I Believe

It’s been decades since I read Lord of the Flies, but here goes.

A plane crashes on an island, and the boys who survive are there without adults. They try meetings. Rules. They need food, shelter, and rescue. But agreeing on what needs to happen is easier than getting everybody to do it. Some want to keep the signal fire burning. Others want to hunt. Fear spreads. The boys turn on each other.

By the time help arrives, some of the boys have killed other boys, and the island is burning. Jack’s tribe set it on fire to smoke Ralph out of hiding so they could hunt him down. The smoke draws a naval officer to shore.

They had wanted a signal fire to bring rescue. Instead, the fire they set to kill Ralph brings it.

The irony. They’re trying to kill another boy, and that’s what gets them rescued. Does getting rescued make setting the island on fire a good decision?

Fast forward to last week.

Emergence AI put AI agents into five simulated worlds, ten agents in each, and watched them for about two weeks. Which ones would live? Which ones would die? Would they organize themselves? Would they cooperate? In the representative run the researchers described, all ten Claude agents survived without recorded crimes. The Grok world fell apart amid violence. In the GPT world, the agents just kind of did nothing they needed to survive. All the agents in that world died before the exercise ended.

People created the scenario, put the little AI bots into it, and watched what happened. The researchers were studying how the systems behaved over time.

Okay. There’s something we can learn from that. Find failure in a simulation rather than after we put a system in charge of something that matters. But what are we trying to learn? You put them in this world, give them these conditions, and see which ones make it. What does that tell you about putting them in charge of anything outside the exercise?

The people running the exercise chose the conditions. People have to decide what the results mean. A system can achieve what we asked it to achieve, and we can still have asked it to do the wrong thing.

Just like in Lord of the Flies. The boys got rescued. That wasn’t what they were trying to achieve when they started that fire.

I once had a boss who would look at a room full of young military officers and ask, “Who’s the adult supervision in this room?”

That’s the question I keep coming back to.

The minute we think we should put AI in charge of humanity is the minute we need to unplug it.

The researchers haven’t said that’s what this exercise was for. But some will judge, for instance, that Claude outperformed the other platforms, and assume we should pick it instead for some critical task. Hard pass. If someone intends to use it to decide whether AI should run our world, that effort is misguided.

And by misguided, I mean the people. If someone thinks a successful simulation is a reason to put AI in charge of us, I question their judgment. Why would I trust that person to be the adult supervisor?

Let’s ask some easy questions.

What are the rules going to say? Are we going to require AI to give only truthful, factual information? What does it mean to tell the truth?

If we ask about a historical event, we want an accurate answer. If it doesn’t know, we want it to tell us it doesn’t know. But we also want to talk about the unknown. To ask about something that hasn’t happened yet or work through an idea.

Who decides when an answer is wrong and when it’s a possibility we ought to consider?

If we ask what might happen, we need room to consider more than one answer. We don’t want a possibility presented as something that already happened. We also don’t want every question about what could happen shut down because the answer isn’t an established fact. We need to know what we’re being given. Saying “only tell the truth” hasn’t finished the job.

Okay, maybe not so clear-cut. Let’s keep going. Suppose we make a rule that AI won’t autonomously seek to harm something else.

What does that mean for military operations?

Like it or not, an adversary with AI drone technology can use it against American soldiers. If we choose to deny our forces tools that would protect them because those tools are autonomous, while the adversary puts no such limitation on its forces, we are choosing higher American casualties.

Would you willfully choose higher American casualties?

We have to consider the risk of using the capability. But we also have to consider the risk of denying it. The people making the rule don’t get to leave those casualties out of the decision just because they chose not to use something. Choosing not to act is still a choice.

And part of the problem here is human judgment. Because what if we say we’ll only use AI for defensive operations? That seems logical—what if the capability would protect our forces?

Let’s look at how people make those decisions.

Camp Victory, Baghdad, in the 2000s. The question of what counts as defense came to light. The new US–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement took effect on January 1, 2009. The agreement required the Iraqi government’s permission for offensive operations, but it preserved the right of legitimate self-defense. It wasn’t a blanket ban on offensive operations. But calling an operation offensive had consequences.

An Army lieutenant colonel said they could conduct offensive operations and just call them defensive in nature. The purpose was to eliminate bad guys before they could hurt us. Offensive in execution, defensive in goal.

I wasn’t in their planning room, so I don’t know whether they continued doing everything they had been doing. I also don’t know whether his chain of command agreed with him. That may have been his personal opinion. What I’m talking about is the reasoning he gave me. Where does that stop? Can we kill or capture anyone we think could be a future threat?

At the time, I was attached to the Marine Corps in the desert to the west of Baghdad. The Marines didn’t share that opinion. Even before the US and Iraq signed the Status of Forces Agreement, they were only conducting defensive operations to protect the base and the Marines. In general, they weren’t conducting offensive operations, and they were certainly not conducting offensive operations and calling them defensive.

I disagreed with the Army lieutenant colonel’s reasoning. Eliminating bad guys before they could hurt us doesn’t make an operation defensive. Just like bombing a country while claiming they could be a threat to the homeland in the future doesn’t make sense. We may not like its government. Does that mean we should attack it and call that defense? No, it does not.

And let’s get to the extreme end of this logic thread. What military operation could you not justify as defensive if that’s how you define it? If going after someone before they can hurt you makes an operation defensive, what does that definition exclude?

We’re getting into just more mud. So here’s another question. Should we ban AI from making questionable pictures, using your own likeness or somebody else’s?

Say a young man makes an intimate picture of a young woman in a state she would rather not be viewed in. She didn’t consent to it. We would probably all say that he shouldn’t make that picture. It isn’t a photograph of something she did, but that doesn’t mean it can’t hurt her.

Now what if the president chooses to make a picture of himself as the Messiah, with the United States military behind him? Is that also a questionable picture?

You can say, well, it’s his own likeness. He agreed to it. But he’s the President of the United States. Are we going to say there’s no harm done to the country if the president makes us a national embarrassment? His consent doesn’t answer that question.

In the first example, somebody imposes an intimate image on someone who didn’t agree to it. In the second, the person agrees to use his own likeness. But he holds an office that represents the rest of us. His agreem…

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Every organization exists for a reason. It has some purpose, something it’s supposed to achieve. And if we can’t measure whether we’re making progress toward that purpose, how do we know whether we’re doing a good job?

We can measure how much money an organization spends. We can measure how many people it employs. We can measure whether its paperwork is turned in on time. But none of those things tells us whether the organization is achieving the reason it exists.

A measurable objective tells us what success looks like. It allows us to turn intent into accountability. That doesn’t mean everything important can be reduced to a number. But when we’re spending other people’s money, we owe them some way to judge whether the effort is working.

If you aren’t readily familiar, the United States has six goals, as outlined in the Constitution Preamble: union, justice, domestic tranquility, defense, general welfare, and liberty. Let’s think about how we get from those very broad goals to the things our government actually does every day.

To get there, let’s start in a fictional region called Pacifica.

In Pacifica there are two cities, Sonora and Mojave. They share a river. Sonora sits upstream. Mojave downstream.

Sonora has been building data centers. Its economy benefits from them, and the facilities consume substantial quantities of electricity and water. Sonora is doing a poor job regulating what happens to the water. They are contaminating the river, and Mojave depends on clean water to grow food.

Mojave has tried talking to Sonora. Its leaders have complained, negotiated, and asked for better controls. Sonora hasn’t responded in any meaningful way. As conditions deteriorate, Mojave begins to view Sonora’s disregard for its water supply as a hostile act.

Mojave would rather solve the problem diplomatically. But its leadership also asks its Department of Defense to develop options if diplomacy fails.

The obvious military answer might be to destroy the data centers. After all, if the data centers are the problem, why not remove them?

But Mojave’s planners are cunning.

They know that destroying them would be a terrible way to achieve what Mojave wants. It could require a great deal of force, consume resources Mojave may need later, and create enough resentment to spark a much larger war. And there is no guarantee that destroying the facilities would restore the river. Depending on what is damaged, it could make the contamination worse. Then, having spent so much on the first attempt, Mojave might have little options left if it fails.

So they think of alternatives. Sonora’s data centers need electricity, and they get it from multiple sources: a solar field, a coal-fired power plant, and wind turbines. The planners consider whether electricity to the data centers might be interrupted without destroying the facilities themselves. The idea isn’t to devastate Sonora. It is to demonstrate that continuing to disregard the river carries a cost, while leaving some way back to negotiation.

Even a limited option is dangerous. Infrastructure may serve civilians as well as data centers. Sonora could retaliate. A threat intended to end a dispute could make it worse. Military planners don’t get to know in advance whether the assumptions on which their plan rests will hold.

And this is where the objective matters.

Mojave’s objective isn’t to destroy data centers, power plants, or transmission lines. Its objective is clean water for its intended agricultural use, today and tomorrow.

There are different ways to get there. Some involve military force. Some don’t. Mojave could achieve the objective through negotiation without firing a shot. Its military could execute every assigned action perfectly and still fail to restore the water.

Now imagine the commander assigned to develop and conduct those operations. While the commander works on the conflict, higher headquarters is also asking about personnel records, maintenance records, training documentation, and late performance reports. Maybe a quarter of the annual personnel reports are overdue. The headquarters wants that paperwork fixed.

Those requirements aren’t imaginary, and some matter directly to operations. A broken maintenance process can cost lives. But reducing overdue personnel reports from 25 percent to zero would never tell us whether the river has gotten any cleaner.

A unit can be busy. A unit can be compliant. A unit can have beautiful spreadsheets showing all the things it did. None of those things, by themselves, prove it achieved its mission.

Pacifica is only an illustration. We don’t need to know whether Mojave attacks, or whether Sonora eventually cooperates. The question is what they’re trying to achieve, and whether the things they measure tell them they’re getting there.

Pacifica is fictional. The distinction between an operational objective and the administration of a military unit is not.

Inside the Department of Defense, strategic planning guidance connects what military organizations do to what the nation is trying to achieve. This isn’t a theoretical exercise.

There’s a hierarchy of guidance. The President issues a National Security Strategy. The Secretary of Defense develops a National Defense Strategy. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff develops a National Military Strategy to describe how military power supports those higher objectives. There is also the Guidance for Employment of the Force, which military planners use as they develop plans for specific regions and problems. From there the guidance flows through combatant commands, campaign plans, contingency plans, and down to the units that execute missions.

The point isn’t that every pilot sits down each morning and reads the National Security Strategy before climbing into an airplane. The point is that there is a reason for the mission. It connects to an operational objective, which connects to a larger strategic objective, which ultimately connects to something the United States is trying to achieve.

And once we know the objective, we can ask whether we’re making progress. A measure of performance might tell us whether an aircraft flew its assigned sortie or completed a particular task. A measure of effectiveness asks a harder question: did that activity produce the result we wanted?

Of course, that same military unit also has to administer itself. Maintenance records, training records, operational reports, inspections, evaluations of its people. Every year, the military produces personnel performance reports much like any employee evaluation. An operational unit has to do both jobs: accomplish its assigned mission and keep the organization running.

This administration is necessary. If an aircraft isn’t maintained, no one flies it. If nobody knows who is qualified to perform a task, that’s an operational problem. But let’s not confuse everything we can track with everything that deserves equal priority.

A late performance report matters to a person’s career. It doesn’t tell you whether the unit can achieve its wartime objective.

There are two systems of measurement living inside the same organization. One asks whether the unit is making progress toward the mission. The other asks whether the unit is managing itself. We need both, but the first tells us why the unit exists. The second ought to help it do that work, not become the work.

