in this issue began to profoundly change. That change has made me an outlier among even my friends. Even people who respect me personally and theologically have trouble with my thinking in this area.

The shift in my thinking is connected to the change in my thinking about war, as I outlined in chapter 5 of this book. When I had the life-changing experience of having my eves opened about Christian non-violence as I sat in a Mexican restaurant with Professor Wil Cooper, it was probably a natural development from that experience that my thinking about how a Christian should relate to his or her nation would also evolve.

To me, the issue is the Lordship of Jesus Christ. When Wil Cooper told me our job is not to calculate contingencies of what may happen if we do or do not use force, but rather our task is to simply do what Jesus said to do in the Sermon on the Mount, I knew immediately in a profound way that Wil was right. As I have written, that shook me like nothing ever had in my life up to that point, and the vision of that has never waned in the subsequent 42 years. I was tremendously shaken, and 42 years later I have been completely unable to shake myself loose from the impact of this imperative.

For the rest of the chapter, see Clarence's blog, Ramblings of a Retired Theologian. The full book will be published June 1; the Kindle version is already available.

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Director Robin Truesdale has made her excellent film Sweet Home Monteverde (my review here) available on YouTube:

The Russian Federation's "root causes" for the invasion of Ukraine.

For Putin and his regime, Ukraine’s democracy, its aspirations for EU and NATO membership, and its cultural independence represent an existential threat to the authoritarian model they have constructed. Ukraine’s success would demonstrate to Russians that a different, more democratic future is also possible for them, a prospect the Kremlin finds intolerable.

Two recent posts from the Daily Quaker Message: Ukrainian Quakers React to the War and Conscientious Objectors in Japan.

A useful overview of Friends Peace Teams, prepared for the annual meeting of Friends World Committee for Consultation, Europe and Middle East Section. (I serve on the Europe and Middle East team of Friends Peace Teams.)

Nathan Perrin on community and legacy vs isolation and chaos.

One of the valuable lessons we can take from both Mennonites and Sámi is that legacies that go on are the ones that are communal in nature. The communities that survive are the ones that dare to remember and, even more surprising, dare to celebrate. They have both lived through centuries of persecution through intentional love and service.

U.S. democracy continues to decompose daily before our eyes. Heather Cox Richardson. The Contrarian.

Wess Daniels on empires, good shepherds, refugees, and the Gospel of John, chapter ten.

Has the "Global Aid Industry," for better or worse, come to an end? 

Nancy Thomas and a harvest of poems from Psalm 119.

“Open my eyes that I may see….” Psalm 119:18, GIMEL

Open my eyes, Lord,
when the Bible gets boring.
When familiarity stiffens my brain cells
and my heart feels paralyzed;
when legality repulses
and the light grows dim,
open my eyes, Lord.

I am a stranger on earth,
an alien among ordinary people,
an imposter in church—
unsanctified, blind
and mostly silent.
How will your commands bind my wounds?
Will they bring me
to the place where I can say,
Your statutes are my delight!?

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A great place to be: Nathan James and the late James Harman at the Blues City Deli.

Love, theoretically

Source.  

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FCNL via Facebook

friendsincubator.org

fwcc.world

Three of the gospels tell the story of the rich man who asked Jesus what he (the questioner) needed to do to get eternal life. Jesus sums up the commandments, and the man says that he's been observing them all his life. Jesus says that he lacks just one thing: he needs to sell all he has, give the proceeds to people in poverty, and follow Jesus.

Matthew. Mark. Luke.

I remember one particular sermon on this passage. Judy and I were on Boston Common on a rainy day in October 1979, on the first day of Pope John Paul II's visit that fall to the USA. In his sermon, the Pope pointed out a detail that only Mark's version has: namely, "...what the young man in the Gospel experienced : 'Jesus looked at him with love' (Mark 10:21)," before explaining what the cost of his hopes would be.

