Character Matters
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“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” ~Galatians 5:22-23
I wear that quote on a chain around my neck. I had a charm made with those words engraved on one side. On the other side is engraved in my dad’s handwriting, “All my love, Dad.”
It was the verse that was read at my dad’s memorial service.
There is a sweet story behind it. One time at church, while my dad was singing in the choir, I was sitting with the congregation next to my mom. Galatians 5:22-23 was the text that was part of the service. After it was read, Mother turned and whispered to me, “That’s your father.”
And so it was.
Maybe that’s why I have such a hard time understanding ANYONE’s support or admiration or even fascination with our current president. His character is the absolute opposite of this verse. I find him nothing short of repulsive. He couldn’t be more different than my adored father.
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: I’ll be Never-Trump.
This week, I felt nauseated after I read this article: MAGA is surging in popularity among Republican Party members, polling shows… According to a poll by YouGov, only 2% of the November Trump voters regret their vote. More than a third of registered American voters surveyed in March identified themselves as followers of Trump’s Make American Great Again movement and a whopping 71% percent of Republicans who responded to the survey identify themselves as MAGA supporters.
So much for the so-called party of character and family values.
And, so much for respect for the First Amendment as well. Did you see the blatant Christian Nationalist message coming from the White House? Presidential Message on Holy Week, 2025. (I wrote about the insidiousness of Christian Nationalism in MAGA Theology.)
Clearly, that Grand Old Party is dead.
What is happening to our country? I just don’t get it.
Don’t folks understand that an America First mentality puts us in a weaker position, just like it did in the 1930s? Don’t they appreciate that authoritarian governments mean grift, corruption, weaker security and the lack of personal freedoms? Don’t they realize that theistic governments mean suppression of human rights?
Do these people have no sense of history? Do these people have no vision or worse?
It’s heartbreaking to see our country repeating the mistakes of the past. It’s appalling to see the very institutions — EPA, DOJ, DOD, HHS, NIH et al — that have kept our nation leading and strong, being kneecapped. It’s horrifying to see our President sitting in the Oval Office with El Salvadorian president, Nayib Bukele, flaunting the ruling of the Supreme Court and talking about building more gulags — with our tax dollars, no less. The cruelty is more than just the point… it’s the policy of this administration.
“Other presidents have used televised meetings in the Oval Office to strike noble poses. President Trump is using them to strike sadistic ones. I’ll never shake the scene of him and Vice President JD Vance taunting and berating President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in February for his inconvenient resistance to Russia’s invasion of his country. But that horror has been paired with and maybe even usurped by what we all watched early this week, when Trump and Nayib Bukele bantered jovially about a Maryland man’s wrongful deportation to a prison in Bukele’s country that sounds pretty much like the 10th circle of Hell.” ~Frank Bruni
After all the horrendously cruel, destructive and utterly stupid things this president has done in the last few months, 47% think that this is ok? Maybe they just don’t understand what their future is probably going to look like. In any case, this is not my America.
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” ~Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in an opinion for a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals
Character Matters
What can I say? It was the substance of my Sunday School teachings. We weren’t instructed in the words of the Bible… we were instructed in the actions of the Bible.
It wasn’t enough to read or know or even say, “the truth will set you free.” It was to be an honest person; to be trustworthy.
It wasn’t enough to read or know or even say, “Fear not.” It was to be brave and act with courage.
I was raised on eight character traits of Jesus and my parents not only expected us to behave in a Christian manner — they lived that way as well and were wonderful role models for my sibs and me. All three of us try hard to live our lives with strength, faith and integrity. While we often fall short, we know and have seen first hand what it means to live a character-centered life.
I have already written about my thoughts on current events that have been essentially based on the eight character traits of Jesus, that I was taught in Sunday School:
Truth (Free Speech, Gaslighting, #TruthMatters, Economic chutzpah, Which way is the wind blowing?)
Faith (1968)
Courage (The Press, Fortis Mulieres, Déjà vu, Groveling Obedient Politicians, Courage, Green Shoots)
Sportsmanship (Due Process; Crosstown Classic; In all things, moderation)
Magnanimity (Remembering Wendy, Picking up the Garbage, Getting a Head Start, A Nation of Immigrants)
Service (Moving in the right circles, SNAFU, Erasing History)
Sympathy (A Face in the Crowd)
But of course, there are other traits of Jesus that are noteworthy: like Humility (I’m just wild about Harry; Think Again; Unwinding… Whoops; Move over, Boomer); Hope ("This land was made for you and me."); and all the other fruit of the Spirit that were mentioned in Galatians.
And I’ll continue to write about these matters of character, because to me…
…Character Matters.
For those who celebrate, Wishing you a Happy Easter.
"This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." ~ Psalm 118:24.
Thought for the day in honor of her birthday…
“Our lack of forgiveness makes us hate, and our lack of compassion makes us hard-hearted. Pride in our hearts makes us resentful and keeps our memory in a constant whirlwind of passion and self-pity.”
~Mother Angelica
Must Read Article:
Will Donald Trump Destroy the Presidency?
Donald Trump is testing the institution of the presidency unlike any of his 43 predecessors. We have never had a president so ill-informed about the nature of his office, so openly mendacious, so self-destructive, or so brazen in his abusive attacks on the courts, the press, Congress (including members of his own party), and even senior officials within his own administration. Trump is a Frankenstein’s monster of past presidents’ worst attributes: Andrew Jackson’s rage; Millard Fillmore’s bigotry; James Buchanan’s incompetence and spite; Theodore Roosevelt’s self-aggrandizement; Richard Nixon’s paranoia, insecurity, and indifference to law; and Bill Clinton’s lack of self-control and reflexive dishonesty.