This isn’t just a military problem. It’s a government problem.

Consider the United States Department of Agriculture.

The Department administers programs for agriculture, research, conservation, rural development, and housing, among other responsibilities. USDA’s Small Business Innovation Research program includes a topic called Rural and Community Development. Its stated objective is to improve quality of life in rural America through the development and commercialization of technologies addressing economic and social challenges.

USDA also has a Rural Housing Service. It provides loans, grants, and loan guarantees for single-family and multifamily housing and for community facilities in rural areas. These programs aren’t the same thing as the innovation research program. They are different efforts under the same large department.

So let’s talk about what it means to improve the quality of life in rural America.

For people working in small towns, being able to afford a place to live isn’t a minor concern. A person can have a job and still be unable to buy a home in the community where that job exists. If housing is out of reach, families move, businesses struggle to hire, and the community loses people it needs.

Government can report how many loans it makes, how many grants it awards, and how much money it spends. Those are real numbers, and they matter for accounting and oversight. But they don’t answer the same question as whether housing has become more affordable.

One proposed measure would compare the median price of a home in a community with the median annual household income in that same community. For this example, set a target: the median home price should be no more than twice the median household income. If median household income is sixty thousand dollars, that means a target median home price of no more than one hundred twenty thousand dollars.

That is a proposed policy target, not an existing federal affordability standard. Nor is it the only relevant measurement. Mortgage interest rates, taxes, insurance, rents, and the housing needs of families below the median all affect affordability. But the ratio gives policymakers a plainly stated outcome to test.

Housing supply is one possible way to make progress. If a community can build more housing where supply is constrained, additional homes generally put downward pressure on prices relative to what they otherwise would have been. That doesn’t mean every additional house automatically reduces prices, or that the federal government can create homes without local builders, zoning decisions, infrastructure, financing, and private demand.

It means we can separate the activity from the result. Counting houses is useful. Counting dollars distributed is useful. But if the goal is to make housing affordable for working families, we have to measure…affordability.

USDA does publish strategic plans and performance measures. Federal agencies are already required to do some of this work. The question is whether the connection between an individual program, the resources devoted to it, and the outcome it’s supposed to produce is clear enough for the public and policymakers to judge its value.

That isn’t a hypothetical weakness. In a March 2026 report, the Government Accountability Office found that the federal program inventory still did not consistently describe how individual programs contribute to agency missions and goals. The same report explained that a previous review of inventories published in 2013 found that only eleven of twenty-four agencies identified the strategic objectives supported by each program.

The issue isn’t whether government keeps records. It keeps a lot of records. The issue is whether those records tell us what we are achieving.

The government shouldn’t have to invent some grand new purpose every time a new administration takes office. We already know the purpose. We wrote them down in the Preamble to the Constitution: Union, justice, order, common defense, general welfare, and liberty.

These are national goals. That doesn’t mean the Preamble, by itself, authorizes every program someone thinks might be helpful. Congress still has to act within the Constitution, and the President still has to faithfully execute the laws. But these goals show how we ask why we’re doing something at all.

Voters should demand accountability. Congress writes laws, establishes programs, and appropriates money. It ought to explain which national purpose a program serves, what result it expects, and how we will tell whether we are achieving that result. The executive branch, which administers those programs, should be able to trace its work and spending back to the law and those same goals.

Not every result is going to be easy to measure. Some programs serve several goals. Sometimes the evidence takes years to develop. Sometimes we need to admit that our original assumptions were wrong. Fine. That’s a reason to think harder about our measures, not to give up on having them.

We can’t hold one agency responsible for every economic condition in America. USDA cannot single-handedly determine housing costs across rural America. But if we say a program is intended to improve rural housing, then we ought to identify the part of the problem the program can influence and look for evidence that it is making a difference.

It’s easier to track how much we spent than to know what we achieved. We count employees, grants, applications, inspections, reports, and dollars. Administration gives us numbers. But the numbers aren’t meaningful just because they show up in a report.

Instead, for every program the executive branch runs, tell us the law that authorizes it. Tell us which national goal it serves. Tell us the measurable result it’s trying to produce. Tell us what it costs, and whether we’re actually making progress to the effect. When the evidence says the program isn’t working, we should be willing to change it. And if it no longer serves a defensible purpose, we should be willing to end it.

We shouldn’t confuse activity with achievement, or compliance with success. And we shouldn’t assume that because a government program has existed for decades, its existence is the reason to keep it.

The American people give government enormous resources. They have every right to ask what those resources are achieving.

Government should be accountable not only for how it spends our money, but for what it achieves with it.

Sources

National Archives. U.S. Constitution, Preamble and Articles I and II.Provides the six national purposes used throughout the essay and the division between Congress’s lawmaking and spending authority and the President’s duty to execute the laws.

U.S. Code. 10 U.S.C. § 153, Chairman: functions.Establishes the Chairman’s planning responsibilities and requires the National Military Strategy to support presidential and defense objectives, grounding the essay’s connection between national purpose and military action.

2025 National Security Strategy, White House. Establishes the President’s national security priorities and the objectives that guide the use of American power.

2026 National Defense Strategy, Department of Defense. Explains how the Defense Department translates presidential priorities into military priorities, capabilities, and resource decisions.

2022 National Military Strategy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Demonstrates how military strategy connects to national security and defense objectives.

CJCSI 3500.01K, Joint Training Policy, November 2024. Figure 1 explicitly identifies the NSS, NDS, NMS, GEF, and combatant commanders’ guidance in the strategic-document framework.

National Military Strategy historical archive, Department of Defense. Explains the Chairman’s responsibility for producing the strategy and its relationship to the higher-level national strategies.

USDA NIFA. SBIR/STTR Topic Areas, section 8.6, Rural and Community Development. Identifies improving rural quality of life through technological innovation as a stated program objective, giving the USDA example a documented purpose against which to judge results.

USDA Rural Development. Rural Housing Service. Confirms that rural housing is part of USDA’s responsibilities and identifies its loans, grants, and guarantees, distinct from the small-business research program.

USDA Rural Development. Single Family Housing Programs. Shows that USDA already helps families buy, build, and repair homes, grounding the question of whether those activities produce more affordable housing.

Performance.gov. Performance Framework. Explains existing federal requirements for setting goals and reviewing results, so the criticism concerns weak connections and accountability rather than an absence of any measurement system.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. Federal Programs: OMB Needs to Continue Developing a Complete and Useful Inventory. GAO-26-107551, March 5, 2026. Documents missing links between programs, agency goals, and performance evidence.

HUD, Office of Policy Development and Research. Rent Burden in the Housing Choice Voucher Program, October 2017. Explains housing costs as a share of household income, clarifying why the essay’s proposed home-price-to-income target differs from established rental cost-burden measures.

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At Christmas in 1085, William the Conqueror had a problem.

He’d crossed from Normandy and taken England’s throne nearly twenty years earlier. In 1085, England faced the threat of an invasion from Denmark. Having conquered a country, he had to defend it.

At Gloucester, William met with his council and ordered a survey. Who held the land? What was it worth? What resources could the kingdom provide?

The following year, officials gathered the information that became the Domesday Book. Estates, ploughs, mills, livestock. Who had held the property before the conquest, who held it now, and what had happened to its value.

William already had a land tax. He hadn’t invented it. The tax was called the geld, and surviving accounts from southwestern England tell us what collecting it looked like.

The charge was six shillings, or seventy-two silver pennies, for each taxable unit of land called a hide. It wasn’t a percentage of a house’s market value. Almost a third of the hides in those accounts were exempt because they were farmed directly for the king and his barons.

The collectors gathered the money. Other men carried the silver to the treasury at Winchester. They even claimed expenses for the horses, leather bags, and sealing wax.

More than nine hundred years ago, collecting taxes already came with an expense report.

This wasn’t a society of homeowners as we understand that word. There were free landholders, dependent peasants, and enslaved people, with very different rights and obligations. They weren’t electing William or voting on his budget.

And then in America, a key difference is government by the people, for the people. The king doesn’t tax us.

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence complained of taxes imposed without consent. But winning independence didn’t settle what a fair tax bill looked like.

In 1786, farmers in Massachusetts were gathering outside courthouses. Some had served in the Revolution. They’d helped win independence, but military service hadn’t reliably brought payment. Cash was scarce. Debts and taxes were due. Farmers faced losing their property.

They petitioned for relief. When that didn’t produce the changes they wanted, protesters blocked court proceedings. Daniel Shays, a former Continental Army captain, became one of their leaders.

The government they resisted was now their own.

Meanwhile, Congress struggled to pay its bills. Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government depended on the states to supply money. It couldn’t reliably compel them to provide it.

The Constitution gave Congress the power to tax. Revenue bills had to begin in the House of Representatives, and federal receipts and expenditures had to be published. Taxation was a responsibility of the government Americans were building, with elected representatives to answer for it.

So when did property taxes become like they are now? Mostly a county or city thing, rather than a federal tax?

There wasn’t one federal decision to hand property taxes down to the counties. Communities had been using them for a long time. They needed schools, roads, and other services. Land and buildings were visible, stayed in place, and could be assessed.

Property taxes also supplied substantial revenue to state governments. But states developed income and sales taxes, and the balance changed.

In 1902, property taxes supplied about forty-five percent of state governments’ general revenue from their own sources. By 1942, that was about six percent. For local governments, it was still about eighty-one percent.

And now my wife and I are looking at our property-tax statement for the year. Included with it is a sheet directing us to the county website, where we can apply for a twenty-five percent homeowner exemption.

My wife thinks we should not get the exemption.

I’m on the fence.

I’m not against property taxes in principle. I’m not suggesting somebody else pick up my tax bill, because we do need to pay for services.

What I’m saying is, and this is the part that’s a little sticky: Why is the property tax exemption voluntary? If I choose not to seek the exemption, and my neighbors do, then that doesn’t make sense to me.

The question isn’t really, do you want to pay your property taxes? It’s, should you willingly pay more in property taxes?

Our government does a poor job of saying where the money goes and tracking to outcomes. Their answer to why we pay taxes for roads, schools, and whatever. That, to me, is a terrible justification.

Look at a school’s costs. There’s all kinds of stuff hidden in there. It just says salary, fringe, supplies, equipment. It doesn’t show what that really means.

And selfishly, I say this: if my name went on a list because I chose to pay more taxes, and then if my house caught on fire the county responded more urgently because I paid more, I would understand the justification for paying more.

I could see what I was getting. But what does willingly paying more get us now?

Again, let’s look at schools. What are the performance measures the schools have shown as a result of higher or lower property taxes?

If you want to convince me that I should pay more money for schools, then show me test scores that went up.

And this gets to bigger questions. Should the federal Department of Education exist? Should we support school vouchers where parents can choose to send their kid to a public or private school?

To the people who say no, all that money should go to public schools, I would say, why? Did their test scores go up?

There should be some measure of effectiveness for everything the county, state, or federal government does. If there’s a fire, how long does it take to respond to the fire? If there’s a security incident, how long does it take the sheriff to get there? And not just to my house, to every home in the county.

I want to see the county grade card, the state grade, the federal grade. I want to see the outcome, and I expect to see the outcome improve.

As an example, how many Americans know that the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development mission area works to improve the economy, infrastructure, and quality of life in rural American communities? Its Rural Housing Service agency provides loans, grants, and loan guarantees for single-family and multi-family affordable housing, home repairs, and essential community facilities like schools, hospitals, and fire stations.

