The Greensboro News & Record was kind enough to publish this reflection, noting that beyond simply celebrating our founding ideals in the Declaration of Independence, we should demonstrate them in practice every Election Day.

Much of today’s political debate focuses on personalities, parties, and policies. I challenge readers to begin somewhere else—with the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Whether you agree with my conclusions or not, I hope you’ll consider the question at the heart of the piece: If we truly believe these truths are self-evident, do they guide us when we enter the voting booth?

Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published in the Greensboro News & Record on July 5, 2026.

Author’s Note: This is part of a series of essays leading up to America’s 250th birthday. The series will explore the meaning of E Pluribus Unum — “Out of many, one” — and what that founding aspiration asks of us today.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Borg offered one of the franchise’s most chilling visions of unity. Civilizations were not persuaded, welcomed, or federated. They were assimilated. Their differences were erased. Individual memory, culture, dissent, and identity were absorbed into one collective will. “Resistance is futile” became more than a catchphrase. It became a warning.

The United Federation of Planets offered the opposite vision: different peoples, histories, traditions, and loyalties sharing a civic project without surrendering who they are.

Today, some of the loudest calls for “patriotic education” risk confusing unity with uniformity. In that vision, love of country depends on one approved story, one approved memory, and one approved definition of who counts as fully American. The danger is not teaching Americans to love their country. The danger is teaching them that love requires forgetting, obedience, and conformity.

When patriotic education becomes a government-approved story that sanitizes the past and treats dissent as disloyalty, it stops being civic education. It becomes assimilation dressed as patriotism.

The Great Seal of the United States offers a better vision. On the scroll held in the eagle’s beak are three words: E Pluribus Unum—out of many, one.

It was not a command to become identical. It was a challenge to become something much harder: one republic.

The Founders did not choose those words because America was already united. They chose them because unity was the problem. The Thirteen Colonies had declared independence, but independence from Britain did not automatically create one people. The question remained: could separate colonies, competing interests, regional identities, religious differences, and political factions become one nation without being flattened into sameness?

That challenge was embedded in the nation’s symbolism before it was fully realized in its institutions. Every generation has struggled to remember the difference between unity and uniformity. Ours is no exception.

The Great Seal and the Problem of Union

Shortly after approving the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson to propose a seal for the new United States. Their original design was not adopted, but one phrase survived the subsequent revisions: E Pluribus Unum.

In the version finally approved by Congress in 1782, the phrase appears on a scroll held in the eagle’s beak. This was more than a national emblem. It visually announced a new political identity to the world: not a nation rooted in one ancient people, one established church, or one inherited culture, but a union of separate states seeking to become a single political community.

Although Congress never formally designated E Pluribus Unum as the national motto, its placement on the Great Seal gave it something close to that status. For generations, it appeared on coins, official documents, government symbols, and the public face of the republic. Long before “In God We Trust” became the official national motto in 1956, E Pluribus Unum functioned as America’s de facto motto—the phrase most closely associated with the nation’s identity.

That distinction matters because declaring independence created a new political entity, but it did not automatically create a unified nation. Despite having a common enemy, the colonies did not yet share a settled national identity. Each state had its own history, economy, religious patterns, regional interests, and political culture. Today, we celebrate July 4th as the birth of the nation. But the Revolution did not by itself solve the problem of union. It achieved independence for the thirteen colonies, which still had to decide what kind of people they could become.

Even the phrase “United States” contained a tension. In the Declaration, Congress referred to the “thirteen united States of America” and later to the “Representatives of the united States of America.” The lowercase “united” should not carry too much interpretive weight by itself; eighteenth-century capitalization was inconsistent. But the phrase still captures the unresolved question: were these states merely united in a cause, or were they becoming one people?

In 1776, the founders declared the colonies to be “Free and Independent States.” Under the Articles of Confederation, the United States functioned less as a consolidated nation than as a “firm league of friendship” among sovereign states. The Articles preserved association, but they did not fully create union.

That is why E Pluribus Unum matters. Introduced in the first proposed seal in 1776 and carried into the final Great Seal in 1782, the phrase offered a vision before the institutions could fully deliver it. The Declaration announced independence. The Articles preserved association. The Constitution later codified a stronger union. But the Great Seal provided the aspiration: out of many, one.

Unity Is Not Uniformity

Whether or not Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson could foresee the full democratic implications of the phrase, E Pluribus Unum began with plurality. It did not say “from many, the same.” It did not require one religion, one ancestry, one region, one language, one ideology, or one approved version of national memory. It asked whether different people could sustain a shared republic.

That is why the Star Trek analogy matters. Roddenberry’s genius was not merely that he created a franchise that endured for six decades. It was that he used science fiction to ask civic and moral questions that American society often struggled to face directly. He gave audiences a way to think about America’s own unresolved promise during an era of racial conflict, social change, and democratic strain.

The Borg represent uniformity: difference erased in service of collective control. The Federation represents something more difficult: distinct peoples bound by shared principles, institutions, and obligations.

America’s first motto belongs to that more difficult vision. It does not ask the many to disappear. It asks whether the many can become one without being erased.

Uniformity is easy. Unity is hard. Uniformity demands sameness. Unity requires mutual obligation. And when uniformity becomes the price of belonging, it does not strengthen liberty. It destroys it.

Teaching America Through E Pluribus Unum

America’s 250th anniversary has renewed the argument over patriotic education. That debate is often treated as another culture-war fight, but the underlying question is legitimate: what should Americans be taught to love about their country, and who gets to decide?

At its best, patriotic education teaches Americans to love their country by helping them understand its founding principles, civic obligations, achievements, failures, and unfinished promises. At its worst, it becomes one approved story, one acceptable identity, and one sanitized memory.

In his January 29, 2025 Executive Order, President Trump calls for “Reestablishing the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission and Promoting Patriotic Education.” Referring back to his first term, the President returns to a patriotic-education framework closely associated with American exceptionalism: the belief that the United States is not merely another nation, but a uniquely founded political project with special principles and a distinctive historical mission.

That view is not inherently wrong, but when reduced to a mandatory national narrative, it can flatten the complexity of American history. By claiming to counter a “radicalized view of American history,” the order presents itself as an antidote to indoctrination. But a government-directed effort to define which version of history is sufficiently “patriotic” risks creating the very problem it claims to oppose: ideological instruction in place of civic education.

Major professional historical organizations have raised similar concerns. The American Historical Association warned that the administration’s approach risked “ideological instruction and the politicization of history.” The Organization of American Historians criticized the earlier 1776 Report as a partisan intervention that narrowed historical teaching and discouraged deliberative discussion.

Taken together, their objections point toward a better standard: serious patriotic education should not teach mythology, grievance, or enforced innocence. It should not begin from the assumption that teaching America honestly is somehow anti-American. Nor should it imply that loving the country requires shielding students from its contradictions.

Informed citizenship requires a fuller history: one that includes the nation’s conflicts and contradictions alongside its achievements, innovations, and opportunities. With the Semiquincentennial approaching, that fuller history should begin with the founding problem itself: how did thirteen colonies attempt to become one republic?

Answering that question requires teaching both the aspirations and contradictions of the founding.

The Founding Contradiction: One Nation, But Not Yet One People

As we prepare to celebrate the nation’s founding, we should be honest about the contradiction built into its first motto: the “many” did not yet include everyone.

When E Pluribus Unum was introduced in the Great Seal process and later came to function as the nation’s de facto motto, the “many” it represented was far narrower in practice than the principle itself demanded. Enslaved people, Native nations, women, free Black Americans, and many others were excluded from full political membership.

As I argued in “All Men Are Created Equal”: America’s Most Ambitious Promise, the founding ideals were often betrayed by the very people who proclaimed them to the world. Likewise, E Pluribus Unum was larger than the founding generation’s ability or willingness to fulfill it. That does not make the motto meaningless. It makes it demanding.

In 1776, the “many” were represented most visibly by thirteen distinct colonies. Today, the “many” include more than 340 million people across 50 states, the District of Columbia, tribal nations, and U.S. territories. We are a people of different ancestries, religions, languages, customs, and political beliefs. Yet the civic claim remains: we are also one American people, not because we are the same, but because we are bound to the same republic and the ideals that established it.

Modern Warning: The Temptation of the Borg

The danger today is not merely division. The danger is responding to division by demanding uniformity—by becoming more like the Borg.

Like past generations, we are tempted to define “real Americans” narrowly, to confuse dissent with disloyalty, and to turn patriotism into performance and history into mythology.

Unlike Star Trek, the Borg temptation is not technological. It is political: the desire for one people without conflict, one story without complexity, one national identity without dissent.

E Pluribus Unum rejects both fragmentation and forced sameness. The answer to national fracture is not assimilation into one approved identity, fed by sanitized history and official talking points. It is recommitment to a republic strong enough to hold difference without surrendering common purpose.

America’s First Motto Is Still an Unfinished Assignment

The Great Seal placed E Pluribus Unum in the eagle’s beak, above the olive branch and arrows—symbols of peace and war. For over 160 years, it served as the nation’s de facto motto.

It did not describe a settled reality then and even now. More than 250 years of American history prove that, including slavery, civil war, exclusion, immigration battles, civil rights struggles, and recurring arguments over who counts as fully American.

But like the Declaration of Independence, the motto gave future generations a standard by which to judge the nation and a challenge by which to improve it.

It was never meant to be patriotic wallpaper. It was the founding generation’s most urgent question:

Can the many become one?

• Not by forgetting.

• Not by obeying.

• Not by pretending difference never existed.

• Not by deciding that only some Americans are real Americans.

From many, one.

That was the motto America chose first. It remains the test America has never finished taking.

Also in this series

Related

Author’s Note: This is part of a series of essays leading up to America’s 250th birthday. The series will explore the meaning of E Pluribus Unum — “Out of many, one” — and what that founding aspiration asks of us today.

Like many Americans of my generation, I first encountered the Declaration as patriotic memory before I understood it as a moral argument. Likely the first time I heard this preamble was when School House Rocks aired the episode titled “Fireworks” during Saturday-morning cartoons, which taught viewers about the Declaration. Near the end, the famous words from above are recited by children’s voices. As I grew older, I would learn more about our nation’s founding and the history behind the liberal-democratic principles that underpin our republic.

Still, as memorable as School House Rocks episodes in teaching history (as well as math and grammar), they only scratched the surface of the complicated history behind the United States founding. Likewise, the history teaching standards that educators use to guide history curriculum in our schools are also limiting. As a result, many Americans first learn the Declaration as a symbol before they are asked to understand it as an argument.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote that famous sentence, it was not original in thought,1 even if it became original in American consequence. The idea of equality came from Jefferson’s friend Philip Mazzei, and the concept of natural rights dated back to 17th-century philosopher John Locke. It was also not an accurate description of colonial America in 1776. Enslaved people were held in bondage. Women were excluded from political equality. Native peoples were treated as obstacles to expansion. Property, race, sex, and status shaped who could fully participate in public life.

America’s founding promise was morally compromised from the beginning, yet powerful enough to expose that compromise and demand something better.

But that is precisely why the sentence matters.

The Declaration was not merely a report on America’s existing social order. It offered a novel claim about human dignity, political legitimacy, and the moral standard by which a government should be judged. Upon adopting the Declaration, the Continental Congress was not claiming that the country had already achieved equality. What they did do, however, was provide a Vision for a nascent nation; a promise that equality would be the standard the country and its posterity could never again honestly ignore. Yet, 250 years later, equality continues to be debated and hindered in public discourse, only made worse by the political divide.

A Truth Claimed Before It Was Practiced

Perhaps the most contested phrase in the Declaration’s preamble is not “all men are created equal,” but the claim that this truth was “self-evident.” To modern ears, the phrase can sound almost unbearable coming from men who tolerated, defended, or directly benefited from slavery and exclusion.

That criticism is not wrong. From today’s perspective, the contradiction is obvious. Still, it was not invisible in the 18th century either.23 However, when detractors invoke hypocrisy to claim historical honesty as a way to end debate, they risk missing the opportunity for deeper conversation. One that explores the harder truth: that the Declaration’s words still matter. Jefferson didn’t write “Self-evident” to mean “universally practiced” or “politically uncontested.” He was presenting a morally foundational principle, one that did not depend on a king, parliament, inherited privilege, or imperial permission.

The founders were not saying equality was obvious because everyone lived it. Instead, they argued equality was the kind of truth on which legitimate government must rest.

That distinction matters.

The Declaration was not written as domestic policy or legislation to be turned into statute. It was a justification for independence. It provided the foundation for the colonists to alter or abolish a government that no longer was serving its people. A foundation rooted in natural rights and the consent of the governed.

Not a Mirror, but a Measure

In 1776, equality was neither a reality nor universally believed. The Declaration’s preamble created a permanent moral benchmark, one meant to be measured against and challenged by each new generation of Americans.

The Declaration’s claim to equality exposed the injustices of the founding generation. Once the 56 men placed their signatures on the parchment, establishing the United States, the words became available to every later American who could then ask: if this is what the nation says it believes, why does it not apply to us?

And that tension has persisted ever since, beginning with the abolitionist movement, through reconstruction, suffrage, civil rights, and recent debates about marriage equality and immigration.4 Even today, with notable achievements towards the vision, there are those who ask, “Why does it not apply to us?” And that is why, as Americans, we need to continue to measure ourselves against the Declaration’s benchmark and never stop moving along the long arc of the moral universe.

The Words Were Larger Than the Men Who Wrote Them

Our founding fathers were indeed great men, but they were also flawed human beings. There is no doubt it would be correct to call them imperfect messengers, noting the contradictions between what they claim to believe and how they lived. Yet their own imperfections do not diminish the moral tenets contained in Jefferson’s words. To the contrary, it simply revealed how much work remained undone for a young nation claiming such novel ideals.

History notes that the majority of the Declaration signers owned slaves, and that several were abolitionists. Although the most vocal abolitionists included Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, many who shared those views acquiesced as a form of compromise. Jefferson himself was conflicted. Visitors to his home at Monticello can read historical accounts stating plainly that Jefferson was both a lifelong slaveholder and the author of the Declaration, acknowledging the Declaration’s promises did not extend to African Americans, indentured servants, or women.

