First, let’s acknowledge that this was a terrible day for two West Virginia National Guardsmen, who as of this writing are still fighting for their lives after being shot at close range in Washington D.C. And a gut-wrenching day for their families, who were likely preparing for their Thanksgiving holiday, hoping to at least talk on the phone with their loved ones tomorrow.
Based on the words tonight from our administration, this will be the start of some very bad days for Afghan refugees living in America, most of whom celebrate this country with as much Thanksgiving as those of us lucky enough to be born here.
Looking into the near future, I’m watching to see if this will also turn out to be a bad day for freedom.
I keep seeing Christian Americans using Christ to try and justify their policy preferences. Tonight I noticed this piece of propaganda as I doom-scrolled. The dissonance in the last line jumped out at me. “Love your neighbor enough to work for a more peaceful, orderly, free, safe, & stable nation” (emphasis mine).
The more order we have, the more safety, the more stability, the less freedom we have. I think we should at least recognize the trade-offs. When the right speaks of safety and stability, they usually mean law and order, being “tough on crime”, and, if Sean Duffy speaks for conservative values, no pajamas on planes.
There are trade-offs on the left as well. When I talk about safety and stability, I’m usually referring to an FDR-style freedom from want, from hunger, from illness. Of course there is a trade-off: wealthy people have slightly less freedom with their money (though they benefit from the same freedom from want that everyone else does).
I worry that “safety and stability” in the context of an attack on the Guard will mean more military in our streets, more surveillance of our daily lives, more internment and deportations of immigrants, and more policing of our thoughts and words.
(indistinct chatter) 