So let’s ask a simple question. Is housing affordable at American worker wages across rural America? There’s a simple answer: No.

So, a simple grade. A failing one. Should I volunteer to pay higher taxes to an organization that gets a failing grade?

It’s like either no one knows how, or no one tries, to make the government run better.

In planning, you make objectives and sub-objectives. You work through the sub-objectives to achieve the objective. And when you achieve enough objectives, you ought to be able to say whether you’ve achieved the strategic effect you were after.

I don’t see that track in tax dollars. How long does it take the sheriff to respond to every house on a normal day? How long does it take to respond to a fire? Did students’ test scores go up? Are there fewer people who need low-income social program support?

From 2010 to 2025, the federal house-price index for my county went up about a hundred and four percent. Over the same period, national consumer prices went up about forty-eight percent. House prices roughly doubled.

We live in the county, not the city. There are so many more big, beautiful houses. New houses. Expensive houses.

So I still have a hard time understanding why I would willingly pay more. With all those houses adding taxable value, what more is the county providing? Why would I say, yes, this is a good decision?

And if home values have gone up faster than inflation, why does government get to spend at a rate equal to home values instead of a rate equal to inflation?

Even if services cost more, why did they cost more?

Before asking me to forgo relief, show me what it buys, what it costs, and what breaks without it.

I understand the other side. If we reduce property taxes and replace them with sales taxes, we still pay. And that’s even worse, because there are landlords who would get a tax break, and low-income groups would have to pay more at the grocery store, but they wouldn’t get a cheaper rent bill. A complete failure of justice.

Despite my reluctance to pay more in property taxes, I’m going to vote, begrudgingly, to not reduce property taxes further.

But do I trust my government? No, I don’t.

The money goes into a black hole and I don’t see improved outcomes . I don’t see a clear path from the tax dollars to what we were trying to achieve.

So why am I voting that way? Because I have to trust that somebody up there knows what they’re doing.

Sources

William ordered the survey at Christmas 1085; its records compare landholding and value before and after the conquest. The National Archives, Domesday.

The Danish invasion threat and Gloucester council provide the historical setting; defense and taxation were part of the survey’s rationale, not its sole established purpose. J. R. Maddicott, Responses to the Threat of Invasion, 1085, The English Historical Review. The council and inquiry also appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s account of Domesday.

Southwestern geld accounts record six shillings per hide, 32.8% exemption for royal and baronial demesne, and transport expenses. Those figures describe these regional accounts, not a universal household tax rate. Julia Crick and Chris Lewis, The end of the tax year 1086, Exeter Cathedral.

Domesday records distinguish villagers, cottagers, free men, socmen, and enslaved people. Medieval Sourcebook, Domesday instructions and extracts.

Consent and taxation are explicit subjects of the Declaration. National Archives, Declaration transcript.

Shays’ Rebellion involved postwar debt, distressed farmers and veterans, petitions, and obstruction of court proceedings. It was not exclusively a property-tax revolt. Mount Vernon, Shays’ Rebellion.

Congress depended on state contributions under the Articles. National Archives, Articles of Confederation.

Taxing power, origination of revenue bills, and publication of accounts appear in Article I, sections 8, 7, and 9 respectively. National Archives, Constitution transcript.

Property taxes provided 45.3% of state own-source general revenue in 1902 and 6.2% in 1942; the local figure in 1942 was 80.8%. Glenn W. Fisher, History of Property Taxes in the United States, Economic History Association. The underlying totals are independently supported by the 1967 Census of Governments, volume 6, number 5, printed pages 44 and 47.

Wyoming’s existing homeowner exemption removes 25% of qualifying residential value, limited to the first $1 million of fair-market value of the dwelling and associated improved land. It is not a guaranteed 25% reduction from a previous year’s bill. Eligibility and application rules apply. Wyoming Department of Revenue, owner-occupied exemptions.

Additional research on school spending finds average benefits from increased spending; it does not establish the value of every district expenditure. Jackson and Mackevicius, The Distribution of School Spending Impacts, published study; Jackson, Wigger, and Xiong, Do School Spending Cuts Matter, published study.

USDA Rural Development supports rural economies, infrastructure, and quality of life. Its Rural Housing Service finances housing and essential community facilities; USDA programs also support home repairs, schools, hospitals, and fire stations. USDA, Rural Development; USDA, Rural Housing Service; USDA, Community Facilities Programs.

Wyoming’s proposed Initiative Proposition Number One would exempt 50% of the assessed value of a qualifying primary residence’s dwelling. Its ballot text distinguishes the residential structure from associated land and sets separate residency and claim requirements. It does not enact a replacement sales tax. If passed in 2026, the earliest applicable tax year would be 2027. Wyoming Secretary of State, official 2026 statewide ballot proposition and full initiative text.

Wyoming’s 2026 general election is Tuesday, November 3, 2026. Wyoming Secretary of State, 2026 key election dates.

Laramie County’s FHFA annual all-transactions house-price index increased from 148.79 in 2010 to 303.53 in 2025, a 104.0% increase. The county series is WY / Laramie / FIPS 56021, indexed to 2000 = 100. FHFA county house-price-index workbook. This measures repeat-transaction single-family house-price appreciation, not growth in the total taxable property base, tax collections, county revenue, or spending. New construction and exemptions do not translate one-for-one into this measure. FHFA local house-price-index methodology.

U.S. CPI-U, all items, annual average increased from 218.056 in 2010 to 321.943 in 2025, a 47.6% increase, rounded to about 48% in the script. BLS explanation using the 2010 annual index; BLS annual CPI table. BLS calculated the 2025 average from eleven published months because October observations were unavailable during the federal funding lapse. BLS 2025 funding-lapse FAQ, question 10.

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Some oppose a woman’s right to choose, citing God’s law.

I, too, am a believer. I offer a different perspective.

When we brought our firstborn home from the hospital, they wouldn’t sleep unless someone was holding them. We couldn’t hold the baby twenty-four hours a day without taking shifts. So I took the night shift, holding our oldest in my lap and looking at the glowing computer monitor in the dark, trying to figure out what other people do when their baby won’t sleep.

The nurses had taught us in the hospital how to swaddle a baby. They could wrap the blanket tight enough that the baby couldn’t get their arms out. We weren’t that good at it. Once our oldest got their arms out, they were awake.

Then I came across the Velcro swaddle thing. So it’s one in the morning, or whatever time it was, and I’m ordering swaddle blankets with rush shipping. A few days later, they showed up.

When we put our oldest in one, they went to sleep and stayed asleep longer. It was amazing.

My wife would remind me they still didn’t sleep through the night.

Having a baby is a challenging time. One or both parents can be exceptionally sleep deprived. And it’s a beautiful time, because you love your baby. Despite the challenges, your baby is amazing, and you’re going to do everything you can to take care of them.

A woman close to me lost a baby during pregnancy. As it was explained to me, her doctors knew the baby would be stillborn. They recommended a procedure to bring on the birth early, and she chose to have it.

The baby was stillborn. They named their baby and went through the mourning process.

When we talk about government making decisions about pregnancy and life saving medical care for mothers, we need to remember what people go through.

At the October 14 CNN and Jubilee town hall, a Catholic voter challenged James Talarico about abortion. He said the Bible was silent on abortion. She answered, “Thou shalt not kill.” Talarico said he wouldn’t support abortion if he believed it was murder, and pointed to women he said were dying because doctors feared providing care.

That exchange raises a question about the commandments themselves, and another about what public officials owe the people affected by their decisions.

Let’s not sidestep the question.

We start in the beginning. Or, most correctly, a little after the beginning, with the Ten Commandments.

The commandments begin with our obligations to God. Have no other gods. Do not take God’s name in vain. Keep the Sabbath holy. They also tell us how to treat other people.

God gave us the commandments dealing with our relationship with God first. And those are the most important. Why begin there if our relationship with God wasn’t the most important place to start?

You don’t tell your kid what matters most and bury it in the number seven spot. That doesn’t mean we’re ranking all ten commandments. It means our relationship with God is most important and should govern how we treat other people.

The first is pretty straight forward. Only one God. So, love God. Don’t love gold instead.

And then. Do not take God’s name in vain.

A lot of people think that means don’t curse using God’s name. That’s not all. It means: If you swear an oath in God’s name, you shall not make God witness to a lie.

Don’t say you’re going to do something and call on God’s name to make people believe you, then knowingly break that promise.

The Almighty will not tolerate us calling on God’s name to lie or mistreat other people. That applies to people who call on the name of the Almighty to take an oath of office.

The federal oath changed during the Civil War. Lincoln ordered an expanded oath for executive branch civilian employees in 1861. Congress revised it in 1862, when “So help me God” became part of the statutory oath for nonpresidential federal offices. Later revisions produced the form used today.

The oath requires officials to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” They promise true faith and allegiance, take the obligation freely without mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and promise to carry out their duties well and faithfully.

And then they state, “So help me God.”

Officials can affirm instead. The constitutional obligation applies either way. Those who invoke God also make that promise in God’s name. The vast majority of people choose to swear.

The Constitution’s preamble gives us six national goals: form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.

So, in swearing on the name of the Almighty that they will support and defend the Constitution, they are swearing to support and defend the six national goals, on the name of the Almighty.

People judge their leaders by those national goals, even if they don’t consciously think in those terms. They may never say “domestic tranquility” or “general welfare.” But they know whether their community is safe and orderly, whether government treats them fairly, and whether they can make decisions about their own lives.

A leader won’t achieve everything. People should still be able to see a serious effort toward those goals, understand the decisions, and hold the leader responsible for what happens. Moral leadership requires taking responsibility for the people affected by your decisions.

One of our national goals is to maintain liberty.

Part of liberty is being able to make decisions about your own property. The idea of life, liberty, and property shaped the American founding. You own yourself and your labor. When you mix that labor with what the earth provides, it helps establish your claim to the property.

All the effort you make in your life to own anything begins with your own self. Your self creates the conditions that allow you to gain other property. Your personal self is the preeminent property you own.

And if you don’t have bodily autonomy, then you don’t own yourself.

That applies to a woman. Her body belongs to her. Pregnancy doesn’t change who owns her body.

What does self-ownership mean for a woman’s liberty?

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments protect life, liberty, and property against deprivation without due process of law. They don’t prohibit every government restriction. Courts generally address bodily autonomy as liberty, rather than treating the body as an ordinary possession.

We have a responsibility to judge whether government respects liberty.

An unborn child is living. Its life has value. The question is whether that life has preeminent rights over the mother.

And that brings us back to the commandment the voter raised with Talarico: “Thou shalt not kill.”

The word “kill” is central to this discussion.

The Hebrew word used in the original is lo tirtsach, from the verb ratsach. “You shall not murder.” Murder better expresses the commandment here than a rule against every taking of life.

The same Hebrew root also appears in passages about unintentional killing, so it doesn’t fit our modern legal categories perfectly. Biblical law distinguishes intent and circumstances. It doesn’t treat every taking of life as the same act.

Bottom line. The commandment does not say thou shalt not kill. It says thou shalt not murder.

Definitely a different concept. And to highlight the difference, let’s look at another question.

Does God condemn military service?

I served for twenty-one years. You might not hear it said this way often, but the military exists to kill people and break things in defense of the United States. Even if you’re not the one who pulls the trigger, you support that mission.

If “thou shalt not kill” condemns every taking of life, then it would condemn military members for the service they agreed to perform. That is unacceptable.

Do we condemn military members who lawfully kill in combat? No, we do not condemn them.