Referring to slavery as an “abominable crime,” Jefferson’s original draft included reference to slavery, calling out the King for introducing slavery to the colonies by waging a “cruel war against human nature itself,” describing the actions as “piratical warfare’. In a tone that seems far more sarcastic than complimentary, he chastizes the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain for keeping “open a market where MEN should be bought & sold.”5 Yet, during deliberations in the Continental Congress, the passage was deleted due to objections by South Carolina and Georgia. Rather than confront the issue, the political system chose compromise—something the country would repeat over a decade later, in the summer of 1787.

A Standard That Could Condemn Its Own Authors

Today, there are two competing, albeit inadequate, Declaration narratives. The first is a purely celebratory view because the Declaration proclaimed equality, the founding was simply noble. The second, a purely dismissive view, dimisses the Declaration as merely hypocrisy, because many signers failed to practice what they claim to believe. Both oversimplify our complex history and also tend to align along ideological fault lines, fueling division.

Both stories are comforting because both are incomplete. The first avoids the brutality of exclusion. The second avoids the enduring power of a principle that later generations would use to challenge that exclusion. A more honest patriotism requires both admiration and indictment.

Both perspectives are comforting to those who make them, not because they are accurate, but because they are incomplete. The first avoids the brutality of exclusion. The second avoids the enduring power of a principle that later generations would use to challenge that exclusion. A more honest patriotism requires both admiration and indictment.

Instead of having an honest conversation about the core principles enshrined in the Declaration and our nation’s historical failures to live up to them, proponents of the competing stories frame opposing views as either a hatred of American exceptionalism or whitewashing history. Neither is accurate nor constructive.

A better narrative is perhaps more nuanced, warranting both criticism and celebration. We should celebrate the Declaration not because its authors were pure, but because its principles were aspirational and exceeded their own practice. At the same time, the founders created a standard that future generations could and should use against the exclusions, compromises, and injustices of the founding order itself.

President Lincoln understood that paradox, reflecting on it nine months before his Gettysburg Address in a speech at Independence Hall. He noted that the Declaration was more than simply a matter of declaring independence from Great Britain. It was the “sentiment embodied,” a moral touchstone promising “that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.” He would emphasize that again at Gettysburg, famously reminding the country that its founding was rooted in the proposition that “all men are created equal.”

The Declaration was not a relic to Lincoln. Instead, he saw it as a promissory note. He used it as a statement of national purpose that the Civil War would test at terrible cost.

The Creed That Made a People

Creed: a set of fundamental beliefs | Merriam-Webster

In my piece on Memorial Day, I discussed how those we honored were bound not by blood but by something deeper. It’s what Lincoln recognized and what makes Americans uniquely American. It’s the American Creed. Not a religious one, but one that is far more universal, as it binds a diverse group of people into one nation. And it begins with the five powerful words that Jefferson paraphrased from another source into the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.

“all men are created equal”

Contrary to what many people believe, America is not a nation defined by common ancestry, religion, or culture. Being American requires only one simple belief: that the Declaration’s principles matter. They are not ornamental. They are the civic foundation enshrined in our founding document in perpetuity.

The Promise That Still Judges Us

Equality: the quality or state of being equal | Merriam-Webster

For 250 years, American society struggled with equality. Even today, despite progress towards its vision, the Declaration’s equality clause remains an uncomfortable topic. Each new generation continues to ask whether American institutions, laws, and habits are aligned with the principle the country placed at the center of its birth certificate. Countering those challenges is a belief that equality has been achieved. And there lies the rub.

The genius of the Declaration in 1776 is not that it allowed colonial Americans to congratulate themselves on achieving, or even recognizing, equality. On the contrary, many at the time openly recognized the hypocrisy. Still, what the founders did realize was that they had created a nation on the premise that all are created equal, knowing that, in perpetuity, every exclusion would become harder to defend, every injustice more visible, and every generation responsible for deciding whether the promise would remain rhetoric or become reality.

250 years later, we still shoulder that responsibility.

The Declaration was America’s beginning, but it also gave the nation an aspirational endpoint. It did not announce that equality had been achieved. It declared the standard by which America would be measured. Nearly 250 years later, that standard still judges us — not because the founders fully understood it, and not because they faithfully lived it, but because they wrote down a promise too large for their own age and too enduring for ours to escape.

Also in this Series

Author’s Note: This is the first in a series of essays leading up to America’s 250th birthday. The series will explore the meaning of E Pluribus Unum — “Out of many, one” — and what that founding aspiration asks of us today.

Before We Were One

Every Memorial Day, we see the same image: rows of white headstones stretching across quiet hillsides and national cemeteries.

Two hundred and fifty years ago this month, Americans were confronting a different image: thirteen separate colonies trying to imagine themselves as one people. In May 1776, before Jefferson’s words had been written, before there was a Constitution, before there was even a United States, Virginia instructed its delegates to propose that the colonies become “free and independent states.”

It was an extraordinary leap. These colonies did not share a single ancestry, denomination, economy, or regional identity. Yet they increasingly came to believe they were bound by something greater than blood or geography.

What Holds Us Together?

Today, as Americans gather this Memorial Day, we find ourselves wrestling again. This time it’s not about becoming one nation, but whether we can continue to be one and what that really means.

As we gather to honor those who gave their lives in service to their country, let’s reflect not only on their sacrifice but also on what makes Americans one people. Those we honor offer an answer. They were never unified by blood. They were unified by belief.

Different Stories, Same Oath

Consider much of world history before 1776. People often fought for kings, tribes, territories, dynasties, or shared identities rooted in blood, language, religion, or geography. America emerged differently.

Our first war as a people was fought not over ethnic, cultural, or religious differences, but over principles—self-government, liberty, and the belief that legitimacy came from the consent of the governed rather than inherited authority.

Those who took up arms against Great Britain were hardly identical. They came from different colonies, religious traditions, cultures, and national origins. Yet they increasingly saw themselves as part of something larger than themselves.

Likewise, over the next 250 years, that pattern would repeat itself whenever America went to war. Immigrants and foreign-born allies fought in the Revolution. Black patriots and Oneida warriors served the Continental cause. During the Civil War, Irish and German regiments filled the Union ranks, while nearly 180,000 Black soldiers served in the United States Colored Troops. In World War II, Japanese Americans of the 442nd fought while many of their families remained behind barbed wire; Black pilots trained at Tuskegee served in segregated units; and Navajo Code Talkers helped secure victory in the Pacific. In Vietnam, and later in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans from rural towns, large cities, immigrant families, and every region of the country served together under the same flag.

These Americans did not always look alike, worship alike, or come from the same backgrounds, but they fought under a common idea.

We see this reality not only in statistics, but in stories. One of the subtle strengths of Band of Brothers is that Easy Company is not presented as a unit of identical Americans. A Philadelphia street kid serves beside a quiet woodsman from Virginia. A Yale-educated officer leads men from farms, factory towns, and immigrant neighborhoods. By Bastogne, those distinctions matter less than the mission they share and the trust they place in one another. That is often how America has worked at its best: not by erasing difference, but by binding difference to a common purpose.

A Creedal Nation

Historian Gordon S. Wood argues that America did something unusual in human history: it created a state before it created a nation. Many nations formed around a common ethnicity, language, religion, or ancestry and then built governments around those identities. America moved in the opposite direction. It had to turn thirteen colonies — and eventually people from every corner of the world — into one nation.

Americans spent generations trying to answer that question. Constitutions established institutions. Immigration brought wave after wave of new Americans. Efforts followed to “Americanize” newcomers and forge a common national identity. Yet Wood argues that the real answer ultimately proved deeper than culture or ancestry. Describing America as a “creedal nation,” he correctly notes that Americans became a people not because they shared a single bloodline, religion, ethnicity, or culture, but because they came to share a set of principles.

Lincoln’s Answer

Abraham Lincoln recognized this during one of the nation’s darkest moments. By Lincoln’s time, America had already become too large and too diverse for ancestry alone to define who belonged. Today, after generations of immigration, migration, intermarriage, enslavement, emancipation, exclusion, naturalization, and service, that reality is even more pronounced.

Lincoln understood this better than anyone. At Gettysburg, he did not define the nation by lineage, soil, or ancestry. He reached back to the Declaration and its claim that “all men are created equal.” In doing so, he offered a way for Americans of different races, religions, ethnicities, and origins to see themselves as part of the same national story.

Still Becoming One People

Still, today, as immigration and demographic change continue reshaping America, many seem to believe that being American can be easily defined by the tangible: how we look, speak, believe, and even celebrate. Debates over language, culture, and national identity suggest we are still wrestling with the same question Americans faced since May of 1776: what exactly makes us one people?

The Creed They Defended

The Americans we honor on Memorial Day may offer an answer.

• They did not all look alike.

• They did not all worship alike.

• They did not all come from the same places.

• They did not share the same traditions and customs.

But they took the same oath. They served under the same flag. And many gave their lives for the same republic.

So this Memorial Day, as we honor those who gave their lives in service to this country, and as we begin the final weeks before the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we should ask ourselves a harder question: what still makes us one people?

The answer cannot be ancestry. It cannot be language, religion, race, region, or party.

If America is to remain one nation drawn from many, the answer must still be the creed first announced in 1776:

Those ideals belong not to a bloodline, but to a people committed to the unfinished work of making those words true.

Related

One of my first memories of military chaplains—and perhaps one shared by many in my generation—is Father John Mulcahy from M*A*S*H, played by William Christopher. Mulcahy was a First Lieutenant in the Army Chaplain Corps, but what made him memorable was not rank alone, and certainly not denomination alone. It was the way he embodied both. He was unmistakably a priest, yet also unmistakably an officer—trusted enough to move within the command, but humane enough to be a refuge from it. He belonged to the institution without being consumed by it. He served the wounded, the grieving, the frightened, the faithful, and the skeptical alike.

Father Mulcahy represented something the military long understood: chaplains need both religious identity and military standing. That is why Hegseth’s directive gets the role wrong.

A few years after M*A*S*H ended its run, the new pastor at my Lutheran church in my hometown was a Chaplain and a First Lieutenant in the Army Reserve. When I was in college, I remember him telling me, “David, I have three goals for you to consider: becoming an officer in the military, attending seminary, and marrying someone awesome.” I ultimately achieved two of the three; seminary was not in the cards for me.

A few years after that, on my first ship, I became friends with Navy Chaplain Captain Earl Boyette, the command chaplain aboard USS George Washington. He had begun his military life as a Marine, then went to college and seminary before returning to serve both his country and his faith as a Navy chaplain. His first chaplain assignment was with frontline Marine units during the Vietnam War. A couple of weeks before I married my awesome wife, he retired from the Navy after nearly 30 years of service, most of it as an officer and chaplain. Then, on my wedding day, he put the uniform back on and delivered the homily—as a Baptist minister—during a Catholic wedding Mass. That, too, was a lesson in what military chaplains are meant to be: grounded in their own faith, but called to serve far beyond it.

Those memories stayed with me because they reflect something the military long understood: chaplains need both religious identity and military standing.

Why Chaplains Have Always Been Both

The American military chaplaincy is older than the country itself. The Army traces its Chaplain Corps to July 29, 1775, when the Continental Congress authorized chaplains for the Continental Army. The Navy’s chaplaincy dates to 1775, serving both the Navy and the Marine Corps, and the Air Force established its own Chaplain Corps after becoming a separate service in 1947. For two and a half centuries, chaplains have been woven into the life of the force in war and peace alike. Their mission has never been limited to conducting worship services. They provide religious care, confidential counseling, ethical counsel, and advice to commanders on morale, spiritual readiness, and the free exercise of religion.

That history explains why chaplains have rank in the first place. They are commissioned officers, not as a courtesy, but because the military is a hierarchical institution. Their rank gives them access, credibility, and the standing to function inside the chain of command. At the same time, chaplains have “rank without command,” a distinction that captures the balance perfectly: they are fully officers, but not commanders in the ordinary sense. Their denomination gives them religious authenticity. Their rank gives them institutional effectiveness.

Military tradition has long reflected that balance. Chaplains have never been barred from visibly displaying their faith. On the contrary, they have long worn symbols identifying their faith tradition on their uniforms, along with the insignia of their rank. In that respect, they are no different from doctors and lawyers in uniform, who also wear both rank and professional insignia. One identifies their place in the military; the other identifies the profession they bring to it. The chaplain’s identity has never been one or the other. It has always been both.

What Hegseth Gets Wrong

That is why Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directive is so misguided. His justification—that chaplains will still retain rank, but will no longer display it while showing faith insignia instead to emphasize their spiritual role—is misleading. It creates the false impression, especially for Americans unfamiliar with military practice, that chaplains were somehow prevented from expressing their faith before. They were not. The long-standing balance was the point.

Hegseth appears to believe chaplains should be seen first as religious leaders rather than as officers, and that making rank less visible will better reflect their spiritual role and make them more approachable. But the whole point of the Chaplain Corps is not to separate spiritual care from military authority. It is to integrate the two in service to the force. A chaplain’s authority is not sacramental alone. It is also organizational.

When a young service member walks into a chaplain’s office, that relationship is shaped not only by the chaplain’s denomination but by the fact that the chaplain understands military life from inside the system. When a commander seeks counsel on morale, ethics, or religious accommodation, the chaplain’s rank is part of what gives that counsel standing. To make rank invisible is to weaken one of the institutional tools that make the chaplaincy effective.

Why This Matters in a Plural Force

The directive is even more short-sighted in a religiously plural force. The Chaplain Corps does not exist only for Christians or only for people of faith. It exists to help protect the free exercise rights of everyone in uniform, including those of minority faiths and those with no faith. That is essential in a constitutional republic. The military chaplaincy is not supposed to function as an arm of religious preference. It is supposed to ensure that service members can live out their beliefs—or lack of them—within the demands of military service.

That is why the optics matter. The more chaplains are presented primarily as visible representatives of faith groups rather than as officers charged with serving the whole force, the easier it becomes for some troops to conclude that chaplains are “for religious people” rather than for everyone. That narrows trust where trust should be broadest. A Jewish service member, a Muslim service member, a Buddhist service member, a Hindu service member, a Christian service member, or an atheist sailor should all be able to look at a chaplain and understand two things at once: this is a person of genuine faith, and this is also a commissioned officer whose duty includes protecting my place in the force. Again, this is no different from a Medical Doctor or Lawyer providing their professional services while also serving as a commissioned officer.

The Balance the Military Already Had Right

There is a deeper problem here as well. Hegseth is treating symbolism as though it can substitute for institutional design. But the Chaplain Corps has endured for 250 years precisely because it was designed to hold together difficult tensions: faith and pluralism, conscience and command, personal belief and constitutional obligation. Remove one side of that balance from public view, and you do not purify the office. You distort it. A chaplain who appears only as a faith representative risks seeming less like a trusted staff officer for the whole command and more like a denominational figure operating adjacent to it.

