August 9, 2026 - 250 Years - Part 2

They Are More than Words.

With this "thought," I continue the previous, available here, and our exploration of some of the monuments in Washington D.C.

Unless the peace that follows recognizes that the whole world is one neighborhood and does justice to the whole human race the germs of another world war will remain as a constant threat to mankind.

One of my favorite presidents is Franklin Roosevelt (and, honestly, his cousin Theodore too). FDR expanded upon Teddy's conservationism, among many things. The DC monument to him is quite beautiful, covered in waterfalls and many powerful ideas. The one expressed above is difficult to read without connecting it to the current state of affairs.

Our current president's attitude toward NATO and the United Nations underscores at best a grave misunderstanding of the idea expressed above. Unfortunately there is compelling evidence that it is worse than that. Attacks on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and threats against judges involving prosecution and travel bans points to leaders that do not just misunderstand this quote, but do not even believe in its wisdom. Back in January, we tragically withdrew membership and support from 66 international organizations.

We withdrew - again - from the Paris Climate Agreement on January 27, 2026. It was hardly a surprise, I suppose. Yet, it has clearly only been the beginning in a reckless and despicable rolling back of environmental protections and focus for this nation.

The EPA has repealed the endangerment finding regarding greenhouse gases, weakening emissions standards for power plants and vehicles. We've reversed course on HFCs, weakened the Clean Water Act and standards protecting drinking water, killed the "blanket rule" in the Endangered Species Act as well as neutered the definition of "harm," reduced the size of national monuments like Grand Staircase-Escalante, lifted protections on the Pacific Island Heritage National Marine Monument, rolled back toxic coal ash disposal rules, and on and on and on. This is just the tip of the iceberg, there is so much more. The DOJ has only filed 16 civil complaints on behalf of the EPA this year. Usually that number easily exceeds 60.

There are so many things to discuss here - our withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), the reduction in funding to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it's all too much. And it all seems very punitive and, frankly, stupid. Stupid because the actions belie either incredible malice or ignorance surrounding what these organizations actually do and the impact they have. Or both.

I have experienced some of this first hand. When the newly created "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) was on its rampage and funding cuts were flying everywhere, the biggest impact I saw at Purdue was a significant alteration in our ability to hire good MS graduate TAs. Graduate students (mostly Ph.D.) that would normally be supported on soft money (grants) by faculty were instead relying on their department TA guarantee. Because, quite rationally, the faculty were unsure whether their funding would continue and were trying to make it last. We lost many good GTAs because of this.

I want to be clear: Purdue did nothing wrong here. They were doing their best to operate within new constraints. Things have improved since then, largely because a lot of the actions undertaken by DOGE have been undone either through the courts or by someone quietly recognizing how bad of an idea the action actually was. But, there was damage done, and in some cases things are still quite broken. There's a reason the weather forecasts are less accurate lately.

There's a lot of ignorance driving all of this - a quixotic belief that there is significant inappropriate use of funds in the government, which ironically has basically been disproved by DOGE's activities. One of the underlying themes that I've seen even at Purdue is this small-minded belief that everything is a business and should be run as such. What an utter lack of imagination one must have to take such a narrow focus and not see how it hurts the support and growth of their fellow man. And, again, I use "man" in the Old English, gender neutral sense.

John Purdue and many other successful businessmen helped create so many of this country's universities. Why? Why not just create another business? They were quite good at that! Because they understood that not everything benefits from being treated as a business. That there are goals, constraints, and structure in business that are harmful for academic pursuits, research, and the public good.

We should ask ourselves, do these actions and others move us toward a world that is one neighborhood or further away?

They who seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers...call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

When we toured DC, the National Guard was deployed around the city. More noticeably close to the White House, which was surrounded by its own temporary, prison-like black fence while the UFC "dome" was being disassembled. There were also signs throughout displaying in bright orange text "We are making DC safe and beautiful." And, to be fair, some of the fencing and construction was clearly rehabilitating the surrounding monuments and grounds. But this notion of a need for better safety is absurd. Benjamin Franklin once said "they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." The Star-Spangled Banner flies "O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave." For a brave people, some of us seem severely overly concerned with safety.

The National Guard is also deployed at airports. Their use in both of these situations is an abuse of power and the individuals that comprise our military. Somewhat recently there was a remake of the TV series Battlestar Galactica. One of the main characters, Commander Adama, articulated clearly to the President his discomfort with utilizing the military to police their own people. He put it succinctly: "There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people." There is wisdom in this.

This isn't some abstract idea either. Anna King, a retired U.S. Army captain who was awarded both a Purple Heart and Bronze Star is sadly one example of exactly this happening. There are others.