The love of Christ is unconditional; it precedes our response. The response that Jesus gave the wealthy man was not just theoretical, saying "yes" to a doctrine; it was practical. And if the first part of the advice to the man seemed difficult (and Jesus says it will be, for it's harder for a rich person to enter heaven than for a camel to go through a needle's eye), the second part of the advice is more than compensation: "Then come, follow me." In other words, you won't be alone.

With a certain bit of irony, Jesus expands on this compensation:

... No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.

The way Jesus looked at the inquirer—with love—is the way he looks at each of us. No exceptions, as the Friends Committee on National Legislation campaign puts it. And as I've mentioned before, we are to "regard" each other the same way.

At least, that's the theory. The important thing in my life was that, having decided to trust Jesus, I did not have to work out the practical implications alone! The nuclear family that didn't understand or like my conversion receded into the background (not entirely, of course) and my earliest emotional support came from my Canadian relatives, with whom I was living as I went through all the stages of grief at losing one sister to murder and another because of being asked to leave my home. Then Ottawa Friends, and wider circles of Canadian Friends, came alongside me. They decided to make this utter newbie a representative to the Friends World Committee's triennial sessions in Hamilton, Ontario, and I soon realized I had a global family. A couple of years later, I was serving that extended Quaker family in Boston, Massachusetts, and there I met my life companion, Judy.

Now many of us are in a season of persecutions. The values that are precious to us, particularly equality and nonviolence, are under sustained attack. On a more doctrinal level, the gospel is being grievously misrepresented by Christian nationalists and their toxic enmeshment with state power—and not just in the USA.

Again: we don't have to work out the implications alone! Our Quaker and ecumenical and interfaith networks are alongside us. Our traveling Friends ministers and community-building events (see posters above) can give us ideas and spiritual refreshment from far and near. The gift-based division of labor means that we equally treasure our mystics and our activists, our evangelists and tax refusers, our street theater organizers and our potluck dinner organizers. They are all part of the "hundreds of times as much in this present age...."

There are three particular gifts that I want to hold up, and they're closely related. First: how do we extend the blessing of no exceptions to those who seem to be spreading counterfeit gospels at the expense of immigrants and other marginalized people, not to mention the reputation of the gospel itself? After we get good and angry (speaking personally, here!), then what? I love the idea of the "Truth Brigade" Judy mentioned in this post, and hope that those of us who are suited to, and called to, this kind of ministry of fierce love will find encouragement for their work.

Second: we need evangelists who understand that all our theories of love will atrophy if our communities are closed to new people, and when we subconsciously assume that all marginalized people are external beneficiaries rather than being among us as equal participants. So ... to the gifted evangelists still among us: please forgive us when we seem to pretend that you don't even exist; and help us identify the barriers and filters that too often result in welcoming only people who match our prevailing demographics.

Third: we need pastors and elders who understand the rhythms of enthusiasm and discouragement, help us when we get on each other's nerves, and know how to help us spell each other as needed.

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"Love Your Neighbour" is not just a Friends Committee on National Legislation campaign, it is also the theme of this year's World Quaker Day, October 5.

Another occasion of mutual care in the global family: the Africa Section of the Friends World Committee for Consultation is hosting the next FWCC global online meeting for worship on June 8, 4:00 p.m. Nairobi time.

"Love in Motion: Friends Traveling in Ministry" (see graphic above): Brian Drayton will help us consider the specific role of traveling in the ministry, which I see as part of the ways we can be each other's encouragement in challenging times. This online presentation and discussion is scheduled for May 21, 8:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Eastern U.S. time. (By the way, Brian Drayton signed Judy's and my certificate of marriage for the registry of vital records in Boston, nearly 45 years ago.)

"Dear Pope Francis": Diana Hadjiyane writes about Francis, community, and ecumenism from her Eastern Orthodox perspective.

Speaking of love, Levi Gaytán's "wildest dreams" came true. 

Elderchaplain Greg Morgan:

.... Death sometimes arrives with no forewarning: a massive heart attack, a brain aneurysm, an accident. Past a certain age, though, we are more likely to die from conditions that progress relatively slowly: cancer, congestive heart failure, or simply old age. This is largely a blessing, I think, as it gives both the dying person and their loved ones time to prepare, and to share conversations that can be among the most intimate and meaningful of their lives.