The military already has a way to honor both dimensions of the chaplain’s role: rank insignia and faith insignia together. That arrangement recognizes that chaplains are neither generic counselors nor sectarian mascots. They are clergy in uniform, embedded in a constitutional military, serving service members across lines of belief and unbelief. Their faith identity gives them authenticity. Their officer rank gives them effectiveness. Undermine either one, and you weaken the office.

A Directive That Deserves Reconsideration

For that reason, this directive deserves criticism and reconsideration. It mistakes visibility for substance. It elevates one part of the chaplain’s identity while obscuring the other. And in doing so, it risks making chaplains appear less accessible to the very people they are meant to serve outside their own traditions. In a force as religiously diverse and constitutionally bounded as ours, that is not a small mistake. It is a failure to understand the genius of the Chaplain Corps itself.

I live in North Carolina, a state where military service is not an abstraction. We are home to one of the largest veteran communities in the country, with veterans in every county. Military members and their families living in the NC communities of Fayetteville, Jacksonville, and Goldsboro also understand both the necessity and the burden of war.

War Talk Is Never Just Talk

That reality is why I cannot shrug off the rhetoric we’ve heard in recent days from the highest levels of our government. President Donald Trump described killing as an “honor.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised “no quarter, no mercy.”

Some will say: It’s just talk. War talk. Chest-thumping. Ignore it.

But words in wartime are never “just talk.” They shape what citizens accept, what soldiers believe is expected, and what enemies fear we mean. And in this case, the words also collide—directly—with law, with the professional military ethic, and with the constitutional design that is supposed to keep war from becoming the private project of any one leader.

“No Quarter” Is Not a Metaphor

Start with “no quarter.” In everyday conversation, it sounds like a swaggering way to say “we intend to win.” But in the law of armed conflict, “denial of quarter” is not swagger. It has a precise meaning: refusing to spare the life of someone who has surrendered—or is trying to. Customary international humanitarian law prohibits ordering that no quarter be given, threatening it, or conducting hostilities on that basis. The same prohibition appears in Additional Protocol I, Article 40, which bans orders “that there shall be no survivors.”

Sadly, this is not the first time we have had this debate during the current term of President Trump. At the end of last year, Americans learned that survivors of the first drug boat attack in September 2025 were subsequently killed in what appears to be a direct violation of the law.1

The American Military Tradition of Restraint

This is not a foreign imposition on American arms. It is consistent with an American line that runs back to the Civil War. The 1863 Lieber Code—General Orders No. 100 Article 16—famously rejects cruelty for revenge: “Military necessity does not admit of cruelty… for revenge.” It insists that necessity does not license everything, and that war should not be conducted in a way that makes peace “unnecessarily difficult.” That is the DNA of a professional force: disciplined violence constrained by law and purpose.

The strategic tradition makes the same point from a different direction. Clausewitz’s most familiar line—that war is a continuation of policy by other means—was never meant to glorify killing. It was meant to subordinate war to political purpose. Sun Tzu, in his own register, praises the victory that avoids maximal destruction, describing “supreme excellence” as breaking resistance without fighting.

The best tradition of military thought treats war as an instrument, not an identity.

The Constitution’s Guardrails

So when a president casts killing as a personal “honor,” the danger is not only moral. It is strategic. A nation that treats war like a stage for virtuosity invites escalation, miscalculation, and endless conflict.

That is where the Constitution comes in—a document designed in part to prevent war from becoming the prerogative of one will. Congress is explicitly granted the power to declare war. The president is commander in chief, but that role presumes a military authorized and funded through Congress. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 reasserts the principle: introducing U.S. forces into hostilities is legitimate only pursuant to a declaration of war, specific statutory authorization, or a national emergency created by an attack on the United States or its forces.

Those are not dusty civics-class abstractions. They are guardrails. They exist because the founders understood something timeless: executives have incentives to act quickly, to frame conflict in heroic terms, and to consolidate power in the name of security. The legislative branch exists to slow that impulse down—to demand clarity, limits, and accountability before the nation crosses the line from peace into war.

Faith Rejects Dehumanization

Religious faith—across traditions—reinforces the same moral boundary: that human beings do not become subhuman because they are enemies. An interfaith statement like the 2019 “Document on Human Fraternity” ties faith to recognizing the other as a brother or sister to be supported and loved. The Catholic moral tradition states bluntly that noncombatants and prisoners must be treated humanely and that extermination is a grave moral crime. Islam’s scripture explicitly pairs fighting with limits—“do not exceed the limits”—and frames unjust killing as a catastrophe. Jewish tradition similarly teaches that destroying a life is akin to destroying a world.

The details differ, but the moral direction converges: restraint is not weakness; it is civilization.

History’s Warning

History shows why this matters. Atrocity rarely begins with paperwork. It begins with language that trains a population to stop seeing the enemy as human. Nazi propaganda compared people to rats. Rwandan extremists called Tutsis “Inyenzi”—cockroaches—and spoke of extermination. Ottoman-era perpetrators described Armenians as “microbes” to be killed. [27] The Khmer Rouge taught that keeping people alive brought “no benefit.”

When leaders talk as if mercy is contemptible and killing is honorable, they are not merely venting emotion. They are loosening the knots that bind power to law.

Not in Our Name

Americans know better, especially those who have served in the military. Many veterans have seen what happens when clear objectives vanish, and war becomes atmosphere. We know the difference between resolve and rage. And we know that our troops should never be asked to carry the moral burden of rhetoric that confuses cruelty with strength.

Not in the name of a professional military, whose legitimacy depends on discipline. Not in the name of a constitutional republic, whose legitimacy depends on lawful authorization. Not in the name of faith traditions that insist human dignity does not disappear when conflict begins.

War may sometimes be necessary. But it is never an “honor” to kill. And it is never lawful—nor American—to promise “no quarter.”

Related

The optics of victory are easy. Strategy is harder.

Donald Trump has always understood something many politicians never quite grasp: politics is theater. Long before entering politics, he built his public persona around spectacle—branding, television, and carefully staged moments designed to look decisive and dramatic. In that world, success is measured by the scene audiences remember: the reveal, the victory, the moment when the cameras capture a triumphant ending.

That instinct now appears to shape the public narrative surrounding the war with Iran. For example, since hostilities began, the White House has turned U.S. military operations into entertainment by mixing real missile strikes with clips from action films and video games and sharing them on social media.1

Additionally, in recent days, Trump has repeatedly emphasized the success of U.S. military operations, describing the campaign as “very complete” and highlighting the destruction of Iranian capabilities.2

“I think the war is very complete, pretty ​much. They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got ​no Air Force.”

President Trump on Military Action in Iran

The framing is simple and compelling: the mission succeeded.

Yet another story is unfolding at the same time. Across the region, retaliatory attacks, damaged infrastructure, economic disruption, and civilian casualties continue to emerge as the broader consequences of the conflict become clearer.3

“We're not getting a lot of information about the strikes on U.S. facilities in Bahrain and Qatar. We're getting information from commercial satellite photos, not from the Pentagon, not from the State Department. And I think that's a real concern. They're giving a lot of detail about what targets they're hitting in Iran, but not what is being hit in Bahrain, Qatar, and also the Emirates.”

NPR Pentagon Correspondent Tom Bowman

The contrast between these two narratives is striking. One resembles the structure of a classic Hollywood war movie: a clear objective, a daring operation, and a climactic moment when the target explodes.

Roll credits.

But real wars rarely end when the mission succeeds.

War Movies and How We Understand Conflict

War movies endure in part because they shape how we imagine conflict itself. Some tell stories of daring missions and decisive victories. Others explore the human cost of combat or the political decisions that send soldiers into battle. Still others revisit real wars to examine how tactical success and strategic outcomes do not always align.

Taken together, these films reveal something important: the moment when the guns fall silent is rarely the moment when the story of the war is finished.

The Hollywood Version of War

Hollywood has spent decades telling stories about war—and those stories shape how many people imagine victory. The structure is familiar to anyone who has watched a classic World War II adventure film like The Guns of Navarone.

In the 1961 film, a small Allied commando team undertakes an audacious mission: to infiltrate a Nazi-controlled island fortress and destroy massive artillery guns threatening Allied ships. The entire story builds toward a single climactic moment—the destruction of those guns.

The explosives detonate. The fortress erupts in flames. The threat is eliminated.

Mission accomplished.

Hollywood war stories often end there. The objective is clear, the operation succeeds, and the audience leaves the theater satisfied that victory has been achieved.

What makes films like that satisfying is the simplicity.

But the logic of cinema is not the logic of strategy.

When the Script Falls Apart

Black Hawk Down

Modern war films sometimes capture this tension more honestly. Early in Black Hawk Down, commanders brief American soldiers on what appears to be a straightforward mission: a quick raid to capture Somali militia leaders and return to base within the hour.

What follows instead is a prolonged urban battle in Mogadishu.

Helicopters are shot down. Reinforcements struggle to reach crash sites. What began as a short operation becomes a grinding fight for survival.

The film illustrates a reality military professionals know well: war rarely follows the script written in the briefing room.

The War That Comes After the Battle

In Harm’s Way

A very different perspective appears in In Harm’s Way, the 1965 World War II drama starring John Wayne.

Unlike many war films, its emotional center is not simply combat heroics but the aftermath of war. The film spends as much time with the wounded, the grieving, and the commanders forced to reckon with the human cost of their decisions as it does with the battles themselves.

Ships are sunk. Sailors are killed. Families live with the consequences of decisions made far from the battlefield.

Professional military officers understand this instinctively. Tactical success and human cost coexist. A strike can achieve its objective and still leave behind instability, damage, and unintended consequences.

The explosion may be the climax.

Strategy determines how the story ends.

That is why the rolling credits at the end of In Harm’s Way are so poignant. Crashing ocean waves set to a somber, haunting orchestration, the filmmaker depicts the “chaos, turbulence, and violent upheaval” of war.

When the Political Story Is Missing

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Yet casualties and damage are only part of the equation.

Military force is never an end in itself. As the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously argued, war is a continuation of politics by other means. Military operations are tools used to achieve political objectives.

Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove satirizes what happens when that relationship breaks down. In the film’s famous War Room, political leaders and military commanders debate procedures and protocols while a nuclear crisis spirals toward catastrophe.

The absurdity lies in the disconnect between action and purpose. Military machinery moves forward even as the political rationale behind it becomes increasingly unclear.

The satire carries a serious warning: military power without clear political objectives can quickly become dangerous improvisation.

Winning the Battle, Losing the Ending

Charlie Wilson’s War

In Charlie Wilson’s War, the United States secretly supports Afghan fighters resisting the Soviet Union during the 1980s. The immediate objective is achieved: the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan.

Washington celebrates the victory.

Yet in the film’s most important moment, a CIA officer warns that the United States has just won the war but is about to lose the peace.

The lesson is simple: tactical success can coexist with strategic neglect.

The Difference Between Optics and Strategy

Leadership in wartime is not judged only by whether a mission succeeds. It is judged by whether leaders maintain the judgment and credibility necessary to navigate what comes next.

Military professionals often describe war in three levels—tactical, operational, and strategic—and success at one level does not guarantee success at the others.

The Caine Mutiny

That lesson appears in The Caine Mutiny.4 As pressure mounts aboard a wartime destroyer, Captain Queeg becomes increasingly fixated on proving his tactical competence while losing the confidence of those around him.

The film’s lesson is subtle but enduring: isolated successes do not necessarily prove sound judgment.

Real Wars Don’t End When the Target Explodes

None of this diminishes the extraordinary professionalism of the United States military. When American forces execute complex operations successfully, it reflects years of training, discipline, and sacrifice.

But the role of political leadership is not simply to celebrate operational success. It is to explain the strategy that makes those operations meaningful—aligning what strategists call the ends, ways, and means of war.

Why this action? Why now? What outcome are we trying to produce?

In The Guns of Navarone, the story ends the moment the guns explode, and the mission succeeds.

Real wars rarely end that way.

Hollywood war movies end when the target explodes because audiences expect closure.

Real wars rarely provide that luxury.

The explosion may be the climax.

But strategy determines how the story ends.

Hollywood may shape how we imagine victory. History determines what victory actually means.

Since the Allied victory in World War II, the outcomes of American military action have rarely been so definitive.

And that responsibility ultimately belongs not to the men and women who carry out the mission, but to the political leaders who made the decision to execute it and clearly define what the war was meant to achieve in the first place.

Editor’s Note on Film References

This essay uses several films as cultural lenses for understanding how wars are often framed in public narratives. The films referenced span a range of storytelling approaches. Dr. Strangelove (1964) is a satire and entirely fictional, though inspired by real Cold War debates over nuclear strategy. The Guns of Navarone (1961), In Harm’s Way (1965), and The Caine Mutiny (1954) are works of historical fiction—fictional stories set within real wartime contexts and informed by the experiences of those who served. By contrast, Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) and Black Hawk Down (2001) are dramatizations of real historical events, depicting U.S. involvement in the Soviet-Afghan War and the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, respectively. The films are used here not as historical evidence, but as familiar cultural narratives that illustrate different ways Americans have come to understand war.

Has Stephen Miller ever watched Star Trek?

If there is one thing that Stephen Miller seems extraordinarily capable of doing, it is opening on something with little or no knowledge of the subject matter. In his role as a presidential advisor, Miller has repeatedly demonstrated a confidence untethered from expertise—often doubling down even when confronted with basic facts. Even conservative Republicans question his expertise, like North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis:

“Look, either Stephen Miller needs to get into a lane where he knows what he’s talking about or get out of this job.”

NC Senator Thom Tillis (R) on CNN

Last week, Stephen Miller ventured into the final frontier with an incredible display of pop culture ignorance. Commenting on a video clip from the Star Trek franchise’s new series on Paramount+, he complained that Star Trek had become “woke” on X, which received many humorous and sarcastic replies that easily can be summarized with this phrase:

Since the very first episode aired in September 1966, and throughout its six decades since, the franchise has returned again and again to questions of power, law, memory, dignity, and responsibility. These were not late additions. They were foundational to the universe Gene Roddenberry envisaged.