The current deployment and use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in major cities is perhaps the most disturbing reflection of this failure in leadership. For months, those that ostensibly are supposed to help enforce this nation's immigration policies have instead been running around our major cities harassing and abusing ordinary U.S. citizens.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

It is almost unbelievable to me that unscrupulous men have convinced so many that we are less safe now than we have been in the past when almost all available data point to the opposite conclusion. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" is sometimes attributed to another great president - John F. Kennedy, whom I also admire. But it was originally spoken by FDR during his first inaugural address in 1933.

So much of our actions these days seem fear-based. I was a sophomore at Purdue when September 11 happened. I was so oblivious that I didn't even realize what was going on until later in the day. I recall coming home briefly between classes to one of my roommates intently watching TV. I glanced at the screen - not long enough to figure out why - grabbed materials for my next class, and headed back out. When I got home that evening after marching band practice, I realized what had happened and what the murmurings during band were about.

I fear sounding callous with what I'm going to write next. But, my reaction was one of mainly confusion. I did not and still to some extent do not understand our reaction to this tragic, awful event. The anger I understand. The desire to lash out. What I do not understand is the stoking and manipulation of fear by our leaders to draw us into war with Iraq and so many other things. In the ensuing years I have watched as politicians in power used the fear of every day Americans to push through legislation like the Patriot Act, incrementally eroding our freedoms with what seems a wanton disregard for any notion of liberty.

When teaching, I often do trivia breaks, where I pause for 5 minutes or so and discuss some notable part of campus or historical interest relating to the university. One of these stories is that of one of Purdue's mottoes: "One Brick Higher!" While it is no longer done, when I was admitted to Purdue University back in 2000 or late 1999, I received in the mail...a brick. It was a cardboard brick, so the postage wasn't as much as you probably thought. But what was interesting about this was that it was symbolic of the phrase I mentioned. And that phrase originated from one of our own presidents, President Smart. He too faced a destructive, disastrous event. And his reaction to that event was starkly different than how our leaders reacted to September 11.

Purdue University had just completed construction of Heavilon Hall, a groundbreaking locomotive testing plant made possible through contributions from Amos Heavilon, a businessman and farmer from Frankfurt, IN. Four days later the boiler exploded, destroying most of the building. As one would expect, people were devastated. Instead of fanning the flames of fear and using the tragedy to push an agenda, however, President Smart instead reassured people and gave them hope. And then, in that hope, he helped create something even greater. He stood in front of the Purdue community and proclaimed "We are looking this morning to the future, not the past ... I tell you, that tower shall go up one brick higher!" And, it did. But not one brick higher. In the end, it was nine bricks higher. That is the Boilermaker Spirit. That is the American Spirit. That is what I hope our country remembers and starts once again embracing.

The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation...It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.

Our current president is not a cooperative man. The utterly absurd threats to invade Greenland, the War in Iran, even our behavior with Venezuela is difficult to reconcile with this idea. The latter two are especially challenging because they involve countries with leaders and regimes that fall seriously short of a government that treats both its own people and humans everywhere with dignity and respect. Yet, the heavy handed way in which we have inserted ourselves into those country's affairs belies an attitude antithetical to freedom.

Most often peace does not occur through force. Or control. So many people that I see cheering on Trump seem to want nothing more than a strong man bullying everyone into submission and telling them what to do. This does not lead to peace. It certainly doesn't preserve liberty. And it is a far cry from a just state of existence. Instead, it is an abusive, mechanistic, and violent will forced upon individuals that deserve liberty and justice just as much as the next person.

As I mentioned earlier, when we toured DC there were many fences in places where they usually are not. The Vietnam memorial, fittingly, was locked behind the same style fencing that encompassed the White House at our time of visit. I say fittingly because it is extraordinarily difficult to not see the parallels between it and our current folly in Iran.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace---a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God. AMEN

I believe this period of time represents a pause or even backslide with regard to "conquer[ing] the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies."

Bigoted hatred seems to be on the rise around our country or perhaps just more brazen. The most recent, solid example of this is the parade of the so-called "Patriot Front" group that marched through Washington D.C. during the 250th celebration. It's difficult to even accept that it's really 2026 and a neo-fascist white supremacist group is even tangentially a part of such a thing. What's worse is this administration's inability to condemn such hatred and associated acts. There even seem to be subtle head nods like the inclusion of the fascist "One of ours, all of yours" phrase on the Department of Homeland Security podium during Kristi Noem's speech on ICE's shooting.

Of course, the culmination of this hatred is in some sense the co-opting of ICE to terrorize regular people in what only appears to be an attempt to instill fear and elicit servitude from a free people. ICE's budget is now larger than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. This is only possible because Congress continues to allocate funds in spite of the fact that over 50 people have died in ICE custody since January 2025. Four people have been shot and killed in public. Not to mention ICE's resistance to lawful auditing by members of our legislative branch - an affront to everything and everyone that has brought our nation this far.

We are subject to the schemings of unworthy men...

We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens, whatever their background.

We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization

To be continued...