But this blessing brings with it a challenge....

The monthly gathering of the Bremerton (Washington) Friends worship group is happening again this Sunday at 4 p.m.

The latest United Nations humanitarian situation reports on Palestine: the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

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Another global family, Playing for Change, presents their version of "Crossroads."

Malice in Wonderland, part two

Portland, Oregon, USA, April 5.

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"I give you a new commandment, to
love one another."

On this Maundy Thursday, the liturgical Christian calendar reminds us of Jesus' final meal with his disciples, and his instructions to them—to love and serve one another. 

On the very next day, soldiers of the occupying power executed him—but not before they took the opportunity to mock him and beat him.

Which of these behaviors—the conduct and instructions of Jesus, or the treatment he received at the hands of the occupying power—more closely resemble the behavior of the Christian nationalists now enjoying power in the USA?

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As I tried to understand what was happening to my adopted country, the USA, in the hours and days after the new president's inauguration, I proposed the metaphor of being under occupation. Despite the "MAGA" slogan, there is practically nothing recognizably American about the ruthless and vindictive actions of the highest officials of the land, the demands for absolute loyalty to the nation's new monarch, or the spinelessness of most members of our legislature, all of whom have promised with straight faces to defend the Constitution they're all in the process of shredding. In a word, they are occupiers.

The scandal over the renditions of ICE detainees to Venezuela and El Salvador is just one of a whole list of unconstitutional transgressions and abuses of power committed by this administration, some of which will have terrible effects on the impartial management of the Justice Department and the courts, on public health research, on the USA's ability to attract international talent, on our credibility throughout the world. But our leaders' capacity for cruelty has been made particularly vivid by the case of Kilmar Ábrego García as well as the others on those early deportation flights to captivity in El Salvador—flights that had clearly been arranged to avoid judicial intervention.

(And now we are not even granted the certainty that Ábrego García is alive and well. [However, UPDATE.])

It's not just the bizarre contortions that government lawyers and spokespeople have to go through to avoid taking responsibility. The total lack of enthusiasm for making amends is mindblowing. What is even more shocking (and more powerful as proof that our country is slipping away) is summed up in the words "gleeful cruelty."

I don't know how long this term has been circulating, but I first came across it in an article in The Atlantic by Charlie Warzel, "The Gleeful Cruelty of the White House X Account." After reviewing several cases of conspicuous online glee, Warzel continues,

The White House is after something more than just shock value. It’s propaganda, and Trump’s allies are learning the playbook. This week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted a video on X from a prison in El Salvador where deported immigrants are being held. Behind Noem are dozens of men in one jail cell, many shirtless with tattoos; their heads have all been shaved during intake. The prisoners are props, a backdrop for Noem’s message of intimidation to undocumented immigrants: “If you do not leave, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and you could end up in this El Salvadorian prison.” Like the ASMR post or the Ghibli cartoon, the implication is that these deportees are utterly undeserving of any shred of human dignity. There are many other examples, such as FBI Director Kash Patel’s recent posts, one of which features him walking around in camouflage, set to rock music, as FBI agents blow open doors with explosives. Taken together, the posts offer a bracing but useful insight into how the administration sees itself, and the message of casual cruelty and overwhelming force it wants to project to the rest of the world.

Looking back at the first principles I proposed back in November, are they adequate for this era of flagrant and gleeful cruelty? I still feel strongly about not dividing our country into pro- and anti-Trump populations, and resisting the degradation of civil discourse. What other disciplines and practices should we consider? For myself, I'm constantly drawn back to Jesus, who was himself mocked and whipped before being crucified. What can we say to those who proclaim faith in Jesus even as they mock and whip others and look to their MAGA audiences for approval? The case for actual evangelism seems more urgent than ever.

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Malice in Wonderland, part one.

On false witnessing and mocking Jesus.