What has changed is not Star Trek, but the political moment in which its values are now treated as suspect. In that context, criticism like Miller’s is revealing not because it is provocative, but because it is ahistorical. It assumes the franchise once offered neutral adventure and only recently succumbed to ideology.

Below, I examine several episodes that will offer a different story.

Taken together, they demonstrate that what is now derided as “woke” has long been Star Trek’s operating system: a consistent skepticism of unchecked power, a defense of inherent dignity, and a refusal to accept injustice simply because it is orderly, legal, or widely accepted.

Historical Truth vs. National Myth Making

Who Controls the Story—and Why It Matters

If authoritarianism corrupts law, it almost always begins by corrupting memory. Nations rarely slide into repression overnight; they first learn to tell comforting stories about themselves. Star Trek has long treated this impulse not as harmless pride, but as a moral failure with real consequences.

No episode captures this dynamic more precisely than “Living Witness” (episode 23 in Star Trek: Voyager Season 4).

When the episode aired in 1998, the Cold War had ended and the United States was enjoying a triumphalist moment. History, many believed, had resolved itself. Living Witness offered a sharper warning: the end of conflict does not guarantee the end of dishonesty—a warning that feels uncomfortably familiar.

The episode depicts a future society that has rewritten its past. Voyager’s crew—long gone—are remembered as villains, their actions distorted to serve a nationalist narrative built on grievance and victimhood. The lie is not enforced by brute force, but by education, ceremony, and repetition.

This is where the parallel to contemporary rhetoric about “patriotic education” becomes impossible to ignore. In Living Witness, Voyager’s legacy is not rewritten through censorship or coercion. It is reshaped through incentives and institutions—until distortion hardens into orthodoxy. That pattern is not speculative science fiction. It is visible in several recent, concrete actions taken by the Trump administration, including:

• “Patriotic education” as a federal policy lever.1

• Quiet edits to the historical record at the Smithsonian.2

• White House–directed review of museum content for “Americanism.”3

• A chilling effect acknowledged by the museum sector itself.4

What ties these examples together is not ideology, but infrastructure. Education grants, museum captions, executive reviews, and commemorative timelines all function as mechanisms of memory. In Living Witness, Voyager’s story is reshaped precisely because these mechanisms reward grievance and punish complexity. The episode’s insight is not that societies lie, but that they often convince themselves they are merely streamlining the truth—making it more accessible, more unifying, more patriotic. Over time, repetition replaces evidence, and ceremony replaces accountability.

Living Witness rejects the premise that unity requires innocence. It insists that societies unwilling to confront uncomfortable truths will inevitably weaponize their past.

The moral posture is firm but earned. Truth triumphs not through outrage, but through evidence and moral courage. Reckoning, the episode argues, is not betrayal—it is maturity.

These are not isolated stories. Across the franchise, Star Trek returns to this moral question from different angles and eras. From proxy wars to erased histories, the episodes below examine how nations rewrite the past to justify the present.5

Authoritarianism, Loyalty Tests, and the Corruption of Law

How Democracies Slide—and What Comes After

While many episodes touched on authoritarian themes, no two episodes illustrate the arc of authoritarianism more clearly than “The Drumhead” (Episode 21 in Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4) and “Tribunal” (Episode 25 in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 2).

Read together, they form a before-and-after anatomy of how fear reshapes institutions.

The Drumhead | How It Starts

A legitimate investigation expands incrementally, propelled by fear and the belief that exceptional times justify exceptional measures. Each step appears reasonable in isolation. By the time the inquiry becomes a loyalty test, its participants no longer recognize how far they have drifted.

The episode’s enduring insight is procedural: authoritarianism does not arrive with speeches or banners. It advances through audits, investigations, and compliance demands that appear reasonable—until they are no longer optional.

This collides directly with contemporary rhetoric insisting that innocent people have nothing to fear, that scrutiny is patriotism, and that dissent signals disloyalty. The moral posture is preventative and absolute: stop this now, or it will not stop on its own.

Tribunal | How It Ends

Three years later, the Tribunal shows the end state. Guilt is presumed. Outcomes are predetermined. Law exists to legitimize punishment, not discover truth. The system is efficient, orderly, and morally empty.

Here, inevitability replaces accountability. The episode offers no illusion of reform—only judgment. When law detaches from justice, legality becomes oppression.

Predictive Warning?

This is where the parallel to contemporary rhetoric about “law and order” becomes impossible to ignore. In The Drumhead, authority advances not through decrees, but through investigations and audits—each step defensible on its own, corrosive in accumulation. Tribunal shows the end state of that logic: guilt presumed, outcomes predetermined, and law reduced to a mechanism for ratifying power rather than restraining it.

That pattern is not speculative science fiction. It is visible in several recent, concrete actions taken by the Trump administration, including:

• The removal or sidelining of career officials involved in politically sensitive investigations.6

• The use of federal law enforcement and investigative authority against perceived critics or protestors.7

• The framing of dissent and protest as obstruction or disloyalty rather than protected civic activity.8

What binds these examples is not ideology, but process. When scrutiny becomes selective, and accountability flows in only one direction, legality loses its moral force. Together, The Drumhead and Tribunal insist on a stark truth: if procedural drift is not confronted early, it does not self-correct—it hardens. And once inevitability replaces accountability, justice becomes indistinguishable from obedience.

This theme is a familiar one in science fiction and one that Star Trek used throughout its history, as seen in the following episodes. Each offers a storyline that traces the erosion of justice from its procedural beginnings to its hollow end state.9

Personhood, Rights, and Moral Standing

Who Counts—and Who Gets Written Off

Long before debates about AI or genetics, Star Trek confronted the ease with which fear turns the unfamiliar into the disposable. “The Devil in the Dark” (Episode 25 in Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1) remains one of its clearest statements.

A monster stalks miners. Fear escalates. Violence appears justified. Then understanding arrives: the “monster” is a mother defending her young. The killings were not malicious, but in defense.

The episode relies not on legal theory but empathy. Once understanding is achieved, violence becomes indefensible.

This challenges contemporary rhetoric that frames rights as conditional or revocable. The moral claim is simple and absolute: sentience confers dignity. Fear does not negate it.

This is where the episode’s moral claim collides directly with contemporary immigration rhetoric and actions.

• Abuses in federal immigration detention facilities.10

• Mistaken arrest and confinement of a U.S. citizen during an immigration raid. 11

• Broad enforcement tactics are chilling community cooperation.12

In The Devil in the Dark, violence feels justified until empathy intervenes—until those in power recognize that what they feared as a threat was, in fact, a being acting in defense of its own survival. Over the past year, immigration policy under the Trump administration has reflected a similar failure of imagination:

What The Devil in the Dark ultimately exposes is not malice, but moral shortcutting—the temptation to let fear substitute for understanding, and policy to substitute for empathy. The miners are not villains; they are frightened. But the episode refuses to accept fear as a justification for disposability. That lesson resonates in contemporary immigration enforcement, where apprehension and confinement too often precede recognition, and where even American citizens can be caught in systems that presume threat before humanity. Star Trek’s warning is not abstract: when institutions normalize suspicion, dignity becomes conditional, and harm is inflicted long before truth has a chance to intervene.

Star Trek returned to this theme with fresh stories in episodes that challenge the idea that rights are conditional or bestowed by authority.13

Systemic Injustice and Moral Complicity

When Polite Systems Commit Atrocities

“A Taste of Armageddon” (Episode 23 in Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1) strips injustice of chaos and reveals it as civilized. War is simulated. Casualties are calculated. Citizens calmly report for disintegration to make the numbers real.

No one screams. The system is humane, efficient—and monstrous.

The episode targets cruelty sustained by distance, where responsibility is outsourced to process. Captain Kirk’s response is uncompromising: any system that normalizes mass death, no matter how orderly, is illegitimate. When his ship and crew are now caught up in the computer calculations, Captain Kirk ultimately decides to force the warring factions into a choice: Actual War or Peace.

Anan 7: You realize what you have done?

Captain James T. Kirk: Yes, I do. I’ve given you back the horrors of war…Contact Vendikar. I think you'll find that they're just as terrified, appalled, horrified as you are, that they'll do anything to avoid the alternative I've given you. Peace or utter destruction. It's up to you.

When violence becomes orderly, justifiable, and repeatedly enacted by institutional authority, policy crosses into systemic harm. A Taste of Armageddon dramatizes that transformation with precision: a society that routinizes death through bureaucracy is not civilized—it is complacent. Recent U.S. military strikes on suspected drug trafficking vessels14 reflect a similar logic, where lethal force is normalized in the name of interdiction and human cost becomes secondary.

Rather than arresting or prosecuting suspected traffickers through the judicial process, these operations have relied on lethal drone and aircraft strikes, including follow-up attacks that killed survivors of initial strikes.15 The result is the same dynamic the episode condemns: harm that is organized, routine, and justified by procedure rather than restrained by moral accountability.

As with rewritten history and hollowed-out law, the danger lies not in chaos, but in normalization.

A Taste of Armageddon aired in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, when American leaders justified escalating violence through abstraction—body counts, metrics, and procedural authority—rather than moral clarity. Presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Richard Nixon framed war as rational, manageable, and legally sanctioned, even as its human cost mounted. Over the past 25 years, that same logic has resurfaced under presidents of both parties, from the post-9/11 “war on terror” to drone campaigns and precision strikes described as clean, efficient, and unavoidable. The technology has changed; the temptation has not. When violence is rendered orderly and distant, it becomes easier to sustain and harder to question.

A Taste of Armageddon delivers a blunt warning: a war that feels humane is often one we have stopped fully reckoning with.

Across the franchise, Star Trek repeatedly exposes how injustice becomes normalized when harm is administered through orderly systems.16

Questions Stephen Miller and other Star Trek Critics Should Ask Themselves

Stephen Miller and other anti-woke crusaders might pause to consider a few questions—not as a rebuke, but as an invitation from the franchise they claim to mourn.

If Star Trek has always argued that dignity is inherent rather than conditional, when did that principle become ideological excess?

If it has consistently warned that law without justice curdles into oppression, why is that warning now treated as subversive?

If it has shown that history can be rewritten not by force, but by institutions that reward comfort over truth, when did honesty become unpatriotic?

If it has demonstrated—from Vietnam-era abstractions to modern precision strikes—that violence grows more dangerous as it becomes cleaner, quieter, and more bureaucratic, why is moral reckoning now dismissed as weakness?

And finally, if Star Trek has never promised comfort to power—only accountability—why are so many critics surprised that it still refuses to do so?

These episodes do not demand adherence to a political program. They ask something older and harder: to recognize fear when it masquerades as virtue, to question systems that insist they are inevitable, and to extend moral concern beyond convenience, legality, or efficiency.

That is not a new direction for Star Trek. It is the franchise's throughline.

If that worldview now feels alien, the problem is not that Star Trek has changed.

It is that the distance between its values and those of its loudest critics has finally become impossible to ignore.

Other Posts In this Series

It is not an argument against faith or tradition, but a reflection on how belief, culture, and the natural world have long shaped one another.

After Christmas Day

Christmas has come and gone.

The lights are still up. The music lingers. Leftovers sit in refrigerators. Some gatherings were joyful; others were complicated. As with most things worth holding onto, the holiday likely did not arrive perfectly—and did not leave cleanly either. Regardless, it is in the past, and we now look forward.

As my family celebrated Christmas this year, we also entered a new chapter that calls for adjustment and acceptance. In October, my oldest daughter married, and with that joyful milestone, we welcomed a new family member: a son-in-law.

Events like weddings bring happiness, but they also bring change—sometimes in ways that are harder to acknowledge. My wife and I are now learning what it means to share our daughter with another family, just as our own parents once had to adapt. There is a quiet grief in that shift, even as there is deep gratitude for the life she is building.

Yet, just as societies evolve, families do as well. And in learning to adapt, we often discover that what feels like loss at first becomes something else entirely—an expansion, not a diminishment.

Christmas, like families themselves, does not remain fixed. It grows, stretches, and rearranges itself. Because Christmas has never been a single moment or a settled meaning, it has always lived in the space between belief and culture, tradition and adaptation, faith and season.

History suggests that fighting that reality has never preserved the holiday. Adapting to it has.

And understanding that history may be the surest way to loosen our grip on the arguments that return every year.

A Once Marginal Holiday

It is easy to forget, amid modern debates, that Christmas was once deeply contested—and often unimportant—even within early American life.

Following the Reformation, many Protestant traditions rejected Christmas outright. They found no biblical command to celebrate Christ’s birth and worried the holiday encouraged excess, superstition, or misplaced devotion. The intensity of post-Reformation opposition to Christmas can sound startling to modern ears. John Calvin, writing in the mid-sixteenth century, left little doubt about his view.

“If you think that Jesus Christ was born today, you are as crazed as wild beasts. For when you elevate one day alone for the purpose of worshiping God, you turn it into an idol. You insist you do so for the honor of God, but it is more for the honor of the devil.”

Calvin’s language is severe, but it reflects a sincere theological conviction: that worship should be governed by Scripture alone, and that uncommanded holy days risked distorting faith rather than deepening it.

That conviction was not limited to Europe. In seventeenth-century New England, Puritan ministers expressed similar concerns, often in even more vivid terms.

“The generality of Christmas-keepers observe that festival after such a manner as is highly dishonourable to the name of Christ. How few are there comparatively that spend those holidays (as they are called) after an holy manner. But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in mad Mirth …”

– Reverend Increase Mather

In Puritan New England, Christmas celebrations were discouraged and at times banned altogether. Churches held no special services. Shops remained open. December 25 passed largely unremarked.

Even after independence, Christmas held little civic or religious significance in much of the United States. Different regions observed—or ignored—it according to their dominant religious traditions. For much of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Christmas was not a national concern or a shared public moment.

Notably, Christmas did not become a federal holiday until 1870, when Congress—under President Ulysses S. Grant—designated it as one of the nation’s first official civic holidays. That recognition applied initially to federal employees in Washington, D.C., and reflected the day’s growing cultural importance rather than any religious mandate. Christmas entered federal law not as doctrine, but as custom.

By the time the government recognized Christmas, Americans had already been celebrating it—unevenly, locally, and often outside formal religious structures—for decades.

The Holiday That Returned—From the Margins

What ultimately revived Christmas in America was not theological agreement or ecclesiastical decree. It was culture—and, importantly, immigration.

In the nineteenth century, waves of immigrants brought Christmas traditions with them, particularly from Germany, Ireland, and later Southern and Eastern Europe. Many were Catholics or members of liturgical Protestant traditions. They decorated homes, sang carols, held midnight services, exchanged gifts, and treated Christmas as a season rather than an afterthought.