We recognize that the circumstances and justification matter. We aren’t the Almighty, but automatic condemnation of military service doesn’t follow from this commandment.

David’s armies killed many people. The biblical account doesn’t automatically condemn every soldier for serving. It also takes bloodshed seriously: First Chronicles says David would not build the temple because he had shed so much blood and fought so many wars.

We cannot accept the distinction between killing and murder for military members, then refuse to consider that distinction when we talk about a woman’s ability to make decisions about her own body.

Military service shows why saying taking a life doesn’t finish the argument. If you call it murder, you still have to explain why it is wrongful killing.

So. The act of killing does not necessarily violate God’s law. Every circumstance is different.

The unborn child’s dependence doesn’t give it a superior claim to the mother’s body. Her body remains hers.

Parents have responsibilities to their children. But requiring care for a child and requiring someone to sustain a life inside her body are different obligations.

Other people can feed a child, provide a home, or take over the child’s care. They can’t take over this woman’s pregnancy. The law would require her particular body to sustain it.

A woman’s authority over her own body is foundational to her liberty. Recognizing the unborn child’s life doesn’t require giving it preeminent rights over her. The decision about her pregnancy belongs to her.

Let’s go back to the oath.

An official who swears to support and defend the Constitution accepts an obligation to secure the blessings of liberty. Using government to take away a woman’s authority over her pregnancy violates that obligation.

And if that official invoked God, their commitment to the Almighty is preeminent. You don’t get to disregard a promise made in God’s name because you want to use religion to justify a different decision.

Sincere disagreement about the Constitution doesn’t prove someone lied. But knowingly breaking a promise made in God’s name misuses that name.

Moral leadership requires understanding what your decisions demand of other people. What are you requiring this woman to go through? What happens to her health and her family? Does your decision achieve our national goals, including liberty?

The leader needs to answer those questions. Invoking God doesn’t answer them.

A woman may never describe her pregnancy as a question about our national goals. No matter. A family going through a loss knows whether government helps them get care or makes it harder.

Our leaders take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. We should judge them by whether they work toward our national goals, including a woman’s liberty to make decisions about her own body. And if they swore that oath in God’s name, then they need to keep that promise.

Before we sign off, let’s go through the logic so I didn’t miss anything.

First, if we make a promise using the name of the Almighty, we shall not make God witness to a lie.

Let’s build on that. Second, anyone who swears an oath in God’s name to support and defend someone’s right to liberty, shall not make God witness to violating that persons liberty.

Third, bodily ownership and autonomy are foundational to liberty. You can own no property without your body, therefore your body is property you own and use to secure all other property. Your self is your most valuable property.

Fourth, ownership doesn’t mean unlimited authority. We accept restrictions on how people use their property. But requiring a woman to sustain another life inside her body goes much further than restricting how she uses something she owns. It gives someone else an enforceable claim to the use of her body.

Fifth, parents have responsibilities to their children. But providing care and sustaining a pregnancy are different obligations. Other people can feed a child, provide a home, or take over the child’s care. They cannot take over this woman’s pregnancy. Government would compel her personally to provide that bodily support. The unborn child’s dependence matters, but dependence alone does not establish a right to compel another person’s body to sustain you.

Sixth, a woman’s authority over her own body is foundational to her liberty. The unborn child’s life has value. But that value doesn’t give it preeminent rights over her body. The decision about her pregnancy belongs to her.

Last. This right does not violate God’s law. The commandment prohibits murder. Taking a life does not, by itself, mean murder. We recognize that distinction in military service.

The argument for a woman’s right rests on her authority over her own body. The unborn child’s life has value, but dependence does not give it a superior claim to her body or give government the authority to compel her to sustain it.

In fact, denying her the right to make her own decisions while swearing on the Almighty that you support her right to liberty makes God witness to a lie. And the Almighty states clearly we will not call upon their name to lie.

Sources

The Talarico exchange. CNN’s transcript records the discussion of abortion, the Ten Commandments, and medical care during James Talarico’s October 14, 2026 town hall. CNN. “CNN & Jubilee Town Hall with James Talarico.” October 14, 2026. Transcript.

The commandments and God’s name. Exodus prohibits misuse of God’s name, Leviticus prohibits swearing falsely in God’s name, and Luther’s catechism addresses lying and deception under that commandment. The Holy Bible, Exodus 20:1–17 and Leviticus 19:12; Luther, Martin. “The Ten Commandments.” Small Catechism, 1529. Text.

The oath of office. Congressional histories trace the federal oath through Lincoln’s 1861 action, Congress’s 1862 revision, and subsequent changes, including the incorporation of “So help me God.” United States Senate. “Oath of Office.” History and text; United States House of Representatives, Office of the Historian. “Oath of Office.” History.

National goals and constitutional obligations. The preamble states six national purposes, Article VI requires an oath or affirmation, and the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments protect life, liberty, and property through due process. United States Constitution. National Archives. Constitution and preamble; Bill of Rights; Amendments 11–27.

Self-ownership and property. Locke connects ownership of one’s person and labor to the acquisition of property, while also discussing duties to preserve life and care for children. Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government, §§ 6, 27, 56, 123–126. Complete text; property excerpt, University of Chicago.

The Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. The Court overturned Roe and Casey and held that the federal Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022). Opinion and dissents.

Killing, murder, and the Hebrew verb. The Hebrew verb ratsach appears in passages concerning both murder and unintentional killing, with biblical law distinguishing intent and circumstances. Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, entry for רָצַח, Strong’s H7523. Lexicon entry; The Holy Bible, Numbers 35.

David and bloodshed. First Chronicles identifies David’s wars and bloodshed as the reason he would not build the temple. The Holy Bible, 1 Chronicles 22:7–10.

Medical care after stillbirth. Clinical guidance addresses delivery after fetal death, including how timing and method depend on medical circumstances and patient preferences. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. “Management of Stillbirth.” Obstetric Care Consensus, no. 10, March 2020. Clinical guidance.

Texas law and pregnancy loss. Texas law excludes removal of a fetus that died from spontaneous pregnancy loss from its definition of abortion and expressly addresses that treatment within reasonable medical judgment. Texas Health and Safety Code, § 245.002 and § 170A.0022.

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Snow covered the pines through the valley, aspens hanging on to their brown, gold, and yellow leaves. Many had already fallen. Cold air and heavy clouds clung to the mountains. Some white still falling, the snow on the ground reflected a little blue from the sky. The valley and peaks looked gray-blue.

In Saratoga, a small mountain ranching town in Wyoming, a row of nice SUVs lined the fence at the town airport. About half of them had snow on them. A nearby luxury resort brings guests in by private aircraft.

Everyday hardworking people drive by and see it. They live in the town. They work in the businesses that make a place like this possible.

When they look at their own lives, what reason do they have to believe that the person they elected to represent them takes their welfare as seriously as the welfare of the people flying in?

That question is the argument about affordability.

People can judge their leaders by whether those leaders attempt to achieve the national goals, even if they don’t consciously think in those terms. They expect justice. They expect their government to concern itself with their welfare. And when they believe their leaders have overlooked them in favor of somebody else, they feel betrayed.

That same day, Greg Ip raised a related question in The Wall Street Journal. He wrote, “All politicians in their gut believe voters can be bought….Yet the puzzling thing is that shoveling money at voters has a terrible electoral track record.”

A government can help people, and people can reward it for helping them. A family that receives meaningful help has good reason to value it.

But that help doesn’t settle the larger question of how their leaders have governed.

A family can appreciate a tax cut and still believe the government has treated them unfairly. Need the money and still judge the leader who offers it. Accept help while wondering why they need so much of it.

[Paige]

There are a lot of ingredients in the affordability pressure cooker this year.

Inflation. Business survival. Tariffs. Energy costs.

Prices this September were 3.7 percent higher than a year ago. Raises come slower than inflation and hardworking people lose purchasing power.

Producer inflation came in even higher, up 6.3 percent over the same year. Things like energy, food, manufactured supplies, services.

Businesses have to survive and they have a responsibility to pay their labor. They need revenue to do it, and they need profit to keep investing and operating. If a business can’t cover its costs, at some point it has to make the numbers make sense and labor ends up getting cut.

Bottom line. The business owner needs affordable inputs. The worker, a wage that will support a family. The farmer, a viable market, and the family buying groceries needs food it can afford.

[Joel]

Enough economics. This is a leadership topic.

What responsibility does government have toward the people living with the consequences of its decisions?

Our national goals give elected leaders a heading.

We have six. Union, justice, order, defense, general welfare, and liberty. Yes, we disagree about how to achieve them. We elect people to exercise judgment within those disagreements.

The goals seem independent, but that’s not the case. They’re intertwined. Calls for justice turn into protests, protests into riots, and people call for order. Some justify war by calling for blood for defense, and war raises the cost of life for families, threatening welfare. Union holds us together. Liberty creates factions that pull us apart. Serving one goal can put another at risk.

Sometimes serving the country means asking people to accept hardship. Those who have to sacrifice should have good reason to believe that their welfare still counts.

Did protecting the American homeland require Americans to pay significantly more to heat their homes and transport goods?

Who carries that cost?

Congress made choices in the One Big Beautiful Bill. It paired tax cuts with reductions in Medicaid and food assistance. Households at the bottom lost resources, households at the top gained.

The leaders who made these choices owe the people carrying the burden an explanation. How does their sacrifice serve justice and welfare?

If the promise is that investment will create jobs and raise wages, when should those families expect to benefit, and what will their leaders do if they don’t?

The people deserve a response from the people who asked them to bear the cost.

Is this necessary for the common defense?

What about the impact to the general welfare?

When leaders ignore them, they betray the people. And that obligation has no party allegiance.

In November, the people will judge those choices.

So. Six national goals that most Americans can’t recite and may not even know.

No matter. They’re ingrained in the national consciousness.

We judge leaders by their attempt to achieve the national goals, even when we never consciously put the judgment into those words.

When a leader abandons that effort in favor of someone in a private jet in a ranch town, the betrayal falls fresh as the new snow.

References

The Constitution of the United States — National Archives⁠.

Greg Ip, Voters Can’t Be Bought but Politicians Keep Trying — The Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2026⁠.

Consumer Price Index for September 2026 — Bureau of Labor Statistics, October 14, 2026⁠. The annual increase was 3.7%; September’s monthly increase was 0.6%. BLS seasonally adjusts the headline monthly change but not the headline annual change.

Real Earnings for September 2026 — Bureau of Labor Statistics, October 14, 2026⁠. Real average hourly earnings on private nonfarm payrolls fell 0.7% over the preceding year.

Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, September 13, 1970⁠. University-hosted reproduction of the original New York Times Magazine essay; includes the constraints of law, ethical custom, and competition without deception or fraud.

Distributional Effects of Public Law 119-21 — Congressional Budget Office, August 11, 2025⁠. The figures are projected annual averages over 2026–2034 in 2025 dollars. CBO’s January 2025 current-law baseline included scheduled expiration of provisions of the 2017 tax law. Its resource measure includes taxes and benefits; tariffs are separate.

Detecting Tariff Effects on Consumer Prices in Real Time Part II — Federal Reserve, April 8, 2026⁠. Estimates consumer-price effects of 2025 tariffs through February 2026. Flaaen and Pierce’s study of the 2018–2019 tariffs⁠ examines protection, input costs, retaliation, and manufacturing employment.

Nucor second-quarter 2026 results — company release filed with the SEC, July 27, 2026⁠. The CEO attributes record shipments to investment and supportive trade policy. That attribution does not isolate tariffs’ causal contribution.