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Catholics connecting the dots: Holy Week and deportees.

Britain Yearly Meeting's Truth and Integrity Group is facilitating a global online meeting for worship on April 22 at 9 a.m. and again on April 24 at 7 p.m. (British Summer Time).

Timothy Snyder: resistance to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Ábrego García case is evidence that the USA is crossing the line into state terror.

Kristin Du Mez: courage really is contagious.

Gordon Haber interviews Jerome Copulsky on the history of efforts toward a "specifically Christian state" in the USA.

On "...Living Together in the Life and Power of God." Earlham School of Religion presents Colin Saxton in the 2025 Perkins Family Lecture Series. April 23 at 7 p.m. Eastern time, online and in person at ESR.

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Mahalia Jackson with an important query.

Due process, the Bible, and lunacy

Seizing Rumeysa Ozturk in broad daylight.

Source.   

One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.
—The Bible

We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics.
—Marco Rubio on cancellation of student visa of Rumeysa Ozturk, arrested Tuesday morning.

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Evidence is ever more abundant that, among decisionmakers at the top of the current U.S. government, the law is seen as irrelevant, or even a nuisance, and the emphasis is on aggressive, swift, ruthless, secretive action.

The video of Ozturk's arrest published today in the Washington Post is shocking. A group of men in plain clothes, some hiding their faces, leave an unmarked car, grab her, and whisk her away handcuffed. Her phone has been seized. Before we (or a judge) know it, she is in Louisiana. Her student visa is cancelled. I thought maybe I was growing accustomed to the Trump-era eradication of normal due process, but I guess not, thank God—we should never get used to this. But it's a crushing disenchantment to see this happening in the "Land of Liberty."

(More about Ozturk's experience is here.)

It appears that official outrage against international students and green card holders is directed especially at people defending Palestinian human rights. Questioning U.S. support for Israel's treatment of the Gaza Strip (population 2.14 million) has been casually classified as aiding Hamas (membership 20,000?), but there seems to be no interest in making this distinction, or, indeed, proving anything at all. We are supposed to accept whatever Trump, Rubio, and their operatives tell us concerning the alleged misdeeds of the people they grab.

This is the administration for which 82% of the USA's evangelical or born-again Christians voted. For them, I dedicate a brief Bible study:

The qualities many of us usually associate with God are grace and mercy. Grace is God's goodwill to us and the whole creation—it's something we don't have to earn, in fact can't earn, but we can pass it on in the way we treat others. And when we fall short, this grace is expressed as mercy—compassion and restoration instead of punishment.

“But if a wicked person turns away from all the sins they have committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, that person will surely live; they will not die. None of the offenses they have committed will be remembered against them. Because of the righteous things they have done, they will live. Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” declares the Sovereign Lord. “Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”
—Ezekiel 18:21-23 

The Lord is not slow in keeping this promise, as some understand slowness. Instead the Lord is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
—2 Peter 3:9

As with grace, God is the source of mercy, but also as with grace, we are to pass that mercy on.

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
    and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
—Hosea 6:6

Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
—Matthew 5:7

There is one specific aspect of mercy that we and our leaders are not at liberty to ignore. We know this aspect as due process. It's a core principle of U.S. constitutional law (see the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth), but the Bible witnesses to its antiquity, as in, for example, the quotation at the top of this post: "A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses."—Deuteronomy 19:15.

Concerning the centrality of this principle, jazz critic and commentator Nat Hentoff had the right idea. Back in 1989, he told a story about a visit he made to a conference in Israel:

I ran into a rabbi in Jerusalem, he’s a philosopher, he’s a big macher in many ways, David Hartman. I’d never met him before, and there was a brief respite between the discussions, and I met him in the corridor and he said, “Hentoff, I want you to tell me the most important development in the history of mankind”. And I said, “Due process”. He said, “Right”, and that’s the last I ever heard of him.

The ethic of due process is reflected in several other biblical passages. The Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5, include this central demand: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” This may well be the most violated commandment of our political life.