Catholic immigrants, in particular, were often viewed with suspicion or hostility in American public life. Anti-Catholic sentiment shaped politics, education, and social boundaries. Yet their traditions endured—quietly, persistently—reshaping the culture around them. Christmas trees, Advent wreaths, midnight Mass, and seasonal music spread not because they were imposed, but because they were practiced.

At the same time, writers and artists helped reimagine Christmas for a broader audience. Clement Clarke Moore and Charles Dickens presented Christmas as a time of family, generosity, and moral renewal. Their influence was secular, sentimental, and widely accessible—and enormously effective.

Stores decorated. Cities lit trees. Employers began offering time off. Churches that had once resisted the holiday started to reclaim it, in part out of pastoral concern. Congregations were already gathering elsewhere. Christmas, once dismissed as unnecessary, became a moment people expected to be marked.

A Familiar Irony

Much of today’s anxiety about Christmas rests on the assumption that the holiday has always stood on firm and uncontested ground. History suggests otherwise.

Many of the most vocal defenders of Christmas today share an instinct that would have aligned them closely with those earlier Protestant critics—skeptical of excess, wary of secular influence, protective of doctrinal purity. The irony is not hypocrisy, but amnesia.

Christmas did not endure because it remained unchanged. It survived because it adapted—as did the communities who made it their own.

The arguments we revisit each year—over greetings, displays, or public language—are echoes of older debates that the holiday already survived.

Looking To Next Year

If history teaches us anything, it is that Christmas does not need to be defended to endure. It needs to be understood.

The season has always made room for sacred meaning and secular joy, for faith and fellowship, for tradition and reinvention. It has survived precisely because it belongs to more than one story.

In that sense, Christmas asks of us what life so often does: patience with change, generosity toward difference, and a willingness to share what (and who) we love rather than guard it.

As we look toward future seasons—toward Christmases yet to come—we might choose curiosity over conflict, generosity over grievance. We might let “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays” be what they were always meant to be: gestures of goodwill, not lines in a cultural trench.

The light returns whether we argue about it or not. It will continue to do so each year—because the season is the reason.

Notes & Sources

• Winter Holidays (including Yule and Saturnalia) — an overview of solstice-related festivals in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Winter Holidays: Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa | Yule, Saturnalia, & More (Britannica)

• Yule Festival — Britannica article on the Germanic winter festival associated with the solstice. Yule Festival (Britannica)

• Why Winter Solstice Celebrations Persist — SAPIENS exploration of solstice traditions and their meaning. Why Winter Solstice Celebrations Persist (SAPIENS)

• A Brief History of Christmas — essay by John Steele Gordon on the historical evolution of the holiday (Wall Street Journal). A Brief History of Christmas (WSJ, John Steele Gordon) (Download PDF Version Here)

• Christmas: Origins and History — Encyclopaedia Britannica page explaining how December 25 came to be associated with the Nativity and late-winter festivals. Christmas: Origins and History (Britannica)

Other Parts of the Series

This essay is part of a short series exploring why Christmas exists when it does—and why that history matters. It is not an argument against faith or tradition, but a reflection on how belief, culture, and the natural world have long shaped one another.

Christmas feels ancient. Timeless. Inevitable.

But historically speaking, it is none of those things.

For the earliest Christians, the birth of Christ was not the center of the faith—and for a long time, it was not celebrated at all.

A Faith Built on Resurrection, Not Birth

Early Christianity was oriented around a single, world-altering claim: that Jesus rose from the dead.

The Resurrection—not the Nativity—was the theological anchor of the faith. Easter was the central observance, so central that in A.D. 325 the Council of Nicaea devoted formal attention to how it should be calculated and observed, anchoring the Christian calendar to Passover and the crucifixion rather than to any date of birth. From its earliest centuries, Christianity organized time around resurrection, not infancy.

Only two of the four Gospels—Matthew and Luke—include narratives of Jesus’s birth. Neither provides a date. There is no biblical command to celebrate it, and no evidence that the first generations of Christians did so.

Christianity did not begin with a manger scene.

It began with an empty tomb.

Christmas Arrives Late to the Calendar

It was not until the fourth century, as Christianity spread beyond its Jewish roots into the wider Roman world, that the Nativity began to appear as a formal feast.

By then, the Church faced a practical question: If the birth of Christ were to be celebrated, when should it be?

December 25 Was Chosen, Not Revealed

The choice of December 25 was not the result of divine “timestamping.” It was a decision shaped by culture, pastoral reality, and the rhythms of the existing calendar.

Late December was already crowded with meaning.

Across the Roman world, people gathered around the Winter Solstice. Saturnalia brought feasting, gift-giving, and suspended routines. December 25 itself was associated with Sol Invictus, the “Unconquered Sun,” a symbol of light’s return after darkness.

By placing Christmas here, the Church did not erase these traditions. It reinterpreted them.

• People were already gathering.

• Already celebrating.

• Already marking the turning of the year.

The Church followed the season and offered a new story within it.

Adaptation, Not Corruption

It is fashionable to describe this as “pagan roots,” as though it represents a compromise or dilution of faith. Historically, it looks more like adaptation—the same process by which Christianity translated itself across languages, cultures, and continents.

The Church did not ask people to abandon the moment they found meaningful. It asked them to see it differently.

Light returning after darkness became a theological metaphor as well as a natural one. Christ was proclaimed as Light of the World not in opposition to the season, but in harmony with it.

This was not syncretism by accident. It was pastoral wisdom—and a clear-eyed understanding of human behavior.

A Resonance Worth Noticing

The choice to place Christmas near the Winter Solstice carries a quiet resonance with some of Christianity’s most fundamental claims.1

The solstice marks the moment when the sun, having reached its lowest point, begins to return. Darkness does not disappear, but it has lost its dominance. The change is real, even if it is not yet visible.

Christianity tells a similar story. Resurrection does not erase suffering in an instant; it reorients time itself. Death remains real, but it no longer has the final word. Hope begins its work quietly, long before it can be seen.

Whether intentional or not, the season into which Christmas was placed already told that kind of story.

A Decision That Carried the Faith Forward

By anchoring Christmas to the turning of the year, Christianity placed its story inside a rhythm people already understood in their bodies and their bones.

That choice mattered.

It helped the faith take root beyond its original context. It made Christianity legible in a world shaped by seasons, labor, and survival. And it ensured that the celebration of Christ’s birth would endure—even when belief itself later fractured.

But that endurance would come at a cost.

Because in the centuries that followed, some Christians would come to reject Christmas altogether.

Looking Ahead

Christmas did not spread without resistance. In fact, in some places it nearly disappeared—dismissed as unscriptural, worldly, or worse.

That story unfolds most clearly in early America.

Part III will explore how Christmas survived opposition, how it was reinvented outside the church, and why today’s arguments about the holiday often miss the history that made it possible.

Notes & Sources

• Winter Holidays (including Yule and Saturnalia) — an overview of solstice-related festivals in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Winter Holidays: Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa | Yule, Saturnalia, & More (Britannica)

• Yule Festival — Britannica article on the Germanic winter festival associated with the solstice. Yule Festival (Britannica)

• Why Winter Solstice Celebrations Persist — SAPIENS exploration of solstice traditions and their meaning. Why Winter Solstice Celebrations Persist (SAPIENS)

• A Brief History of Christmas — essay by John Steele Gordon on the historical evolution of the holiday (Wall Street Journal). A Brief History of Christmas (WSJ, John Steele Gordon) (Download PDF Version Here)

• Christmas: Origins and History — Encyclopaedia Britannica page explaining how December 25 came to be associated with the Nativity and late-winter festivals. Christmas: Origins and History (Britannica)

Other Parts of the Series

Today marks the Winter Solstice—the longest night of the year.

It is not a loud moment. There is no announcement, no visible switch flipped in the sky. And yet, something important happens. The days stop getting shorter. The light, having reached its lowest point, begins—almost imperceptibly—to return.

Long before calendars were printed or holidays named, people noticed this moment. And they gathered around it.

Before Holidays, There Was Survival

For early European societies—particularly between roughly 100 and 400 BC—the Winter Solstice was not an abstraction. It was a marker of survival.

These were agrarian and pastoral communities. Food stores were at their lowest. Cold and illness were constant threats. Livestock that could not be fed through winter were slaughtered in late autumn, making midwinter one of the few times of relative abundance before scarcity deepened again.

The solstice mattered because it marked a turning point. The darkness had reached its limit. Whatever winter still held, it was no longer getting worse.

This was not superstition. It was observation.

Light, Fire, and Gathering

Across early European cultures—Celtic, Germanic, Norse, Mediterranean—the response to this turning shared common elements.

Light was central. Bonfires, torches, and candles were lit not as decoration, but as declaration. Darkness had not won.

Evergreens—pine, fir, holly, ivy—were brought indoors or displayed publicly. They were reminders that life endured even when the land appeared dead.

Feasting followed practical logic as much as ritual meaning. Fresh meat from recently slaughtered animals, fermented drinks, and communal meals helped prevent waste and reinforce bonds at the hardest point of the year.

And perhaps most importantly: people gathered. The solstice was not meant to be endured alone.

A Story Older Than Belief

What makes the Winter Solstice remarkable is not that it was celebrated, but that it was celebrated everywhere, often without contact or shared tradition.

• Northern Europeans marked Yule.

• Mediterranean cultures observed midwinter festivals tied to agricultural cycles.

• Persian communities celebrated Yalda Night.

• In East Asia, the solstice was recognized as a turning from darkness toward balance.

These were not borrowed rituals. They emerged independently because the sky itself imposed the same reality on everyone.

The solstice does not require belief.

It requires only attention.

While visiting San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with friends, we visited the Cañada de la Virgen in Guanajuato. It is an archaeological site of a pre-Hispanic settlement located on the northern border of Mesoamerica, whose main monuments were used for astronomical observations. The images below are from the site, including one of the sunset during a solstice (not sure if it was winter or summer solstice), and it perfectly aligns with the monument peak.

The Survival Instinct Still Exists

For many, the days and weeks between the autumn equinox and winter solstice are anxious ones. The “winter blues” set in as daylight hours decrease and temperatures fall. For those like me who enjoy outdoor activities—walking or cycling—there are fewer opportunities to do so. Still, some truly fall into depression during this time of year. Like people in earlier centuries, the Winter Solstice offers a meaningful tipping point toward spring, though one that requires patience and resolve to endure what still lies ahead. The solstice does not promise relief—it promises direction.

Perhaps the Winter Solstice is not meant to be celebrated so much as observed—with reflection and patience. Nothing visibly changes when it arrives. The cold still settles in, the nights remain long, and the world looks much the same the following morning. And yet, something has shifted. The darkness has reached its limit. From that point on, light is returning, quietly and without fanfare. There is comfort in that—not because it solves anything immediately, but because it reminds us that change often begins long before we can see its effects.

The Season Before the Story

The Winter Solstice was never about one culture or one belief. It was about recognizing that time itself had shifted—that the darkness had reached its boundary.

In the centuries that followed, this ancient season would take on new meanings and stories. Not to replace the solstice, but to travel with it. To give narrative and theology to a moment humanity already understood in its bones.

One of those stories would come to be known as Christmas.

Part II will explore how—and why—the early church chose this season, and what that decision reveals about faith, culture, and adaptation.

Notes & Sources

• Winter Holidays (including Yule and Saturnalia) — an overview of solstice-related festivals in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Winter Holidays: Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa | Yule, Saturnalia, & More (Britannica)

• Yule Festival — Britannica article on the Germanic winter festival associated with the solstice. Yule Festival (Britannica)

• Why Winter Solstice Celebrations Persist — SAPIENS exploration of solstice traditions and their meaning. Why Winter Solstice Celebrations Persist (SAPIENS)

• A Brief History of Christmas — essay by John Steele Gordon on the historical evolution of the holiday (Wall Street Journal). A Brief History of Christmas (WSJ, John Steele Gordon) (Download PDF Version Here)

• Christmas: Origins and History — Encyclopaedia Britannica page explaining how December 25 came to be associated with the Nativity and late-winter festivals. Christmas: Origins and History (Britannica)

Other Parts of the Series

Rob Reiner and his wife were artists of a life lived in public and in principle, and their violent deaths have left a hollow space for those of us who grew up with Reiner’s work—work that made us laugh, sharpened our moral instincts, and reminded us that stories can be a form of civic education. Tragedy like this should still us. It should call forth empathy, humility, and restraint.

Instead, it exposed something else.

A life of cultural contribution

Long before he became one of America’s most influential directors, Rob Reiner stepped into living rooms each week as Mike “Meathead” Stivic, Archie Bunker’s son‑in‑law on All in the Family. In that role, Reiner gave voice to the growing younger and more accepting generation of Americans. Willing to challenge prejudice through humor, Reiner’s award-winning performance showed us all how to challenge prevailing American paradigms rooted in misguided bigotry and ignorance. When Mike argued with Archie, it offered powerful allegories for how to debate issues—political, social, religious, and cultural—fiercely yet respectfully, without losing sight of his wife’s father's humanity. It was a performance that helped the country learn how to talk to itself. It’s a lesson that could be relearned today.1

As a director, Reiner’s range was extraordinary. I haven’t seen every film he made, but many of his films sit among my personal favorites. Even though his movies differed in tone and genre, they were united by common traits: compelling stories and interesting characters that served as mirrors for the audience, inviting them to reflect on society.

At times, Reiner held up a mirror and let us see ourselves through the lens of youthful curiosity and awkwardness (The Sure Thing, Stand by Me); through the complicated terrain of friendship and love (When Harry Met Sally, The Story of Us); and through reflections on life, mortality, and meaning (The Bucket List). At other moments, he turned his attention outward—examining how history remembers pivotal events and the people who shape them, or are shaped by them (Ghosts of Mississippi, LBJ), and how institutions fail before history ever gets the chance to judge them (Shock and Awe). And sometimes, through satire alone, he created fictional characters so vivid they became real to millions (This Is Spinal Tap).

Stories as a moral compass

Reiner’s greatest gift, however, may have been his instinct for archetype. His films gave us characters to admire and characters to recoil from—models of integrity and warnings against arrogance(The Princess Bride, A Few Good Men, The American President).

Through them, he offered a moral compass without sermonizing, trusting the audience to recognize the difference between strength and cruelty, courage and bravado, leadership and domination.