“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” James Madison wrote in one of the Federalist Papers during the debates over the ratification of the Constitution. He was right, but he never could have imagined Donald Trump…
What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.
What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican…
Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice….
It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.
Quote of the day…
“This whole Trump II administration is a cruel farce. Trump ran for another term not because he had any clue how to transform America for the 21st century. He ran in order to stay out of jail and to get revenge on those who, with real evidence, had tried to hold him accountable to the law…. By attacking our closest allies — Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea and the European Union — and our biggest rival, China, at the same time he makes clear he favors Russia over Ukraine and prefers climate-destroying energy industries over future-oriented ones, the planet be damned, Trump is triggering a serious loss of global confidence in America. The world is now seeing Trump’s America for exactly what it is becoming: a rogue state led by an impulsive strongman disconnected from the rule of law and other constitutional American principles and values.”
~ Tom Friedman
What I’m reading today…
This week’s winners of the Joseph Welch and Neville Chamberlain awards
The Naval Academy Thinks Midshipmen Can’t Handle the Truth
For the past four years, I have been delivering a series of lectures on the virtues of Stoicism to midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and I was supposed to continue this on April 14 to the entire sophomore class on the theme of wisdom. Roughly an hour before my talk was to begin, I received a call: Would I refrain from any mention in my remarks of the recent removal of 381 supposedly controversial books from the Nimitz library on campus? My slides had been sent up the chain of command at the school, which was now, as it was explained to me, extremely worried about reprisals if my talk appeared to flout Executive Order 14151 (“Ending Radical and Wasteful Government D.E.I. Programs and Preferencing.”) When I declined, my lecture — as well as a planned speech before the Navy football team, with whom my books on Stoicism are popular was canceled…
The men and women at the Naval Academy will go on to lead combat missions, to command aircraft carriers, to pilot nuclear-armed submarines and run enormous organizations. We will soon entrust them with incredible responsibilities and power. But we fear they’ll be hoodwinked or brainwashed by certain books?
Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was not one of the books removed from the Naval Academy library, and as heinous as that book is, it should be accessible to scholars and students of history. However, this makes the removal of Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” inexplicable. Whatever one thinks of D.E.I., we are not talking about the writings of external enemies here, but in many cases, art, serious scholarship and legitimate criticism of America’s past. One of the removed books is about Black soldiers in World War II, another is about how women killed in the Holocaust are portrayed, another is a reimagining of Kafka called “The Last White Man.” No one at any public institution should have to fear losing their job for pushing back on such an obvious overreach, let alone those tasked with defending our freedom. Yet here we are.
What is the Insurrection Act of 1807? Will it allow Trump to declare martial law on April 20?
The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to deploy military forces inside the U.S. to suppress rebellion or enforce the law in certain situations. It is not yet certain whether Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act. We do know, however, that the report from the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security scheduled to land on Trump's desk on April 20 is to include suggestions on "whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807."
All the President’s Flatterers
Trump surely stages these exhibitions of flattery and fealty in part because the adulation and subjugation are a rush and because he believes that they make him look commanding, regal. But there’s more at work than that. Every time he gooses Vance, Rubio, Bondi, Noem or any other key aide to endorse and expound on a questionable or downright reprehensible action of his, he binds them to it. They’re now doubly, triply, quadruply committed. Any micro-possibility of dissent is gone.
The first thing that I thought about was the generation of World War II veterans who were an omnipresent part of my life growing up, and how reticent they were about expressing their feelings….
I cried in the cemetery today. I cried in grief for my country.
Voting for Donald Trump and for members of Congress aligned with him was a serious and dangerous mistake, but not all grievances or desires for change were invalid. Whether the complaints were about policy or culture, it’s important to understand—and to address—those issues that drove half of America to settle on a bad choice rather than the alternative…The primary focus now needs to be on reasserting Congress’s Article One role as maker of laws, decider of policies, distributor of funds, designer of taxation—and ensuring the election to Congress of men and women who recognize their constitutional obligations to check the ambitions of would-be kings.
How Rome’s Senators Got Robbed of Their Republic
In about 80 years, roughly the same length of time between the end of World War II and now, the Roman Republic was transformed into a dictatorship. If you had told a Roman senator at the beginning of the first century B.C.E. that his grandchildren would willingly hand over governance to a monarch, he would not have believed you. Like the American one, the Roman Republic was founded on the rejection of a king. Though flawed, Rome had a representative government based on the rule of law, with freedom of speech and rights to legal recourse for its citizens.
The Roman Republic lasted nearly 500 years, about twice as long as Americans have had theirs. As was surely true for the Romans, most Americans can hardly imagine that their system of self-government might break and be replaced by an imperial dynasty. That is why considering what undid the Roman Republic is useful today—if we can learn from the Romans’ mistakes.
“But stepping back a bit from the relentless daily news cycle to take in the whole of what’s transpired since January 20, something else becomes apparent: The administration is governing in an overwhelmingly negative way. The president and his team are out to destroy, like demolition experts sent into a high-rise housing project to level the buildings, leaving a vast vacant lot.” ~Damon Linker
A man who has spent most of his life, and much of his presidency, gaslighting the public ran into the brick wall of reality. Misinformation, disinformation, bullying, and nasty social-media posts proved ineffective. Stock and bond markets weren’t intimidated by the threats of the aging president.
Harvard and the massacre of reason
Days after Harvard became the first university to bravely refuse to bend to the president’s will, the MAGA king froze billions of dollars in federal funding and his IRS is moving to revoke their tax exemptions. They’re trying to murder the nation’s oldest university because it refused to remake itself in Donald Trump’s image.
What I am listening to…
I mentioned this show last week. I hope you’ll take the time to listen to this podcast. I thought it was excellent.
What I read every day…