Other examples:

Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.
—Isaiah 1:17

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.
—Leviticus 19:15

Ecclesiastes has an acid comment on politics without this ethic:

"If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still."
—Ecclesiastes 5:8

The principle comes up in the New Testament, too, as in the dramatic scenes of the gospel of John, chapter 7, when Jesus shows up in Jerusalem halfway through the Festival of Tabernacles, and begins teaching in the temple court, fully aware of the risk. The authorities send guards to seize him, but ...

Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”

“No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.

“You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”

They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”
—John 7:45-52

As for Marco Rubio calling Rumeysa Ozturk and people like her "lunatics," along with the choice insults he and his colleagues (led by the president) use for judges they don't like, and other targets of convenience, I don't want to push this Bible passage too hard, but it's interesting:

But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.
—Matthew 5:22; follow link for the footnotes.

Finally:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.
—Matthew 7:1-2 

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Here's a sobering perspective from Cornel West's presentation last Saturday at Reedwood Friends Church (sponsored by The Cultural Soul Project):

Democracy ain't nothing but a moment of interruption in the history of non-democratic and anti-democratic regimes going back to the beginnings of the species. And it doesn't last forever. You got to fight for it, sacrifice for it, truth-tell, justice-seek for it. And in the end there is still no guarantee.

(Be sure to watch the whole video; there's plenty more about the spiritual resources we draw on to truth-tell and justice-seek. And you'll get occasional glimpses of Judy and me in the third row!)

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Related posts:  Grace and mercy; Have mercy; Grace and peace.

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Friday addition: Jonathan Last recommends thinking and acting "like a dissident movement" in these specific ways. It makes a lot of sense to me.

Heather Cox Richardson looks at some of the words of J.D. Vance (in 2021) and Curtis Yarvin (in 2022) that might help us understand the American future they and their networks are looking forward to: a future without democracy. What do you think: is the current DOGE chainsaw operation a fulfillment of those stated visions?

Andy Olsen at Christianity Today: How are Hispanic churches in Florida dealing with the state's "double immigration crackdown"?

Alexander Vindman on the shutdown of Radio Free Europe and its sister channels. Checking this evening, Voice of America and its Russian service seem to be frozen on March 15, but RFE/RL's Russian service (svoboda.org) is still alive.

Elizabeth Bruenig asks, "Can Silicon Valley Find Christianity?" As you guessed, it's complicated: "Christianity, they ought to know, is not a life hack: It’s a life-upending surrender to the fact of divine love."

The Council of Europe's Venice Commission provided an amicus curiae brief to Ukraine's Supreme Court on the subject of conscientious objection, particularly in wartime. Page 13 summarizes relevant Quaker experience. (Thanks to Ukrainian Quakers for the link.)

Is Nancy Thomas an official old soul?

The latest list of happiest countries. By the way, John Helliwell (World Happiness Report) tells us: “Negativity is poisonous to happiness.”

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Mavis Staples, with Rick Holmstrom on the guitar: "Wade in the Water."

The tax covenant

A few days ago, I finished compiling our family's federal and state tax information for 2024 and sent it on to our preparer. These hours of accounting for our income and relevant expenses over the previous year are a chance for reflecting on our stewardship, our evident priorities ... and where our tax money goes.

Over the years, the subject of taxes has come up several times in this blog. Back in 2006, I linked to a post by Julia Ewen of Atlanta Friends Meeting that I republished with her permission. She reframed the issue of conscientious payment or nonpayment of taxes. Among other points, she said:

We have to accept the fact that life—paying or not paying taxes included—is not neat and clean. And take responsibility for our choices—and their fall-out—good and bad together.

The biggest danger,  though, lies in getting confused about who in charge of things: Caesar? The religious establishment? or Jesus/God? And that confusion can happen whether Caesar is involved or not (hence the story about the Temple Tax).... [See her full essay for the "Temple Tax" context.]