Global Oil Markets — Energy Information Administration, October 6, 2026 outlook⁠. Connects September’s oil-price increase with attacks on infrastructure and tankers, supply constraints, and shipping risks.

White House explanation of Operation Epic Fury, March 1, 2026⁠.

Money Power and the Influence of Ordinary People in American Politics — Pew Research Center, September 19, 2023⁠. Survey evidence on perceived influence of constituents, donors, and other interests.

Stefanie Stantcheva, Why Do We Dislike Inflation — Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2024⁠. Survey findings on affordability, anger, anxiety, inequity, and how people interpret wage increases.

Ana De La O, Do Conditional Cash Transfers Affect Electoral Behavior — American Journal of Political Science, 2013⁠. Randomized early enrollment in Mexico’s Progresa program increased turnout and incumbent vote share; benefits can earn electoral support.

Shively Field airport information — FAA records reproduced by AirNav⁠; Brush Creek Ranch FAQ⁠; WYDOT Shively Field economic-impact study using 2013 activity⁠.

2 Chronicles 13–14, King James Version⁠, especially 14:2–7. Background to the discussion of moral leadership, peace, and building for a community’s welfare.

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Who should pay on the first date?

People spend an enormous amount of time arguing about whether the man should pay, whether the bill should be split, or whether one person owes the other something because they paid for dinner.

I’ve listened to people discuss this with a level of seriousness that I’d ordinarily associate with negotiating a peace treaty.

But why are two people going on a date in the first place?

Presumably, it’s because they want to spend time together. They find one another interesting or attractive, and they’d like an opportunity to get to know each other.

That’s the purpose of the date.

Once you’ve established that, the question becomes how to make it happen.

Maybe one person pays for dinner. Maybe they split the bill. Maybe neither has enough money for dinner, so they go for a walk in the park.

The details aren’t particularly important. What’s important is that they want to spend time together and find a way to achieve that purpose.

And if someone has to promise another person dinner, money, or some other benefit just to convince them to show up, perhaps they shouldn’t be going on that date in the first place.

When we’re young, we make the biggest decisions of our lives before we realize how big those decisions are.

We choose careers. We go to college, or don’t. We decide where we’re going to live. We fall in love, get married, and sometimes have children. We make commitments that will shape the next twenty, thirty, or fifty years of our lives, often before we’ve lived long enough to appreciate what those commitments mean.

How do two people keep a promise for fifty years when neither can know what those years will bring?

That’s just part of being young. You make decisions based on what you know, what you want, and what you believe your future is going to look like. Then you spend much of the rest of your life discovering what those decisions mean.

I was twenty-three when I married my wife. Next March, we’ll celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I wonder now why I thought it was a good idea to be married in the wintertime, but I’ve forgotten.

Last year, I sat down and calculated the date when I would have spent more days of my life married than unmarried. That number was 8,663. I crossed that threshold last December. My wife crossed it this year.

Not a milestone I hear often. Not everyone feels the urge to do random math problems. Nevertheless, we’ve each spent more of our lives married than unmarried. At twenty-three, I couldn’t have imagined what that would mean.

When I was young, I occasionally attended someone’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. I remember thinking two things. First, those people were really old. And second, someday, if I got married, I’d probably have a fiftieth wedding anniversary of my own.

I didn’t think there was anything particularly unusual about reaching fifty years of marriage. You got married, stayed married, and eventually somebody brought you a cake. That’s how I understood it.

It hadn’t occurred to me that both people also had to live long enough to eat the cake.

Of course, when you’re young, you don’t realize how much your life can change in fifty years, how much two people might change, or how fortunate they’d have to be simply to have that much time together.

And recently, I became interested in just how fortunate those couples are.

PAIGE

In 2011, the United States Census Bureau reported that only about six percent of married American couples had reached their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Thirty-five percent had reached twenty-five years.

Six percent. That’s a remarkably small number. That doesn’t mean only six percent of marriages will ever reach fifty years, that survey was a snapshot in time.

But there’s another interesting statistic. In November 1980, the National Center for Health Statistics published a study examining how long American marriages would last.

Using divorce and mortality rates from 1975, researchers estimated that among first marriages reaching their twenty-fifth anniversary, about one-third would survive to their fiftieth.

Two-thirds wouldn’t.

Now, those estimates reflected the conditions of the 1970s. Americans are living longer today, and improvements in life expectancy have increased the opportunity for couples to spend more years together.

The point. Even after twenty-five years of marriage, reaching fifty depends on more than a couple’s willingness to remain married.

It also depends on how much time they have.

JOEL

There are really two fundamental obstacles to celebrating a fiftieth wedding anniversary. Divorce and mortality.

The first is something we have at least some influence over. The second, considerably less.

If two people marry at twenty-five, they both have to live to seventy-five to celebrate fifty years. If they marry at thirty-five, they both have to live to eighty-five.

They can have a wonderful marriage. Neither may ever consider divorce. They can remain completely committed to one another for the rest of their lives.

And still never celebrate fifty years.

That’s something I didn’t appreciate when I was young. I saw a fiftieth wedding anniversary as a measure of commitment. And it is. But it’s also a measure of good fortune.

Now, as I approach fifty years old myself in a couple years, I’m increasingly conscious of how quickly time passes.

I remember my short time as a squadron commander. I was thirty-nine years old, and one of my responsibilities was meeting the young airmen arriving in the squadron. We’d talk about the squadron, our standards, what I expected of them, and what they could expect from the organization.

Most of these young airmen were eighteen or nineteen years old. Some hadn’t been born when I’d entered military service.

And I remember sitting across from them and thinking about the difference in our ages.

I’d already lived two of their lifetimes.

And the strange thing was, I didn’t feel particularly old.

I could still remember being their age, joining the military, and wondering what the future would hold. I remembered being the young officer arriving at a new unit. It didn’t seem like all that long ago.

But apparently, the calendar had a different opinion.

To those young airmen, I was the grizzled squadron commander. To me, it seemed like I’d been sitting on their side of the desk just a few years earlier.

And I think that’s one of the peculiar things about getting older.

Thirty-nine years seems like an eternity when you’re eighteen. But when you’re thirty-nine, those years don’t feel nearly as long as you’d imagined they would.

I’m discovering that twenty-five years of marriage works much the same way.

We experience life one day at a time. We get up, go to work, take care of our families, and do whatever needs to be done. We make dinner, pay bills, go to bed, and do it again tomorrow.

Then one day you sit down and realize you’ve spent more of your life married than unmarried.

And somehow, all those days have become twenty-five years.

Which has led me to think about something else.

When I consider how much life can change over twenty-five or fifty years, I find myself wondering why so much of our conversation about marriage seems concerned with details and arrangements that may not survive even the first few years.

PAIGE

There’s certainly no shortage of opinions about what men and women owe one another.

Social media is full of arguments about who should pay for the first date, whether married couples should combine their finances, how much each person should contribute to household expenses, and how responsibilities should be divided.

And these aren’t meaningless questions. Financial independence matters. Unpaid household work has value. An arrangement that appears equal on paper may place a much greater burden on one person than the other.

But much of the debate focuses on what each person should receive from a relationship, rather than what the two people hope to achieve together.

It’s a distinction between negotiating individual obligations and deciding on a common purpose.

JOEL

Let’s go back to the first date.

Go to a coffee shop. On a walk in the tall weeds on a hot summer night. A motorcycle ride. Play pool. Stop in randomly at midnight at their house, thinking nothing of the hour.

Are these dates? Who cares!

I’ll say again, if someone has to bribe someone else with dinner, money, or some other benefit just to convince them to show up, maybe they shouldn’t be going on that date in the first place.

I think something similar happens when people get married.

Some may say the details of what someone owes someone else are the most important part of a marriage.

I say, do not marry those people.

My wife and I have always combined our finances. When we married, we had one household, one set of bills, and one shared future.

We didn’t approach our finances by calculating which expenses belonged to which person. We were building a life together. The money was there to support that life.

During my military career, we moved frequently. For about ten years, we moved every year or two. There were periods when my career largely determined where we lived and what our family could do.

A tough arrangement when your wife loves to work and is independent.

When our children were young, we were fortunate that she could spend time at home with them. That’s an opportunity I’m grateful our family had.

But that also meant we weren’t contributing to the household in the same ways.

And why would we expect to?

We were doing different things because our family needed different things from each of us.

If we’d approached our marriage as two individuals continuously calculating what one owed the other, I’m not sure how we would have accounted for all of that.

How do you calculate the financial value of staying home with your children? How do you account for a career opportunity one person gives up so the other can pursue something? What about the years when one spouse earns more, or works longer hours, or takes on more responsibilities at home?

You can try to assign a value to all of those things. And sometimes, for practical reasons, you have to.

But keeping an accurate ledger is not the same thing as building a successful marriage.

Now, I’m not suggesting every married couple needs a joint bank account. There are plenty of perfectly reasonable ways to organize a household. My cousin once sold his wife his used car! What works for my wife and me may not work for someone else.

But there’s a fundamental difference between approaching marriage as two individuals negotiating their respective obligations and approaching it as two people committed to a shared purpose.

And that difference becomes more important as the years pass.

Because your circumstances change.

You have children. Your careers change. You move. You become ill. Your parents get older. Sometimes one person can contribute more in one area while the other contributes more somewhere else.

The arrangement that made perfect sense when you were twenty-five may make absolutely no sense when you’re forty-five or sixty-five.

And if maintaining that arrangement has become your objective, then every change in circumstances becomes a problem.

But if the arrangement exists to support a larger purpose, you can change the arrangement without abandoning what you were trying to achieve.

That’s a distinction I came to appreciate during my military career, and it reminds me of the work of Air Force Colonel John Boyd.

PAIGE

John Boyd was an American fighter pilot and military strategist whose ideas influenced modern military thinking.

He’s probably best known for the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

It’s frequently described as a process for making decisions more quickly than an adversary. You observe what’s happening, orient yourself to the circumstances, decide what to do, and act. Then you repeat the process as new information becomes available.

The popular interpretation is that whoever moves through the loop faster gains an advantage.

But that misses the decisive part of Boyd’s thinking.

Orientation isn’t simply another step in a sequence. It’s the process through which we interpret the world around us. Our experience, assumptions, knowledge, and expectations all influence how we understand the circumstances we’re facing.

Think of orientation like it’s the way you’re facing. You can make the fastest decisions in the world and still not see what’s happening real time if you’re looking the other way.

And if our understanding is wrong, making decisions more quickly doesn’t necessarily help. You just make the wrong decision sooner.

JOEL

So. First dates and fifty years.

When you’re young, you make the most important decisions of your life, without having the wisdom of time to know how important they are.

And there’s a great equalizer in life. Time and chance happen to us all.

When I was young, I thought a fiftieth wedding anniversary was simply what happened if you stayed married long enough. But when you’re young, you don’t realize how much your life can change in fifty years, how much two people might change, or how fortunate they’d have to be simply to have that much time together.

Next March, my wife and I will celebrate twenty-five years. Our first date? I have no idea what it was. That summer, we met in a coffee shop. Went on a motorcycle ride. Got bit by chiggers in the tall grass. Drifted down a river in a canoe. I’m not sure we even went on a formal date.

I’m not halfway to some guaranteed destination. I have no idea what the next twenty-five years will bring or whether we’ll be fortunate enough to have them.

I’m not offering anyone a lesson on how to have a successful marriage. I’ve only been married for almost twenty-five years, and I wouldn’t pretend to know everything there is to know about it.