Unsurprisingly, many people disagreed with Reiner’s political views. He was outspoken, and his advocacy drew sharp criticism. That disagreement was real, sometimes heated, and often personal. But disagreement—however intense—has never been a license to abandon basic decency.

When decorum was needed most

In the days following his death, tributes came from across the political spectrum. Even those who differed with Reiner on politics acknowledged Reiner’s decency, cultural impact, and the human tragedy of the loss.

Against that backdrop, the response from President Trump stood out—not for its gravity, but for its absence of it. Rather than focusing his remarks on the tragic event and offering the nation’s condolences tot he Reiner’s family and friends, his public statement redirected attention inward, recasting a moment of shared mourning into one of personal grievance.

Presidents are not required to like everyone, in life or in death, but they are required to rise above themselves when the moment demands it.

Jessup—and then Humperdinck

It is tempting to reach for Colonel Nathan Jessep of A Few Good Men as an immediate point of comparison to the President’s arrogant leadership style.2 To be sure, the President would likely welcome it. Jessep’s contempt for law, his self‑justifying fury, his insistence that only he understands what must be done—all feel familiar. But Jessep, for all his menace, believes himself to be a tragic guardian. He imagines history will vindicate him.

A more accurate mirror is found in The Princess Bride.

Prince Humperdinck is not driven by conviction but by vanity. He plots murder not out of ideology but convenience, weaponizes tragedy for advantage, and cloaks cowardice in ceremony. He believes appearances are power and that decorum is something to be worn or discarded as needed. Most of all, he cannot imagine a world in which he is not the center of the story.

This is where Reiner’s insight becomes almost unbearably apt.

The punishment that endures

Unlike most villains, Humperdinck is allowed to live. Westley spares him—not out of mercy, but judgment. He leaves the prince alive with his cowardice intact, his ears unsealed, condemned to hear every shriek and cry uttered at the sight of him echo forever in his “perfect” ears.

It is a fairy‑tale sentence, but also a profoundly human one. The punishment is not exile or death; it is legacy.

A leader obsessed with his legacy rarely survives it. History does not preserve self-mythology; it preserves the moments when power was tested by tragedy and answered with vanity instead of restraint. In those moments, decorum is not ornamental—it is the moral minimum of leadership. When it is abandoned, the failure does not pass. It lingers, echoing long after the office is gone, until it becomes the legacy itself.

Prince Trumperdinck

Rob Reiner spent a lifetime providing us with stories that both entertained and challenged us. Perhaps his best ability was to provide us with examples of what bad leadership looks like—not with lectures, but with stories. In The Princess Bride, he gave us a ruler whose Machiavellianism became his Achilles’ heel, whose pride consumed his purpose, and whose final defeat was self‑inflicted.

In moments of national tragedy, we learn who our Prince Humperdincks truly are.

Reiner understood that lesson better than most. It is one of many gifts he leaves behind—and one we would do well not to ignore.

📜 The Revolution We Think We Know

When Ken Burns opens his new series The American Revolution with Episode 1, “In Order To Be Free,” he makes a bold choice: to complicate rather than canonize the founding of the United States.

We’re introduced not just to revolutionary heroes, but to loyalists, enslaved people, Indigenous nations, and ordinary civilians caught in the middle. The birth of the republic was not a clean break from tyranny—it was a civil war—a messy, violent, ideologically contested struggle for identity and meaning.

Burns reminds us that up to one-third of the colonial population remained loyal to the British Crown. They weren’t cartoon villains; they were conservatives—culturally, politically, and psychologically. They feared revolution, not because they loved tyranny, but because they hated disorder. They clung to monarchy, hierarchy, and tradition.

Sound familiar?

🧠 Loyalists Then, Culture Warriors Now

Today’s culture warriors—those banning books, attacking DEI programs, and demanding “neutral” history curricula—are spiritual descendants of the loyalists.

Just as the loyalists clung to empire, 2025’s anti-woke movement clings to a sanitized myth of American greatness. Both movements respond to disruption with panic. Both view inclusion and truth-telling as existential threats.

We see this in the backlash against efforts to tell a more complete story of America:

• Book bans targeting stories of Black and Indigenous people

• Legislation erasing the teaching of systemic racism

• Attacks on DEI framed as “divisive”

In each case, the logic is the same: preserve order, deny discomfort, protect identity.

🖖 The Mirror of Bele and Lokai

In Star Trek’s Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, the Enterprise encounters two aliens—Bele and Lokai—locked in eternal conflict. Each is half-black, half-white, but reversed. Their people have fought for generations over this difference.

The crew sees the absurdity. But to Bele and Lokai, difference is everything. One is the oppressor, the other the rebel. Their planet has been destroyed by war, yet they still fight. Bele is played by Frank Gorshin (best known as the Riddler in Batman), and represents authoritarian conservatism. Lokai is played by Lou Antonio, and represents the marginalized dissenter.

Bele is an enforcer. A zealot for the status quo. He speaks in absolutes. He denies injustice. He demands compliance.

“It is obvious to the most simpleminded that Lokai is of an inferior breed.” — Bele

His bigotry mirrors the logic of those who attack inclusive narratives today. Bele cannot imagine a society where differences are acknowledged and accepted; in his world, they are to be denied, or perhaps controlled. That impulse—to refuse to engage with uncomfortable truths—is echoed in today’s backlash against efforts to tell a fuller, more honest story of America.

We see this in the book bans targeting stories of Black and Indigenous people, where entire communities are written out of the national narrative because their experiences challenge a preferred version of the past. Bele would recognize that instinct: if a story threatens the dominant identity, remove the story.

We see it in legislation designed to erase discussion of systemic racism. Instead of grappling with generational harm, these laws attempt to flatten history into something tidy and unproblematic—a move not unlike Bele’s refusal to admit any injustice in his society.

If inequity cannot be acknowledged, it cannot be questioned, and the existing order remains unshaken.

And we see it in the attacks on DEI, often dismissed as “divisive” simply because they affirm the legitimacy of people and perspectives long marginalized. For Bele, acknowledging Lokai’s experience would destabilize his worldview. For today’s anti-DEI crusaders, acknowledging inequity threatens the myth of a perfect, unbroken America where everyone has always had equal opportunity.

In each of these modern conflicts, the logic is the same: preserve order, deny discomfort, protect identity—even if that means suppressing truth, silencing voices, or refusing to see what is right in front of us. It is the same flawed worldview that destroyed Bele and Lokai’s planet: a belief that the world must conform to one group’s comfort rather than expand to include everyone’s humanity.

🔍 Character Comparison

📚 When Identity Becomes the Battlefield

Ken Burns’ documentary urges us to reckon with the complexity of our founding. It includes enslaved men who fought for freedom they wouldn’t receive. It highlights the voices of women and Indigenous people, long left out. It shows a war not just of arms, but of competing ideals of liberty.

In contrast, the current push to restrict history teaching is Bele’s worldview in action:

• It elevates narrative purity over truth.

• It reduces complex realities to simple stories that feel easier—and safer—to control.

• It favors winning the argument over learning from the conversation.

Just like Bele and Lokai, America today finds itself locked in a war of identities—not over policy, but over whose story gets to define us. As Ken Burns shows in The American Revolution, even at our founding, we were never fully united—our struggle for liberty was also a struggle over who that liberty included. Then, as now, we weren’t always willing to destroy the shared world we inhabited, but we were willing to let it divide us. And that division, then as now, weakens the very freedom we claim to be fighting for.

🗽 The Founding Wasn’t Finished — And Still Isn’t

Burns is not rewriting the Revolution. He is expanding it. He reminds us that history is not a weapon. It’s a mirror. The founders didn’t complete the work—they began it. Our job isn’t to defend mythology. It’s to fulfill a promise.

If we silence the messy truths of our past, we become like Bele—obsessed with control, unable to reflect, locked in a grievance so deep we no longer see the ashes around us.

✊ Let That Be Our Last Battlefield

We face a choice:

• Embrace discomfort and teach the truth.

• Or double down on grievance and let the flames rise.

If we are truly a free people, we must be free enough to examine how we got here. That’s the only way forward. Ken Burns shows us the roots of our national identity. Star Trek shows us what happens when identity becomes a weapon.

Let’s hope we choose the former.

More from my series on Star Trek

It’s an honor to be here with you on Veterans Day — a day when our country pauses to recognize the men and women who have worn the uniform, who stood the watch, who swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Today, I’d like to share a bit of my story, because it’s really a story about us

About what it means to be Americans who come from different places, believe different things, and still find ways to stand together.

After our country’s founding, our default national motto became E Pluribus Unum, “From Many, One”

It is more than just words on a coin. It’s a challenge to every generation to make it true again.

Growing Up in Girard, Pennsylvania

I grew up in a small town in northwest Pennsylvania called Girard — a rural community about the same size as Hillsville. My father was an Army veteran, and I was the first generation of the Petri family to attend college. Girard had one high school with fewer than 500 students, and my graduating class was about 140.

It was the kind of place where everyone knew your name, your parents, and probably your car. In fact, I was often known more as “Elmer and Florence’s grandson” than by my own name.

Faith, family, and community were the backbone of life. People worked hard, looked out for each other, and showed up for football and basketball games, concerts, and the annual school play.

We learned patriotism early — not as a slogan, but as respect for the flag, the country, and those who served it.

In that way, I imagine it’s probably not much different from Hillsville.

But Girard was also a place where almost everyone looked and believed the same. At the time, that felt normal. I didn’t realize how much that sameness shaped the way I saw the world — or how much I wasn’t seeing yet.

My first glimpse of a bigger America came the summer before my senior year at Boys State, where I met young men from every part of Pennsylvania — from different backgrounds and faiths—that week cracked open a window of understanding that the country I thought I knew was far larger, and far more complex, than my little corner of it.

Discovering Difference — College

That window opened wide when I went to college at Penn State. There, I met students from across Pennsylvania and beyond—people who looked, believed, and lived very differently from me.

My freshman roommate was from New Jersey and came from a much wealthier family. We didn’t have much in common, but we learned to respect each other and help each other succeed.

One experience really stayed with me. During my sophomore year, I was elected president of an honor society that was almost entirely women. Leading that group made me rethink what leadership really meant. I had to listen more, understand more, and realize that good ideas don’t depend on who’s in charge. It was humbling—and it made me better.

College taught me that leadership isn’t about being the loudest voice in the room; it’s about hearing the voices you might otherwise miss.

Those lessons would serve me well later in the Navy.

Serving With “Many, as One” in the United States Navy

I joined the Navy through the Nuclear Propulsion Officer program, which recruited college students strong in math and science. I expected to meet intelligent people—but I didn’t realize just how different they would be.

At Officer Candidate School, my roommate was a Black Jamaican immigrant. During the hardest weeks of my life, we relied on each other for everything—inspections, studying, and moral support. We didn’t look alike or come from the same world, but we became a team.

That’s where I first saw what E Pluribus Unum really means.

A couple of years later, at Surface Warfare Officer School, I used a phrase I’d heard my grandfather use all the time without realizing it was hurtful to Jewish people. A classmate called me on it—and he was right. Years later, I embarrassed myself again when I made an offhand comment about a meal a young officer was eating and learned he was Muslim.

Both moments stung, but they taught me something vital: never assume the person next to you is just like you.

When I reported to my first ship—the USS George Washington—I led sailors from every part of America, each with their own story. As I learned more about them and their different life experiences, I became a better leader.

As a department head on a destroyer, I was responsible for qualifying junior officers. One young officer felt I was holding him back because he was Black. It shook me. I had to stop and question myself. After talking with my executive officer and the chief petty officers who worked with me—all of whom were Black—they reminded me that fairness means holding everyone to the same high standard.

Lowering expectations helps no one.

That’s when I truly understood what it means to be an American.

It isn’t sameness—it’s shared purpose. We don’t have to think alike or look alike to serve the same mission. We’re strongest not when we agree on everything, but when we work together toward something greater than ourselves.

Living the Lesson in Mount Airy

I left active duty in 1999 while stationed in San Diego and transferred to the Navy Reserve. In 2004, my family and I moved to Mount Airy. It reminded me a lot of Girard — small-town spirit, people who care about family, community, and faith.

But Mount Airy was also different than the town where I grew up. Southern culture and roots, along with more diversity that included a strong Black community, and a growing Hispanic population.

At first, we were definitely “the outsiders.” People were kind but cautious. Over time, I came to see that, just like Girard, Mount Airy’s greatest strength is its sense of community — that simple act of waving to a stranger, the belief that people should look out for one another.

Still, I also learned how quickly misunderstanding can divide us. When I advocated for curbside recycling years ago, some folks labeled me “that guy from California.” Nevertheless, I kept at it and was joined by other community members who shared my vision. In 2012, the program became a reality and continues to exist today. It happened, not because we all agreed on everything, but because we shared a vision of making our town better. That’s what community is about.

It reminded me of something the late Senator John McCain said when he first ran for Congress.

When accused of not being a “true” Arizonan because he’d moved there after retiring from the Navy, he replied, “I never lived anywhere very long in the Navy. But the place I lived the longest was in a POW camp in Vietnam.”

McCain, one of my heroes, understood that home isn’t about how long you’ve lived somewhere—it’s about what you give to it.

The truth is, America’s strength lies in our collective differences, bound together by unity of purpose.

Yet, some people claim diversity isn’t our strength.

I see it differently and believe the opposite to be true.

If we forget E Pluribus Unum, we forget who we are.

Veterans’ Perspective — A Lesson for Today

I retired from the Navy in 2009 after twenty-two years of service. Retiring didn’t mean leaving behind the lessons I’d learned — it meant finding new ways to live them.

One of the most important lessons was this: you rarely know the politics of the person standing next to you on the bridge, in the combat center, or in the engine room — and that’s how it should be. We serve the Constitution, not a person and not a party.

In uniform, no one cares how you voted, only whether you’ll do your job and have your shipmate’s back. That’s the America I still believe in — one built on duty, trust, and shared values, not on the divisions that fill our headlines.

When I look at my fellow veterans, I see what our country can be: people from every background, united by something greater than themselves. Our strength has never come from uniformity; it comes from unity — from choosing, every day, to stand together as Americans.

And that same choice belongs to all of us, in every classroom, every home, and every community.

From Many, One | Honoring Veterans by Upholding our Nation’s Original Motto

In 1776, while Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson were drafting the Declaration of Independence, they were also helping design our nation’s Great Seal. On it, they placed these three Latin words — E Pluribus Unum — “Out of many, one.”