In fact Caesar is probably the smaller problem. Jesus talks very little about Caesar, but inveighs a great deal against people in the religious establishment: people who like to appear to be good while in fact committing injustice and evil, people who acquire money and power at the expense of those they are supposed help and protect, people who live motivated by fear, greed, selfishness, addiction to power, instead of love and concern for others...

When we get that right, then we will know when to pay taxes and when not to. Neither is wrong. Neither is right. In and of itself. It is like the Torah admonition not to pick grain on the Sabbath  ( Matthew 12:1-8). Yes, scripture says not to do it. But scripture also says that we can pull an ox out of the ditch if he has fallen into it on the Sabbath... "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath". Thus the he issue about taxes is not simply about paying or not paying. It is about why we are paying—or not—about being responsible for our choices, and about who we are letting run our lives, our souls!

Here's what I wrote back in 2022, when anti-tax rhetoric was at one of its periodic peaks:

In this political season, both in the USA and in the UK (and no doubt elsewhere), politicians are trading on the dislike of taxes to gain popularity. Republican opposition to Democratic initiatives are routinely blasted with the old "tax and spend" epithet, and the Conservative leadership campaign in the UK has featured competitions for who can cut taxes the most.

A biblical view of taxation might be hard to pin down. We have God's sour view of what a king would do to the people of Israel (1 Samuel chapter 8), but also the attributes of good rulers (Psalm 99:4; Proverbs 16:12). We have examples of the positive uses of taxation (to support the central institutions of the nation, particularly the Temple, and to prepare for drought; more generally, to maintain the nation's leaders so they can protect the people and serve justice). John the Baptist tells tax collectors to collect only the required amount (Luke 3:12-13). Jesus treats tax collectors positively (especially Matthew) and tells his followers to pay Caesar what is Caesar's (Mark 12:17 and parallels).

In the USA and similar democracies, the fundamental functions that governments must do, and pay for, are described in a constitution (written or unwritten) and in subsequent legislation. We vote for the people in the legislature and authorize them to draw up budgets based on the commitments we have made to each other, all based on those authorized purposes of the government. We then have to pay for those commitments that keep our nation viable and livable. The sum total of those costs represents the amount we have to raise, one way or another. 

Right now our national conversation seems to be "what commitments can we slash to save money?" A more honest conversation would admit that we're often actually asking "what commitments to others can we slash to save money, while keeping the commitments that benefit people just like us?" A popular variation: "What commitments can we privatize so that we can buy them if we want, and those who can't afford them ... well, we just won't worry about them."

The conversation I truly want to have across political lines is: "Who do we [and who do our critics] want our policies to bless, and who are we willing to leave out?" Once we've decided what we're willing to pay for these blessings to ourselves and our fellow human beings, we can then figure out how to divide the burden with equal attention to fairness. Evading our fair share is not an honest blessing.

Source.  

Ideally, by paying taxes, we citizens are simply upholding a covenant we have with each other. We have made promises to each other—"to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" (preamble to the U.S. Constitution), setting up a government for these purposes and assigning that government, through our legislature, the practical tasks needed to fulfill those promises. We know that these tasks cost money, so our legislators make a list of those costs and institute sources of revenue, including taxes. That's the covenant: to decide on the tasks needed for the "general Welfare," from which we all benefit, directly or indirectly, and to pay our fair share for those tasks.

Too bad it doesn't end there!

First of all, we rarely have unanimity on the tasks themselves. A huge example: many countries recognize that health care is an inelastic demand that affects every single person—precisely the sort of thing that the marketplace cannot provide equitably—but, in the USA, we don't. We differ as to whether various essential tasks of community maintenance should be federal responsibilities or best left to local governments, the marketplace, or private charity. What is the best balance between governmental provisions for social and economic justice, on the one hand, and entrepreneurial incentives on the other? Even with perfect goodwill on all sides, we are guaranteed some robust debates. And once the commitments have been made and the budgets established, some will still resent paying those costs.