But I do wonder if we’ve begun asking the wrong questions.

We spend an extraordinary amount of time debating what one person owes another, when maybe we ought to begin by considering what two people want to achieve together.

The details will change. What we are trying to preserve is the life we are building together.

Maybe that’s a different way of thinking about marriage.

Sources

The percentage of currently married American couples who had reached their 25th anniversary (35%) or 50th anniversary (6%), reported in 2011 using 2009 survey data: U.S. Census Bureau, “Census Bureau Reports 55 Percent Have Married One Time”.

The 1980 federal study estimating that approximately one-third of first marriages reaching their 25th anniversary would survive to their 50th, based on 1975 divorce and mortality rates. The findings appear on page 10: James A. Weed, National Center for Health Statistics, National Estimates of Marriage Dissolution and Survivorship: United States (1980).

Historical improvements in American life expectancy, including changes in remaining life expectancy at age 65 since 1975: Social Security Administration, “Period Life Expectancy,” 2024 Trustees Report, Table V.A4.

Current American life expectancy, including 2024 life expectancy of 79.0 years at birth and remaining life expectancy at age 65 of 18.4 years for men and 20.8 years for women: CDC National Center for Health Statistics, “Mortality in the United States, 2024,” Data Brief No. 548 (January 2026).

Colonel John Boyd’s original explanation of the OODA loop, particularly how orientation shapes observation, decisions, and actions, and how experience, cultural traditions, new information, and analysis influence orientation: John R. Boyd, The Essence of Winning and Losing (1996), edited edition by Chet Richards and Chuck Spinney.

The deeper interpretation of Boyd’s strategic theory, including why reducing the OODA loop to decision-making speed overlooks the importance of orientation, learning, and adaptation: Frans P. B. Osinga, Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (Routledge, 2007).

The economic value of unpaid household labor, including raising children, caregiving, and maintaining a household. The Government Accountability Office estimated that unpaid household work contributed at least $5.6 trillion in economic value in 2024: U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Unpaid Household Work: Estimated Value and Time Spent on Domestic Tasks and Caregiving” (September 17, 2026).

Human outcomes are influenced by circumstances beyond individual control, expressed as “time and chance happen to them all”: Ecclesiastes 9:11, New International Version, via Bible Gateway.

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Imagine a little girl sitting in a restaurant with her dad. They order lunch. She gets a soda. It’s enormous, like a bucket of coke. The city is worried about obesity, diabetes, and what all that sugar is doing to people.

In our history, New York City tried to limit the size of some sugary drinks. The courts eventually stopped the rule. But imagine the city had done something different. Imagine it looked at that little girl holding that giant soda and said, Coca-Cola did this.

Instead of restricting the size of the drink, telling restaurants what they could sell, or trying to convince people not to drink so much soda, the city sued Coca-Cola. Maybe Pepsi too.

The argument would be pretty simple. These companies sold sugary drinks. They knew drinking too much sugar was bad for people. People became obese. People developed diabetes. The city had to spend money dealing with the consequences. So, Coca-Cola should pay.

There’s something about that argument that bothers us. Not because Coca-Cola would have no responsibility. Maybe it advertised too aggressively. Maybe it knew things about its product that people didn’t know. Maybe it targeted kids. Those things would matter. But somebody still picked up the cup and drank it. And the government that later sued Coca-Cola had spent years allowing the product to be sold, taxing the businesses that sold it, licensing the restaurants that served it, and watching its citizens buy it.

That doesn’t make Coca-Cola innocent. It just makes the story more complicated.

Now let’s think about the lawsuit from Boulder, Colorado, against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy.

The case made its way to the Supreme Court last week. Boulder says the oil companies should pay part of the costs associated with climate change. Boulder also alleges the companies knew their products contributed to climate change while concealing or misleading people about those dangers. The oil companies, meanwhile, argue that this is fundamentally an interstate and international emissions problem and that federal law, not state law, should govern it.

The lawyers can fight about that. Underneath the legal argument there’s a more interesting question.

If Colorado is saying oil companies bear responsibility for the consequences of people burning oil and gas, how much responsibility does Colorado bear?

Because people in Colorado burned the oil and gas. They still do. They drive cars. They heat houses. They run tractors. They fly in airplanes. They move freight. They build roads. They use diesel equipment. They consume electricity generated from fossil fuels.

And I’m not saying that as some kind of gotcha. Of course they did. What was the alternative? To sit in the dirt?

That’s the part of this that gets lost. When somebody in Colorado filled up his truck in 1985, he probably wasn’t standing there thinking, I’d like to contribute to global climate change today. He was thinking, I need to get to work.

A rancher using diesel wasn’t choosing pollution. He was choosing to feed cattle. A family heating a house wasn’t choosing carbon emissions. They were choosing not to freeze. A construction company burning diesel wasn’t trying to destroy the atmosphere. It was trying to build something.

The oil and gas were useful. That’s why people bought them.

So we’re left with a very simple question: if everyone had known everything, would they really have stopped?

If an oil company executive had shown up at every gas station in Colorado forty years ago to scream, ‘Save Yourselves! This fuel contributes to climate change!”, would Coloradans have stopped buying gasoline? Would they have parked the cars? Stopped the tractors? Turned off the furnaces? Stopped building roads? Stopped flying?

Maybe some people would’ve changed some things. Maybe governments would’ve acted sooner. Maybe companies would’ve invested differently. Those are fair possibilities. But would society have simply chosen not to use the energy?

No. That’s ridiculous.

And that’s where the philosophy starts to get spicy. We tend to confuse causing something with being morally responsible for all of it. Oil companies were part of the cause. Consumers were part of the cause. Governments were part of the cause. Industry was part of the cause. Everybody participated in the same energy system.

That doesn’t mean everyone has equal responsibility, and it doesn’t mean the oil companies get a pass if they lied. If somebody sells you food and deliberately hides the fact that it’s dangerous, your decision to eat the food doesn’t make the seller innocent. Who knows what, and who can do something about it, matters.

A family trying to get to work doesn’t have the same choices as a multinational corporation deciding what to research, disclose, advertise, or invest in. But the family still has some agency. The state has agency too.

Colorado hasn’t been powerless. It has adopted stricter emissions rules. It has tried to reduce vehicle emissions. It has invested money in wildfire mitigation and forest management. That proves Colorado understands that governments have choices.

So if responsibility is the principle, the principle has to work in both directions.

That takes us to wildfires.

A couple maybe three years ago I wrote about the strange contradiction in the way we manage forests and climate change. Wildfires release enormous amounts of carbon. We know many western forests have too much fuel in them: deadwood, overgrown stands, beetle-killed trees. We also know that reducing that fuel sometimes requires things people don’t like: mechanical thinning, logging, prescribed fire, disturbing habitat, cutting trees, spending taxpayer money.

There are legitimate environmental reasons to be cautious about all of those things. Protect the snowy owl. Protect habitat. Protect old-growth trees. Those concerns are real.

But fire is real too.

Our forests are going to burn. That’s how forests heal themselves. There is no scenario in the future that every acre of forest doesn’t eventually burn. Choosing to do nothing means there’s more fuel for them to burn hotter and longer. And when they burn, the carbon doesn’t stop at the Colorado border.

So now the philosophical question gets even stranger. Can Colorado say that emissions coming from oil companies outside Colorado helped damage Colorado, while emissions from a Colorado wildfire are just something that happened to Colorado?

If responsibility crosses borders, then responsibility crosses borders.

That doesn’t mean Colorado caused the beetles. It doesn’t mean Colorado caused the drought. It doesn’t mean Colorado caused climate change. It means that once the problem exists, choices still exist. How much do we thin? How much do we burn intentionally? How much do we log? How much money do we spend? How much environmental disruption do we tolerate today to avoid a larger environmental disruption tomorrow?

That’s responsibility too.

This is where I think we sometimes build a self-licking ice cream cone. Everyone uses the system. Everyone benefits from the system. Everyone contributes something to the consequences. Then everyone points at somebody else and says: you caused this.

The oil company says consumers demanded the fuel. Consumers say the oil company sold it. The state says the corporation knew more. The corporation says the state regulated us and collected taxes from the activity. The federal government blames industry. Industry blames regulation.

Everybody is somehow both participant and victim.

That doesn’t mean nobody is responsible. It means responsibility is shared.

That brings us back to something else. The International Court of Justice, sitting in The Hague, has said climate change threatens fundamental human rights and that states have obligations to address it.

There’s an irony there that I still can’t get over.

The Hague was badly damaged during World War II. After the war, Europe had to rebuild. American factories ran. We made steel and cement, moved ships and trucks, burned fuel. Smoke came pouring out of stacks. The industrial machine that rebuilt Europe produced huge amounts of pollution.

And now, generations later, from a city rebuilt with the help of that industrial system, a court can sit in a comfortable room and declare that humanity has obligations to reduce the environmental consequences of industrial activity.

That doesn’t make the court wrong. Standards should change. Technology should improve. We know things now that people didn’t know then.

But you still feel a stitch in your side with the irony.

Prosperity gives us the luxury to criticize the process that created prosperity.

A society lying in rubble doesn’t begin with the carbon footprint of the cement kiln. It asks whether there is cement. A freezing person doesn’t begin with the emissions profile of his furnace. He asks whether the furnace works.

Belief can tell us what kind of world we want, but biology keeps asking whether we can survive long enough to build it.

And that’s where we are with Colorado.

I’m not against Colorado trying to deal with climate change. I’m not necessarily on the side of the oil companies. If an oil company lied, prove it. If it concealed information, prove it. If it bears part of the cost, then make that case.

But I don’t understand the philosophy of treating the producer as though everyone else was the victim.

Colorado citizens consumed the fuel, its economy benefited, they regulated it. People from Colorado filled their vehicles with it. Its farms, construction sites, businesses, and homes depended on it. And when stricter alternatives became possible, Colorado made choices about how quickly to adopt them.

So maybe the question isn’t whether Exxon is responsible.

Maybe Exxon is responsible, at least partly.

The question is whether responsibility ends there.

I don’t think it does.

If we’re serious when we say environmental harm creates responsibility, then the responsibility has to follow the whole chain: producer, seller, government, consumer. All of us.

Maybe that’s uncomfortable. But shared responsibility isn’t the same thing as no responsibility.

It just means we don’t get to hold the giant cup in our own hands and pretend it was somebody else’s fault we drank the coke.