It was meant to describe thirteen colonies becoming one nation, but today it has evolved to mean something even larger: one people, from many backgrounds, bound by shared ideals.

This year, we celebrated the Army’s 250th birthday in June, the Navy’s last month, and the Marine Corps’ yesterday. Next year, our nation will mark 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. These anniversaries remind us that our nation’s birth and its defense by those who served have always been intertwined.

Two and a half centuries later, every veteran and every citizen still inherits that same duty — to make freedom real, not just declared. The founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the idea that we could be one people, out of many. Every generation since has had to renew that promise.

Now it’s our turn.

So what does E Pluribus Unum mean for all of you here today?

For the students:

It means you get to shape what America looks like next. You get to decide whether we build bridges or walls, whether we listen or label, whether we see differences as threats or as teachers.

Being American isn’t about where you’re from, what you look like, who you love, what you believe, or which group you belong to — it’s about what you’re willing to stand for. Every time you include someone new, every time you stand up for someone different, every time you reach across a divide — you’re living the same principle that veterans have fought to defend.

That’s how you honor Veterans Day: not just with words, but with actions that reflect the best of what this nation can be.

And to the teachers here today — you serve, too.

Veterans defend our nation abroad, but you defend its promise at home. You frame what our children learn — that truth matters, that history has lessons, and that democracy depends on citizens who can think, question, and care.

You also decide how they learn. Every classroom you lead is a small version of America — filled with different voices, talents, and beliefs. When you encourage students to listen, to reason, and to respect one another, you show them that learning is the antidote to fear. And together, through the example you set, you show what “E Pluribus Unum” looks like in practice. Even when it’s hard—Especially when it’s hard—When outside voices question your work, you remind us that education isn’t indoctrination; it’s liberation. It’s the freedom to think, to imagine, and to grow.

It’s what allowed a young man from a small town in Pennsylvania, who once saw the world through a narrow window, to see his country more clearly and serve it more fully.

Sitting in your classroom may be the next Colin Powell,the first African American to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, the first Marine to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs1, Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to be Chief of Naval Operations. Perhaps one of your students will become like one of the many famous Virginia veterans—like Staff Sergeant Darrell C. “Shifty” Powers from Clinchco, Virginia, who served in the famed 101st Airborne Division during WWII, and portrayed by Peter Youngblood Hills in the HBO series “Band of Brothers,” Vice Admiral Samuel L. Gravely Jr. of Richmond, who was the first African American to serve aboard a warship as a U.S. Navy officer, first to command a Navy ship, and the first African-American to achieve the rank of Admiral, or General Alexander Archer Vandegrift, from Charlottesville who received the Medal of Honor and was the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

In that sense, you are our nation’s quiet veterans — fighting every day for the minds and hearts of the next generation.

And for that, you have my most profound respect.

Thank you

View the speech on YouTube

This is a continuation of my series of posts on Star Trek.

The Omega Glory | Season 2, Episode 23 of Star Trek: The Original Series

The Omega Glory is, to put it mildly, a wild ride. It is a Cold War-era allegory where the metaphors are about as subtle as a phaser blast. You’ve got tribes named “Yangs” and “Kohms,” a devastated Earth-like planet, and a bunch of patriotic relics—including the U.S. Constitution—worshipped like sacred scrolls.

But amid the pulp and peculiarity, there’s a moment of genuine profundity.

When Captain Kirk discovers that the “Yangs” have preserved the Constitution but interpret it as a tribal document—meant only for their people—he stops everything to deliver a lesson. Not a tactical order. Not a diplomatic overture. A civic tutorial:

“The words must apply to everyone… or they mean nothing!”

And with that, James Tiberius Kirk—not a Founding Father, but arguably their best fictional student—makes a case for American ideals that’s both simple and powerful: Constitutional rights are not tribal trophies. They’re universal guarantees.

It’s a lesson many today still struggle to grasp.

When the Constitution Becomes a Brand, Not a Bond

Consider, for a moment, another Kirk—the late Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. Noted for being a tireless campus crusader and self-appointed guardian of the Founding Fathers’ vision for America.

Charlie Kirk loved the Constitution—frequently referencing it with the zeal of a preacher and the volume of a rally emcee.

“Our Constitution needs to be reread, not rewritten,” Kirk once declared, calling on his followers to stand up and defend it—not as an abstract idea, but as a battle cry.

But there’s a difference between invoking the Constitution and understanding it. And in Charlie’s case, his love for the parchment sometimes comes with selective footnotes.

In The Omega Glory, the Constitution is explicitly misused because it is not understood. The Yangs treat it as sacred—but only for their tribe. When outsiders or “lesser” peoples are involved, the document’s meaning is conveniently reinterpreted or discarded.

Sound familiar?

Consider when Charlie Kirk expressed regret that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, arguing it led to a “permanent DEI bureaucracy” that undermines American meritocracy. Never mind that the Act was a legislative embodiment of the Constitution’s equal protection principles. Never mind that discrimination, not equity efforts, was the actual violation. In Charlie’s reading, the Civil Rights Act distorted the Founders’ vision—rather than fulfilled it.

Captain Kirk, again, would have something to say.

He didn’t lecture the Yangs because they tore up the Constitution—he lectured them because they revered it without understanding it. They used its symbols to justify power, not equality. They believed the words “We the People” applied only to themselves.

Kirk corrected them. He reminded them that no freedom is real unless it is shared.

American Ideals Require Application, Not Just Admiration

What makes The Omega Glory so jarringly relevant is how easily the Constitution becomes a totem—something waved in anger, clutched in fear, or quoted in isolation. But the words alone aren’t magic. As Captain Kirk warns, they must apply to everyone, or they become meaningless. Theater without substance.

That’s the danger of the version of constitutionalism espoused by Charlie and his acolytes: it sounds like reverence, but often functions as exclusion.

Captain Kirk used the Constitution not to assert dominance, but to humble. Not to divide, but to unite. He read it aloud—not as a partisan weapon, but as a moral mirror.

In today’s culture war, maybe that’s what we need most: fewer self-proclaimed guardians of the Founders, and more captains willing to teach what the Constitution actually means.

“They must apply to everyone… or they mean nothing.”

A lesson taught using a tattered copy of the Constitution on a distant world by a fictional hero.

Meanwhile, in 21st-century America, many still seem to be skipping that chapter.

From my series of articles on Star Trek

In the 1960s, American television couldn’t say certain things out loud. It was an era when direct critiques of racism, war, authoritarianism, or religious dogma were often rejected by networks, advertisers, or censors. But storytellers found another way—through science fiction.

Shows like Star Trek and The Twilight Zone smuggled in cultural critique under the cover of aliens, distant planets, and hypothetical futures. They explored desegregation by putting different species on the bridge of a starship. They warned against fascism through dystopian parallel Earths. They challenged nationalism, dogma, and even nuclear annihilation—without ever naming real-world figures.

This wasn’t just clever writing. It was an act of resistance—a way to speak uncomfortable truths at a time when too many preferred silence.

Sometimes it takes science fiction to get us to hear the truth.

The America of the 1960s was deeply divided—by race, by war, by gender roles, and by competing visions of freedom. The civil rights movement was met with both progress and backlash. A president had been assassinated. Faith in institutions was faltering. The space race pushed the boundaries of technology, while Vietnam pushed the boundaries of morality. Amid all this, Star Trek dared to imagine a future not just of advanced starships—but of advanced thinking.

Fast-forward to the 2020s, and the parallels are hard to ignore. Once again, we find ourselves in an era of protest and polarization, disinformation and distrust. A pandemic revealed both the resilience and fragility of our systems. Politics has grown more tribal, and cultural conversations more fraught. And yet, amid all this uncertainty, I found myself looking backward to look forward.

In the spring of 2020, like many others confined to home, I turned to streaming content for comfort and curiosity. But instead of just binging the latest trending show, I decided to embark on something more ambitious.

I began a five-year mission to watch all of Star Trek—not in the order it was released, but in the order the events unfold in the universe that Gene Roddenberry envisioned in the mid twentieth century, from the earliest days of warp drive to the far reaches of post-Romulan diplomacy. Starting with Enterprise and ending with Picard, I set out to explore not just distant planets—but decades of human storytelling, values, and imagination.

What I Watched — and What I Didn’t

My journey followed what’s often referred to as the Prime Timeline, grounded in the canonical vision established by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

Here’s the sequence I followed:

1. Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005)

2. Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–1969)

3. Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973–1974)

4. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

5. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

6. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)

7. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

8. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994)

9. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

10. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

11. Star Trek: Generations (1994)

12. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999)

13. Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001)

14. Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

15. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

16. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

17. Star Trek: Picard (2020–2023)

I chose to exclude the Kelvin Timeline reboot films (beginning with the 2009 Star Trek directed by J.J. Abrams), as well as newer shows like Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and Section 31. My goal wasn’t to be a completionist—it was to stay grounded in the original Roddenberry canon: a unified, character-driven universe rooted in 20th-century ideals.

What Is Star Trek Canon, Anyway?

In Trek fandom, “canon” refers to the core body of work considered part of the official universe. Roddenberry, famously hands-on in the early years, insisted on consistency not just in the facts and timelines, but in the philosophy of the future. That meant a future without poverty, bigotry, or unchecked militarism. A future where exploration wasn’t conquest, and diplomacy wasn’t weakness.

While some debate lingers—particularly around The Animated Series, which has been both canonized and disavowed over the years—most fans agree the following form the foundation:

• All live-action series from The Original Series through Picard

• All ten Prime Timeline films (1979–2002)

• Selected elements of The Animated Series that were referenced in later shows

This foundation is what I chose to explore—and revisit—with the full arc of continuity and character development that defined generations of science fiction.

The Social Legacy of Star Trek

Star Trek’s cultural impact lies not just in its longevity but in its bravery. Time and again, it tackled topics that other shows wouldn’t touch. Racism, gender identity, colonialism, disability, class, war, peace, environmental collapse, artificial intelligence, and even the ethics of time travel.

Its power was in the metaphor.

When it was too controversial to show a white man and a black woman in a relationship on 1960s television, Star Trek did it aboard the Starship Enterprise. When Cold War politics made détente seem naïve, Star Trek showed Klingons and humans becoming allies. When 1990s America debated gay rights, Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation explored identity through Trill hosts and androids with human souls. And when the early 2000s teetered between nationalism and fear, Enterprise shifted its tone to explore preemptive war, xenophobia, and rebuilding trust.

Science fiction gave the franchise freedom to ask dangerous questions—without directly naming the people or politics of the moment. That was its shield. And its weapon.

Favorite Episodes — and Future Reflections

As I navigated this five-year mission, I encountered episodes that I truly enjoyed. Perhaps they moved me, challenged me, surprised me—or simply made me laugh with delight. Some pushed the boundaries of what television could do. Others carried quiet, emotional truths.

Rather than highlight them all here, I’ll explore several of these favorite episodes in future posts. Some of those entries will delve into quirky trivia, while others will unpack the layered allegories that address everything from race and war to gender and surveillance—even when such themes couldn’t be mentioned openly.

This journey has been more than entertainment. It has been a lens through which to examine who we were, who we are, and who we still might become.

Why We Still Need Shows Like Star Trek

Now, in 2025, we find ourselves in a different—but no less fragile—moment.

It’s not censors in gray suits we fear, but algorithms, outrage mobs, and curated feeds that reinforce our ideological silos. Speech is free, yes—but only until it angers the wrong tribe. Political partisanship often disguises itself as principle. And many who claim to defend constitutional values do so only when it aligns with their interests or identity.

What we need today is not another politician or talking head shouting about “free speech” or “cancel culture.” What we need is another Gene Roddenberry or Rod Serling. Storytellers with the clarity—and courage—to speak across boundaries. A visionary who can hold a mirror to our values without triggering the immediate retreat into tribal lines. Instead of scripted reality shows, perhaps a bit of escapism is needed, reminding us of the vision our founders had for this nation.

And perhaps, as Star Trek once did, these storytellers will remind us that American ideals—pluralism, equality, liberty, reason—are not meant to be temporary, tribal, or transactionally applied. They are meant to endure.

That’s the heart of Star Trek—not the starships or the technobabble, but the moral imagination it asks us to embrace.

In a world that increasingly rewards noise over nuance, Star Trek still dares to ask: What kind of people do we want to be?

It doesn’t give easy answers. But it does offer a challenge.

To boldly go. Together.

Other Posts in This Series

I shared it on Facebook with the following caption.

Several people commented, and one of my friends made the following observation:

That Nazi word gets thrown around so loosely. The media has been unquestionably controlled for decades by leftist. A little pushback makes leftist very uncomfortable. I don't believe Trump had anyone fired. The networks are realizing they offend more than half the country. The centrist have had enough. So let's stop with the nazi and fascists talk please. It's so far left motivated and untrue. I'm watching a memorial right now of a young man(a brilliant and good man)assassinated for bucking the system of indoctrination on campus.

One point to note – this was not about the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk.

My purpose was to highlight how actions being taken by the current President’s Administration have interesting parallels to actions taken by governments in the past.

My Reply

I will meet you halfway on the use of the word Nazi, because that is a loaded term that depicts actual acts of genocide and atrocities that should not be diluted by casual use. However, the word fascist is a valid and historically grounded term when discussing political ideology. It is no worse (or better) than conservatives who use the terms leftist, communist, or socialist as shorthand for their political opponents.

What Fascism Actually Means

The most widely accepted definition of fascism is attributed to political theorist Roger Griffin, who is considered one of the leading scholars on the subject. Griffin defines fascism as:

“A form of political ideology whose core mythic basis is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism.”

That sounds academic, but in plain English it means fascism is built around the idea of national rebirth—a promise to rescue a society in decline through authoritarian power, mass mobilization, and the exclusion (or suppression) of those deemed outsiders.

Authoritative references like Encyclopædia Britannica put it this way:

“Fascism … is characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, strong regimentation of society and the economy, and the exaltation of nation and often race above the individual.”

This definition is not left-wing spin. It is a consensus view among historians and political scientists, cited across universities and scholarly studies worldwide.

Why It Matters in Today’s Politics

When commentators use the word fascist to describe modern movements, they are not necessarily claiming we live under Hitler or Mussolini. They are pointing out echoes of a dangerous pattern:

• Authoritarian leadership – the call for one strong leader above all other institutions and the abdication/acquiescence of the legislative branch to the executive

• Ultranationalism – portraying the nation as under siege, often from minorities, immigrants, the “radical left” or “elites.”