To complicate things further, as the Bible and the Federalist Papers remind us, we are not angels. The collection and disbursement of taxes is subject to corruption. Some of us evade taxes; some of those who spend the people's money find ways to divert it. And even among honest people, inefficiencies can creep in. So ... we have to spend some of our tax money on auditors, prosecutors, and inspectors-general, just so the rest of the money can go to its original purposes, and (hopefully) trust among taxpayers can largely be preserved.

Even with all those complications, the general covenant can prevail as long as we can see that our taxes pay for the promises we have made to each other, with reasonable allowances for audits and safeguards. But it's a vulnerable covenant. All it takes to break it is for enough self-serving demagogues to make enough noise, generate enough cynicism, trigger enough popular resentment, in order to make people forget the covenant altogether. Instead, those manipulators treat "TAXES" [scary music] as a special category of evil that has no connection with those constitutional purposes ... except for those purposes that have taken on exaggerated rhetorical sanctity—most usually, the Military, which is sometimes given even more than it asks for!

Aside from this cynical practice of breaking the connection between promises and taxes for political gain (example: the traditional Republican slogans about those "tax and spend Democrats"), there are at least three other techniques for weakening the essential covenant trust between people and government, and thereby diverting resources from the "general Welfare" to benefit those who resent sharing their wealth. All three are very popular in this current season of chaos.

First: raise an alarm over waste and corruption, without providing for a deliberate process of finding specific instances, or using the facilities already provided for that purpose. The current DOGE chainsaw campaign may accidentally and randomly eliminate some defective corners of the bureaucracy, but there seems to be no corresponding eagerness to find out what promises, honestly made and honestly kept, could end up on the butcher's floor in the process, and what those now-broken promises might cost in human life.

Second: sabotage the promise-making process, namely the work of the legislative branch. Our Constitution explicitly assigns the budgeting task to Congress, which also establishes the major branches of government and has, in the Senate, the "advice and consent" role of approving high officials. The president must not encroach on the legislature's lawmaking responsibility but instead, in the Constitution's words, "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed...." Now these encroachments are made on a daily, sometimes almost hourly basis.

Third: act as if the wealthiest among us should never fear even modest increases in the taxes they pay. Those who arguably benefit the most from the governmental structures that protect their wealth and (by providing infrastructure at taxpayer expense) make that wealth even possible, too often use that wealth to exercise veto power over suggestions of increased taxes. No matter how worthy or urgent our proposed promises to each other might be, revenue must only go down! Best of all, from their point of view, the savings gained by mercilessly degrading "general Welfare" can actually reduce their taxes.

(I recognize that there are ultra-wealthy people who do not agree with this agenda.)

I'm relatively sure that you already know all this, and probably know it in greater depth and detail than I do. I only record it here, and in the framework of a covenant, because I would like to do my tiny part in reinforcing that original connection between promise and payment in a season that, instead, threatens to overwhelm us with a tidal wave of misdirection and cynicism.

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Related: The socialists are coming!! Paying for health care. 

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How ethics can deteriorate: Cabinet member openly urges television audience to buy Tesla stock. "Danielle] Brian [of Project on Government Oversight] said Lutnick’s comments indicated that Trump’s previous flouting of ethics norms may be affecting how his officials behave." You think?

At NASA, too ... Eric Berger (Ars Technica):

[I]f we're going to start lying about basic truths like the fate of [astronauts Butch] Wilmore and [Suni] Williams—and let's be real, the only purpose of this lie is to paint the Trump administration as saviors in comparison to the Biden administration—then space is not going to remain apolitical for all that long. And in the long run, that would be bad for NASA.

Matt Levine (Bloomberg): Even deregulation needs regulators.

The alleged dangers of the "empathy exploit" (Elon Musk) and two Christian responses: Michael C. Rae (Religion News Service); George Demacopoulos (Orthodox Christian Study Center, Fordham).

And now, for a cosmic change of perspective courtesy of the European Space Agency, namely 26 million galaxies and counting. Be sure to watch the extraordinary video.

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Can't say I didn't warn you ... "The Hustle Is On." (With the late Little Charlie Baty.)