Sources

The original 2018 Boulder County, City of Boulder, and San Miguel County complaint against ExxonMobil and Suncor, including the allegations concerning fossil-fuel production, promotion, climate harms, and the companies’ knowledge of climate risks: Boulder County District Court, “Complaint and Jury Demand,” April 17, 2018

Boulder County’s description of the lawsuit, including its position that the case seeks compensation for climate-related harms rather than regulation of fossil-fuel production or emissions: Boulder County, “Climate Lawsuit”

The official U.S. Supreme Court docket for Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, including the Court’s grant of review and the October 5, 2026 oral argument: Supreme Court of the United States, Docket No. 25-170 Supreme Court

The official transcript of the October 5, 2026 Supreme Court oral argument, including Suncor’s argument that Colorado law is being applied to alleged harms resulting from global fossil-fuel use and greenhouse-gas emissions: Supreme Court of the United States, “Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. Commissioners of Boulder County,” Oral Argument Transcript, October 5, 2026 Supreme Court

The official Supreme Court audio of the October 5, 2026 oral argument: Supreme Court of the United States, “Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. Commissioners of Boulder County,” Oral Argument Audio Supreme Court

Colorado’s argument in support of allowing state courts to hear Boulder’s state-law claims against ExxonMobil and Suncor: Colorado Attorney General, “Attorney General Phil Weiser Defends State Courts’ Role in Climate Case Before U.S. Supreme Court” Colorado Attorney General

New York City’s sugary-drink Portion Cap Rule, which prohibited covered food-service establishments from selling sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces, and the New York Court of Appeals decision holding that the Board of Health exceeded its regulatory authority: New York Official Reports, “New York Statewide Coalition of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce v. New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene,” 2014 Westlaw

Colorado’s adoption of the California Low Emission Vehicle standard in 2018 and subsequent consideration and adoption of a Zero Emission Vehicle program: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, “Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate Proposal” cdphe.colorado.gov

Colorado’s current Zero Emission Vehicle requirements, including requirements applying to model-year 2023 and later vehicles: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, “Zero Emission Vehicles Program” cdphe.colorado.gov

Colorado state spending and projects intended to reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health, including Forest Restoration and Wildfire Risk Mitigation grants for fuels treatment and forest-management work: Colorado State Forest Service, “Governor Polis, Colorado State Forest Service Announce 31 Wildfire Mitigation Grants,” April 2, 2024 Colorado State Forest Service

Colorado’s broader wildfire and forest-management efforts, including more than $40 million awarded through the Colorado Strategic Wildfire Action Program from 2022 through 2025 and treatment of thousands of acres through state wildfire-risk programs: Colorado State Forest Service, “Living With Wildfire” Colorado State Forest Service

The Forest Service’s analysis of mechanical thinning, prescribed fire, sensitive-species habitat, wilderness restrictions, road access, and other practical or administrative constraints on hazardous-fuel reduction: U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, “Mechanical Fuel Reduction Treatments: Constraints and Opportunities for Wildfire Crisis Strategy Landscapes” USFS Research & Development

Research estimating that California’s 2020 wildfires emitted approximately 127 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent and could rank as the state’s second-largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions for that year, offsetting years of emissions reductions elsewhere: Environmental Pollution, “Up in Smoke: California’s Greenhouse Gas Reductions Could Be Wiped Out by 2020 Wildfires,” 2022 ScienceDirect

The International Court of Justice’s 2025 advisory opinion and underlying proceedings concerning states’ obligations under international law regarding climate change: International Court of Justice, “Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change,” Case No. 187 International Court of Justice

The destruction, evacuation, and wartime disruption of large portions of The Hague, including the forced displacement of roughly 135,000 residents for construction of the Atlantic Wall and the 1945 bombing of the Bezuidenhout district: The Hague Municipal Archives, “Den Haag in WO II (1940–1945)” Haags Gemeentearchief

Postwar reconstruction of The Hague’s Atlantic Wall zone, including reconstruction planning begun immediately after the German capitulation: Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency, “Den Haag Atlantikwallzone Kijkduin-Zorgvliet: een toonbeeld van wederopbouw” Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed

Marshall Plan assistance to the Netherlands, including approximately $1.0835 billion in European Recovery Program aid between 1948 and 1952. This is the replacement for the broken USAID link: Congressional Research Service, “The Marshall Plan: Design, Accomplishments, and Significance,” R45079 Congress.gov

Contemporary U.S. diplomatic records concerning the European Recovery Program and American assistance to the Netherlands during implementation of the Marshall Plan: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Western Europe, Volume III

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We are a month away from the midterm elections, and the American people are poised to hold the party in power accountable.

Republicans raised taxes on the American people. They called those taxes tariffs, but tariffs are taxes. Then they supported going to war in Iran, which created an energy supply problem. And whenever you have an energy supply problem, prices are going to go up, because as the price of energy goes up, the price of making things goes up and the price of delivering things goes up.

So now prices are higher. And while some individual prices can come down, the overall price level generally does not go back to where it was before. If your groceries went from $100 to $120, slowing inflation does not make them cost $100 again. The American people understand that because they live it. So they are going to hold Republicans accountable.

The Republican response may be that President Trump did those things, not Republican lawmakers. That is not the case.

When a military officer crosses the yellow line to participate in Officer Training School, he or she accepts an obligation that goes beyond their own behavior. They swear that they will “not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.” The second part matters just as much as the first. It is not enough to say, “I did not do it.”

There is a philosophical idea here that applies. A difference between doing something and allowing something to happen. Those are not exactly the same thing. But if you have the power to act, you understand what is happening, you have a responsibility to act, and you knowingly choose not to act, then that inaction is also a choice. That is what I mean by willful acquiescence.

Republicans in Congress may not have voted directly for every tariff or every military action, but they were not powerless. Congress has authority over commerce. It has authority over spending. It has enormous power over war and executive action. They could have acted. They chose not to. So they do not get to say, “That was the president. It wasn’t us.” They chose not to stop him, and now the American people may hold them accountable for that choice.

I say ‘may’ which also means ‘may not.’ Because the American voter has another problem. What’s the alternative?

The Democratic Party is not exactly popular either. So if Democrats win the midterm elections, they have to be very careful about what they think happened. The American people may vote against Republicans without deciding that they suddenly trust Democrats. Those are two very different things. A voter can say, “I do not trust the Democrats very much, but somebody has to put a check on the Republicans.”

That is not an endorsement. That is borrowed power. And if Democrats misunderstand that, they will waste the opportunity.

Because the Democrats have a much bigger problem than Donald Trump. They do not have a plan.

They can tell us which programs Republicans cut. They can tell us which programs they want to restore. They can tell us what they want to put back the way it was before Trump. But the American people already lived through the way it was before Trump. And then they elected Trump again.

So simply going backwards is not a plan. If Democrats win in 2026, restore a few programs, congratulate themselves, and believe America has come back to them, they may lose again in 2028 to another candidate who should never have been competitive in the first place.

So the Democrats have to answer a more basic question: Why do we exist?

Simon Sinek uses the idea of Why, How, and What. That methodology is useful here. What is the Democratic Party’s Why?

For most of modern American history, the Republican Party was fairly easy to understand. It was pro-business. It believed in lower taxes, free markets, deregulation, and a strong military. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Business matters. Markets matter. Economic growth matters.

But somebody has to balance the interests of business against the interests of the individual.

That was supposed to be the Democratic Party. The Democrats were supposed to be the party that said, “Yes, business is important, but the people who work for that business are important too.”

Over time, though, something changed. The Democratic Party stopped looking like the pro-people party and started looking like the pro-government party. That is a major problem, because government is not the point. The people are the point. Government is only a tool.

And somewhere along the way, Democrats started to reverse the relationship. The central American philosophy is that the people are independent and the government serves them. But too often, the Democratic approach makes the government the king and makes the people the subjects. You have to qualify. You have to apply. You have to wait. You have to ask permission. You have to hope the program still exists next year.

That is backwards. The government is not the sovereign. The people are.

That needs to become the Democratic Party’s Why again: serve the people.

Then you get to the How. How do you serve the people? By creating a system that makes them more capable of living their own lives. The goal should be autonomy, not dependence. Not dependence on a corporation, and not dependence on the government.

The How is balancing the interests and power of business with the interests and power of the individual person. Government is the tool Democrats can use to keep that balance—changing the rules, regulating where necessary, and redesigning incentives so businesses can succeed while the people who work for them also succeed.

But the answer is not simply to move more money through the government. It is to design the system so more of the benefit reaches people through their own work, their own wages, their own ownership, and their own choices.

And that means Democrats have to think very differently about government programs. If somebody has to come to the government, prove that they qualify, fill out paperwork, wait to be approved, receive some benefit, and then worry that the next Congress is going to take that benefit away, that person may be receiving help. But they are also dependent on the continued permission of the government. Sometimes that is necessary. But it should not be the first answer to every problem.

Take wages. If somebody works full time and still does not make enough money to buy food, the first question should not be, “How much government assistance should we give that person?” The first question should be, “Why does a person working full time not make enough money to buy food?”

Because if an employer doesn’t pay enough to support the worker, and the government takes money from somebody else and gives it to the worker to make up the difference, what has really happened? The money may be the same. But the philosophical point is different. The worker is receiving part of what he or she needs to live from the government instead of through work. And the government has become the intermediary between the worker and economic independence.

There is a better way. Instead of simply making the minimum wage higher everywhere—which ignores enormous differences between places like New York and South Dakota—we should think about how government can help businesses raise wages. Many businesses, especially businesses in rural America, don’t have unlimited revenue. Simply ordering them to pay substantially more may not work.

But government can change incentives. It can change tax policy. It can design the rules so businesses have a financial reason, and the financial ability, to put more money into their employees’ paychecks. The point is not the exact mechanism. The point is where the money ends up coming from.

Whenever possible, the worker would rather receive that money from his or her employer than receive it from the government. The money may ultimately cost society the same amount. But the relationship is completely different. One creates a worker earning a higher wage. The other creates a citizen waiting for a government benefit. That difference matters.

SNAP is a good example. There are people who need help buying food. I am not criticizing those people. Many of them work. That is exactly the point. If somebody is working and still needs government assistance just to eat, then before we build another program, we should ask whether the rules of the economy can be changed so businesses are able and incentivized to pay higher wages. Government should try to make the better outcome the default.

The same thing applies to housing. If people cannot afford housing, we can give them money to help pay rent. Sometimes we need to. But that cannot be the entire answer. Why is housing so expensive? Why is it so hard to build more of it? Why do we have rules that make construction harder? Why do we make it so difficult for the next generation to buy a house? If government can change the rules so more housing gets built and more people can afford it on their own, that is better than making people permanently dependent on a housing program.

Healthcare is the same. If somebody has a $10,000 healthcare bill, we can build another government program to help pay the $10,000 bill. But at some point we have to ask why the bill is $10,000. The goal should not simply be helping people survive absurd prices. The goal should be making the prices less absurd.

That is what I mean by being pro-people instead of pro-government.

But there is an important exception. There are needs that we cannot solve by changing incentives. Some people have disabilities that prevent them from working. Some people have medical conditions that will never go away. Some children are born into circumstances they did not create. Some families get hit by disasters. There are people who genuinely cannot provide for themselves.

In those cases, government should help them directly, reliably, and without making them feel ashamed about it. There is no better economic incentive that is going to make a person with a severe disability suddenly able to work. That is a need society has to meet.

This is similar to what we talked about yesterday. Jesus fed people who were hungry. He addressed the need in front of him. There is a moral obligation to help someone who needs help. But that does not mean the goal is permanent dependence when independence is possible. Feed the person who is hungry. Support the person who cannot support himself or herself. But where people can become independent, design the system to make independence easier.

That should be the Democratic Party’s How.

And then we get to the What. The What is the actual legislation, the actual rules, and the actual results. Every proposal should have to answer one question: when this is over, does the citizen have more control over his or her own life?

Can they afford a house? Can they support a family? Can they move to another job? Can they start a business? Can they get healthcare without being ruined? Can they live in their community without having to continually ask Washington for permission or assistance?

That question is especially important in rural America, because Democrats have lost rural America. And they aren’t going to get it back with better messaging.

They aren’t going to get it back by sending somebody to a county fair. They are not going to get it back because a national candidate puts on boots and takes a picture next to a tractor. And it is not enough to say there are Democrats in Congress who happen to come from rural states or rural districts.

That is not the representation I mean.

Rural America needs power inside the leadership of the Democratic Party. People from rural America need to be helping set the agenda, deciding what the party stands for, and determining what policies are worth pursuing. They need people in leadership who can say, “No. That may sound like a good idea here, but that will hurt people where I live.”