• Suppression of dissent – branding journalists, academics, or political opponents as enemies of the state, stating that criticizing the President should be illegal, or demanding journalists sign a pledge to only report on government-approved messaging.

• Militarization of politics – glorifying violence, discipline, and force as solutions or renaming a cabinet position the “Secretary of War” and using the military to police citizens

You don’t need concentration camps or world wars to see these tendencies at work. Fascism, in its early stages, often starts with cultural intimidation, propaganda, and undermining democratic norms.

Meeting in the Middle

So yes, “Nazi” is too often thrown around in ways that diminish its meaning. But “fascism” is not an empty insult. It is a specific political category with identifiable traits. Using it responsibly allows us to analyze when modern movements flirt with authoritarian nationalism and when democratic institutions are at risk.

If someone wants to dismiss that discussion as “leftist spin,” I’d challenge them to look carefully at the scholarship. Griffin himself is not a partisan ideologue—he is a centrist academic whose work is widely cited across the political spectrum. His definition of fascism is not an attack line; it’s a tool to understand history and, potentially, our present.

And that is why words matter.

On Political Violence

Finally, you mention the tragic assassination of a young man on a college campus. On this, I believe we can all agree: violence has no place in our democracy. Whether it comes from the right, the left, or anywhere in between, political violence is an assault on the very principles of free expression and civic debate.

But here is the danger: when a society normalizes authoritarian language, dismisses democratic institutions, and treats opponents not as fellow citizens but as enemies, the line between rhetoric and violence erodes. That is exactly why careful language—and a sober understanding of terms like fascism—matters so much.

We can debate fiercely, even passionately, about ideology and policy. Yet, once politics is reduced to a contest of who can shout loudest or strike hardest, citizenship gives way to combat, and democracy begins to unravel.

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Several well-known entertainers have been barred from working after officials accused them of making jokes that mocked the country’s leadership and programs. The performers, including some of the nation’s most recognizable comedy and stage figures, have been removed from the official registry, effectively ending their public careers.

Officials said the group’s offense was failing to show a “positive attitude” toward the ruling system. Their routines, authorities claimed, crossed a line by using humor that “caused annoyance” among loyal supporters and undermined the image of the government.

In a lengthy editorial in state-run media, one senior official described the performers as “arrogant and tactless” and criticized audiences who laughed at their routines as “parasitic” and unworthy of influence.

The banned performers reportedly joked about government policies and programs, and even questioned whether humor still had a place in the country. What appeared to anger the authorities most, however, were sketches that caricatured the mannerisms and behavior of ruling figures—clips that spread quickly among the public.

While satire once played a role in the movement’s rise to power, officials now say such ridicule is unacceptable. “This government is built to last for generations,” one editorial read, “and we cannot waste time tolerating the antics of unserious critics.”

Observers abroad are expected to raise concerns about censorship and free expression, but government leaders dismissed those objections. What matters, they said, is that the ruling system has consolidated power and expanded its reach over millions more citizens.

History or Current Events?

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The assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah in 2025 is shocking not only for its violence but also for what it says about the state of free speech in America. It also invites comparison with another figure from a different era: Harvey Milk, assassinated in San Francisco in 1978.

At first glance, the two men could not appear further apart: Milk, a progressive icon and pioneer for LGBTQ+ representation, and Kirk, a conservative activist and provocateur whose organization, Turning Point USA, became a megaphone for the populist right. Yet their stories share a profound through line. Both engaged in their right to speak freely, both challenged prevailing orthodoxies, and both had their lives violently ended while exercising the very rights that define a liberal democratic society.

Challenging the Status Quo

Harvey Milk defied a social and political culture that sought to silence or erase gay Americans. By running openly for office and winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he compelled the city and the nation to confront the presence, dignity, and rights of LGBTQ+ individuals. His life’s work was an act of resistance against exclusion.

Charlie Kirk, in a different way, confronted what he framed as the ideological monoculture of higher education and youth culture. Through campus speeches, social media, and political organizing, he sought to challenge the liberal status quo in academic and cultural institutions. His rhetoric was sharp, his tone often combative, but his central claim—that conservatives deserved equal space in the national conversation—was itself an appeal to the democratic principle of free expression.

In both cases, the men became symbols of disruption, defying cultural dominance in their respective arenas.

Inspiring Followers

Milk was beloved not only for what he fought against, but for what he offered: hope. To gay Americans who lived closeted lives, his election was proof that dignity and representation were possible. His oratory fused moral conviction with optimism, rallying a movement to see itself as equal participants in democracy.

Kirk tapped into a different reservoir of energy: the sense of alienation felt by conservative students in overwhelmingly liberal settings. He built Turning Point USA into a national network that gave young conservatives an identity, a platform, and a mission. His followers also loved and admired him. For many young conservatives, he was a courageous defender of their values in hostile territory.

Though their messages diverged radically, both men mobilized communities by transforming grievance into collective purpose.

Fundamental Differences, Democratic Common Ground

It is also essential to be clear about their differences. Milk’s ultimate objective was greater equality and representation for those who had long been denied it; Kirk’s was the preservation and expansion of conservative cultural and political power. Many Americans passionately support one and strongly oppose the other, which is common for a democracy. More importantly, that is the reality of pluralism.

Yet in a liberal democracy, such opposing objectives must remain matters of debate, persuasion, and compromise—not of vitriol, demonization, or violence. A democracy that thrives is one where citizens contest ideas but stop short of seeking dominance at all costs. Thriving democracies require compromise, and sadly, political division and disregard for our fellow citizens hinder the United States’ ability to succeed.

Tragic Deaths

Harvey Milk was killed by Dan White, a fellow city supervisor who refused to accept his presence in office.

Charlie Kirk was killed while speaking at a university event. Though the full motives of his assassin are still under investigation, the act itself was a rejection of democratic engagement.

Both deaths were political in the truest sense: attempts to silence voices that some could not tolerate hearing.

The New Status Quo and Challenging It

At first glance, the comparison between Harvey Milk and Charlie Kirk will strike many as outrageous. Those on the far left may recoil at the idea of likening a civil rights pioneer to a conservative firebrand; those on the far right may be equally horrified at placing Kirk alongside a gay icon of progressive politics. But that discomfort is the point. In a liberal democracy, the test is whether we can recognize the common thread beneath sharp ideological differences. Both men exercised their right to speak freely, and both were silenced by violence.

The current rush to frame Kirk’s killing along partisan lines only proves how fragile our democracy has become. Commentators are quick to assign blame or turn tragedy into fodder for clicks and likes, often with little regard for the facts. This kind of opportunism fuels division, erodes public trust, and increases the likelihood of further violence.

Rational minds can see past the noise. The lesson of this moment is not to elevate angry talking heads but to insist that ideas—even those we despise—be debated rather than destroyed. Comparing Milk and Kirk is not about erasing their profound differences, but about refusing to surrender to a status quo where disagreement means dehumanization and violence.

Final Thoughts

Harvey Milk and Charlie Kirk stood at opposite poles of America’s political spectrum, yet they were united by one act: the exercise of free speech in pursuit of their vision of life, liberty, and happiness. Both became victims of political violence that, regardless of motive, represents a rejection of the ideals of liberal democracy.

The real challenge is to resist a new status quo where politics is fueled by outrage, where leaders court clicks with vitriol, and where violence is treated as an extension of debate. The temptation with political violence today is to quickly fold tragedy into partisan narratives, turning it into a weapon for one side or the other. But doing so only entrenches the very divisions that make such violence more likely in the first place.

Milk and Kirk remind us—uncomfortably—that democracy requires something more complicated than loyalty to a side. It needs defending the right of opponents to speak, insisting that disagreement remain within the bounds of persuasion and compromise, and rejecting any notion that dominance or dehumanization is an acceptable substitute for democratic engagement. If drawing this comparison makes you uncomfortable—or even angry—then take it as a challenge to rise above reflexive outrage and choose to be better.

That is the work of a free people.

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“Would you like me to release to you this ‘King of the Jews’?” Pilate asked… But at this point, the leading priests stirred up the crowd to demand the release of Barabbas instead of Jesus. Pilate asked them, “Then what should I do with this man you call the King of the Jews?” They shouted back, “Crucify him!”

“Why?” Pilate demanded. “What crime has he committed?” But the mob roared even louder, “Crucify him!” So to pacify the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip, then turned him over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified.

The Book of Mark Chapter 15:9,11-15

In the New Testament, we find one of history’s most haunting lessons in the power of the mob. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, had the authority to release a prisoner during Passover. Given the choice between Barabbas, a revolutionary convicted of murder, and Jesus, a man Pilate knew had been handed over out of envy, the decision should have been clear. Yet the crowd, stirred up by religious leaders, demanded Barabbas. When Pilate asked what should be done with Jesus, the mob roared back: “Crucify him!” Though he found no crime, Pilate gave in, “to pacify the crowd”.

It is a timeless story of the difference between leadership guided by principle and decisions bent under the weight of mob rule.

Fast-forward two millennia, and the setting is less dire but the dynamic eerily familiar. Cracker Barrel, the southern-themed restaurant chain, recently unveiled a new logo as part of a broader rebranding effort. The update was modest: a simplified wordmark, cleaner lines, and the removal of the company’s long-standing “Uncle Herschel” figure. But in today’s polarized climate, even design choices can become flashpoints.

The backlash was swift and loud. Social media lit up with accusations that Cracker Barrel had gone “woke.” President Trump himself amplified the outrage, framing the controversy as a symbol of cultural decline. In short order, the company announced that it would restore its original logo.

The episode raises a question as old as Pilate’s court: when does responding to public sentiment become a capitulation to mob rule?

History Repeats Itself

History offers no shortage of moments when leaders have surrendered principle to the roar of the crowd. During the French Revolution, what began as a legitimate uprising against monarchy and privilege devolved into the Reign of Terror. Revolutionary leaders, swept along by the passions of the street, turned to the guillotine to satisfy the mob’s demand for blood. Justice gave way to fear, as spectacle replaced deliberation.

A century and a half later, in Nazi Germany, students gathered in public squares to burn works deemed “un-German.” Cheered on by crowds and sanctioned by Joseph Goebbels, the book burnings were not spontaneous but carefully staged displays of outrage. Universities and libraries, eager to avoid confrontation, capitulated — allowing the mob to dictate what knowledge and culture could remain.

And in Little Rock in 1957, when nine Black students attempted to integrate Central High School, Governor Orval Faubus sided with segregationist mobs rather than uphold federal law. His defiance emboldened the crowd and turned prejudice into a show of force, until President Eisenhower deployed federal troops to restore order. Once again, leadership faltered, and mob sentiment briefly overpowered principle.

These episodes, different in scale but similar in form, remind us that when noise replaces reason, institutions and leaders often make decisions not from conviction, but to pacify the crowd. Which brings us back to Cracker Barrel.

Cracker Barrel’s Dilemma

I’ve explored these themes before in my own writing—first in “Cracker Barrel’s Backlash Proves Nostalgia Isn’t What’s Really at Stake”, where I questioned whether outrage is a defense of tradition or a staged performance; and then in “Rebranding in the Age of Division”, where I examined how cultural polarization magnifies even the most modest brand changes into spectacles. Here, I attempt to extend those threads, situating Cracker Barrel’s saga within a much broader historical context.

Of course, Cracker Barrel’s rebranding reversal is not on the scale of Pilate’s decision, the French Revolution, or Nazi book burnings. But it echoes the same dynamic, even if the stakes are trivial by comparison. The company had articulated a strategic vision for the future, assuring stakeholders that its values had not changed even as it sought to modernize. Yet when the logo became a lightning rod, Cracker Barrel yielded not to thoughtful criticism but to the loudest voices amplified by cultural politics.

The irony is that the outrage was less about design than about symbolism. To some, the simplified logo represented erasure of nostalgia; to others, it was cast as a symptom of “wokeness.” Lost in the noise was a meaningful conversation about Cracker Barrel’s actual values, its evolving customer base, and its long-term mission.

Or Was It Strategy All Along?

There is another possibility worth considering: what if the controversy was intentional? Cracker Barrel knows its customer base and the cultural landscape it inhabits. It is aware that in today’s climate, any alteration to a nostalgic symbol risks triggering outrage. By floating a new logo — perhaps never intending to make it permanent—the company may have anticipated a cultural backlash.

In this light, restoring the original logo becomes not a retreat but a performance. Cracker Barrel could claim it “listened to its customers” and, more dramatically, appeared to bow to presidential pressure. What better way to reaffirm loyalty with its most traditionalist patrons than to stage a symbolic skirmish in the culture wars — and emerge as the brand that stood firm against “woke” redesigns?

If that’s the case, then Cracker Barrel didn’t cave to the mob; it choreographed the mob. It turned outrage into theater, reaffirming its identity not through its new design, but by sacrificing it.

The Lesson

The difference between public pressure and mob rule lies in how leaders respond. Public pressure can reflect genuine, organized calls for accountability. Mob rule is driven by volume, anger, and intimidation. One strengthens democracy; the other undermines it.

As I observed in Rebranding in the Age of Division, a logo today isn’t just a design—it’s a cultural signal. Cracker Barrel’s quick reversal underscores that without a compelling narrative to accompany visual changes, even a symbol can be hijacked by outrage.

Cracker Barrel’s leaders may have mistaken mob noise for authentic public will—or they may have cleverly harnessed it. Either way, the result is the same: symbolic battles replacing meaningful conversations about values, vision, and mission.

History teaches us that leaders who bend too easily to the mob rarely satisfy it—and those who manipulate outrage risk deepening the cynicism that drives it. Whether in ancient Jerusalem, revolutionary Paris, Nazi Germany, or modern-day America, the challenge remains the same: will leaders hold steady to principle and vision, or yield simply “to pacify the crowd”?

Parting Thoughts

Cracker Barrel’s logo U-turn shows that when symbolism wins over substance, what’s at stake isn’t just branding—it’s how meaning becomes negotiable under pressure. Today, the mob doesn’t need torches and pitchforks anymore—it has hashtags and talking points. Whether companies cave to it or quietly court it, the effect is the same: public discourse shrinks, symbols eclipse substance, and outrage becomes the coin of the realm. That is the real lesson of Cracker Barrel’s saga: when symbols outweigh substance, the mob is always fed—and leadership always starves.