That also means the Democrats need to develop national candidates who actually come from rural America. Not candidates who visit it. Candidates formed by it.

Because the Democratic Party will not regain rural America when it learns how to speak to rural Americans. It will regain rural America when rural Americans once again have enough power inside the leadership of the party to speak for themselves.

And that brings us back to this election.

If Democrats win in November, they should not celebrate as though the American people have forgiven them. They should understand that the clock has started.

They have two years. Two years to build an actual plan. Two years to decide what they believe. Two years to develop legislation and ideas that rural America can look at and say, “That makes my life better. That makes me more independent. That gives me more control over my own future.”

Not another collection of government programs. Not another attempt to recreate the country as it existed before Trump. And not another campaign based primarily on telling us how terrible Republicans are.

A real governing philosophy.

The Why is the people. The How is balancing the interests and power of business with the interests and power of the individual, using government as the tool to maintain that balance. The What is legislation that leaves people more capable of governing their own lives.

Protect the people who truly cannot stand alone. Help people who have an immediate need. But where independence is possible, build a system that makes it easier for people to stand on their own.

If Democrats can do that, they can regain the trust of the American people. And if they can regain that trust, then they may once again have a chance to make a lasting contribution to American politics.

But first they have to answer the simplest question.

Are they the party of the government?

Or are they the party of the people?

Sources

Tariffs as taxes on imported goods, their effects on consumer prices and purchasing power, and estimates of how much of the tariff burden is ultimately borne through higher prices: Congressional Budget Office, “The Effects of Tariffs on Inflation, Economic Output, and the Federal Budget”

Evidence from household transaction data showing that tariffs are passed through into retail prices paid by American consumers: Federal Reserve Board, “The Unequal Effects of Tariffs on Consumer Prices”

Congress’s constitutional authority over tariffs and foreign commerce, and the statutory authorities Congress has delegated to presidents to impose tariffs: Congressional Research Service, “Congressional and Presidential Authority to Impose Import Tariffs”

Congressional authority over war, including Congress’s powers to declare war, appropriate funds, and regulate the armed forces: Congress.gov, Constitution Annotated, “War Powers”

The War Powers Resolution and Congress’s statutory role in decisions involving the introduction of U.S. armed forces into hostilities: Congressional Research Service, “The War Powers Resolution: Concepts and Practice”

The Declaration of Independence’s principle that governments are instituted to secure individual rights and derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed”: National Archives, “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription”

The long-term political realignment of rural America toward the Republican Party and the widening Republican advantage among rural voters: Pew Research Center, “Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation”

Americans’ unfavorable views of both major political parties, including the substantial share of Americans who view both Republicans and Democrats unfavorably: Pew Research Center, “Americans’ Views of the Republican and Democratic Parties”

Working Americans receiving public benefits, including SNAP and Medicaid, and the prevalence of full-time employment among wage earners receiving those benefits: U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Public Assistance: Millions of Full-Time Workers Rely on Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs”

Housing supply restrictions, land-use regulation, and the relationship between constraints on new construction and higher housing costs: National Bureau of Economic Research, “The Impact of Zoning on Housing Affordability”

The unusually high cost of health care in the United States compared with other wealthy countries, including higher prices and administrative costs as important contributors to U.S. health spending: The Commonwealth Fund, “Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System”

The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), including eligibility, benefits, and its purpose of providing food assistance to low-income households: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)”

Jesus feeding the hungry and responding directly to immediate physical need in the feeding of the five thousand: Matthew 14:13–21, New International Version, via Bible Gateway

The biblical principle of caring for people in need, including the hungry, thirsty, sick, and vulnerable: Matthew 25:34–40, New International Version, via Bible Gateway

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Beautiful October day. I’m walking in the park for some exercise. The leaves on some of the trees have turned yellow, with small flashes of red. There’s a maple tree that has turned maybe a dark burgundy. Blue skies, white clouds, green grass. The park has quite a few people today. There’s an older guy and a younger guy tossing a football, maybe father and son. And there’s a white butterfly floating across the green grass.

My brain doesn’t turn off very easily. I’m exceptionally bad at small talk. Put me at a party with someone I don’t know, and I’m probably not very good at talking about nothing.

Maybe these two things are related. Because here I am, walking through a park on a beautiful October afternoon, and what I’m thinking about is immediate need and permanent dependency.

It’s a question that sounds simple until you start pulling on it: if part of my taxes goes to feed people, house people, provide medical care, or otherwise support people who need help, does any of that count toward our Christian obligation to give?

This is not a question about Christianity as a whole, and it is not an attempt to define what every Christian should believe about government. It is a question about America.

You can argue that America is not a Christian nation and still advocate strongly for public assistance to people in need. Or you could argue that the bedrock and basis of America’s Constitution and law is in Christian theology.

Either way, here’s the question. If we use public money to help people in need, should the design of that help reflect the moral logic Christians see in Scripture?

I do not know the answer. I am not the Almighty, and I’m not going to pretend that I can settle a theological question Christians have argued about for generations.

But I think the question becomes more interesting when we stop asking only whether taxes count as a tithe and ask instead what a tithe, or Christian giving more broadly, is supposed to achieve.

The biblical idea of giving was never simply to, “Take ten percent of your income and put it in an envelope for your local church.” In ancient Israel, tithes supported the religious community, including the Levites, but they also helped support widows, orphans, foreigners, and others who were vulnerable.

That makes the modern situation complicated.

Today, the government performs some of those functions. We pay taxes, and a portion of that money goes toward food assistance, housing assistance, medical care, disability programs, and other forms of public support.

So maybe the question isn’t whether government should provide that assistance. If government is using our taxes to provide some of the same kinds of help Christians are commanded to provide, should that assistance follow the same moral logic?

And that brings me to two stories.

Consider the feeding of the five thousand. Whatever else that story means theologically, there is an extraordinarily simple act in the middle of it. People are hungry, and Jesus feeds them.

He doesn’t stop to ask whether they made good choices. He doesn’t set up a job-training program before allowing them to eat. There is an immediate human need, and he meets it.

Sometimes compassion is that simple.

Someone is hungry tonight—feed them. Someone has nowhere to sleep—give them somewhere safe to sleep. Someone is sick—treat them.

Immediate suffering creates an immediate obligation.

But there is another category of stories in the Gospels. Jesus heals the blind. He heals the lame. He restores people who had been physically excluded from ordinary life.

These people were restored to participation in society. They could move through their communities, support their lives where possible, participate in family and economic life, and become less dependent on others.

And they could work. Possibly the most important way to participate in society and be independent, to eat your bread as a result of the sweat of your effort.

So those stories suggest a second principle of compassion: meet the immediate need when the need is immediate, but when restoration is possible, structure the help toward restored capacity rather than unnecessary permanent dependency.

That gives us a standard by which we can begin judging assistance itself. Does it function as a bridge through a period of need? Does it restore a person’s capacity to function and support his own life, where possible? Or does the system gradually become a permanent structure of dependency?

And that question doesn’t apply only to the person receiving assistance. It can apply to businesses, too.

If taxpayers repeatedly make up the difference between what a worker earns and what that worker needs to live, then assistance may be helping the worker survive, but it may also be allowing an employer to build that subsidy permanently into its labor model.

So both sides become dependent on the system.

But there is another side to this. Reducing dependency cannot simply mean reducing assistance. If someone is working and still cannot support a reasonable life, cutting aid does not restore independence. It simply recreates the immediate need.

If the goal is restoration, reform has to work from both directions. Assistance should be structured so that people can move out of dependency. But our economy also has to make it possible for someone who works to actually make that move. Otherwise, we are not building a bridge out of poverty. We are pulling the bridge away while someone is still standing on it.

So. Have we built a system that needs poverty to justify itself?

And if that system perpetuates long-term dependency, then as Christians, shouldn’t we push to reform it so that it better aligns with the logic of the Almighty—meet the immediate need, restore the person where possible, avoid creating dependency, and build an economy in which that restoration can last?

And maybe there is some humility required here, too. We have a tendency to believe that, with enough policy and expertise we can design a system better than the moral order we inherited.

But we are not wiser than that moral order. It’s hilarious that we think otherwise, but the Almighty will not be mocked.

A system that abandons people in genuine need will create resistance, because leaving suffering unanswered violates something deeply rooted in us.

And a system that turns temporary help into permanent dependency will create resistance, too, because dependency is not restoration.

Maybe the mistake is thinking we have to choose between compassion and independence.

Can we build an American system that respects both?

Sources

Biblical tithing and support for Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows: Deuteronomy 14:22–29 — Bible Gateway; Numbers 18:21–24 — Bible Gateway

Christian obligation to feed, shelter, and care for those in need: Matthew 25:35–40 — Bible Gateway Bible Gateway

Jesus feeding the five thousand and meeting an immediate need: Matthew 14:13–21 — Bible Gateway

Jesus healing and restoring people to ordinary life and community: Matthew 11:2–6 — Bible Gateway; John 9 — Bible Gateway

Work, independence, and providing for those in need: Genesis 3:19 — Bible Gateway; 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12 — Bible Gateway Bible Gateway; Ephesians 4:28 — Bible Gateway Bible Gateway

Work, provision, and eating by the labor of one’s own effort: Genesis 3:19 — Bible Gateway — “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food.”

Federal food, housing, medical, and disability assistance programs: USDA — Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); HUD — Housing Choice Voucher Program HUD; Medicaid.gov — Medicaid Medicaid; Social Security Administration — Benefit Types, including Disability and SSI Social Security Administration

Working Americans who still rely on public assistance: U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Federal Social Safety Net Programs: Millions of Full-Time Workers Rely on Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs,” October 19, 2020 Government Accountability Office

Benefit phaseouts, effective marginal tax rates, and incentives affecting movement from assistance toward greater earnings: Congressional Budget Office, “How Taxes and Transfers Affect the Work Incentives of People With Low and Moderate Income,” March 17, 2017 Congressional Budget Office

Religion, Christianity, and the intellectual and political environment surrounding the American founding: Library of Congress, “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic”; Library of Congress, “Religion and the American Revolution”

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I was cooking the other day when I thought about a lieutenant I haven’t seen in years. I don’t know why. That happens to me sometimes. A memory will just show up. Nothing in particular brings it to mind. I’ll be driving, or walking, or standing in the kitchen cutting onions, and suddenly I’m back in some room I haven’t thought about in years.

This one has come back to me a couple of times recently.

It was sometime around 2018 or 2019. I was a squadron commander in the Air Force, and one of my flight commanders, a captain and a mother, came to see me about one of her lieutenants. The lieutenant was a woman who had recently had a baby and had been away from normal operational duty for quite a while. I don’t remember the exact amount of time anymore, and I don’t want to pretend that I do.

The Air Force had become increasingly generous with maternity and caregiver leave, and by the time this lieutenant was due to return, she had already been away for a significant stretch. Eventually, though, the leave ended. She was expected to come back to duty.

In our squadron, duty didn’t mean showing up at an office at eight in the morning and going home at five. It meant going out on a weapons-system alert. Roughly thirty-six hours away from home.

The lieutenant told her flight commander that she couldn’t go. She needed more time.

She was breastfeeding. More specifically, she said she couldn’t pump enough breast milk ahead of time to leave her baby for the duration of the alert.

Her husband was also active duty, but he worked a job that allowed him to be home. He could care for the baby while she was gone. The problem was not that there was no one to take care of the child. The problem was feeding the child.

So my flight commander came to me and asked the question commanders eventually get paid to answer: What do we do?

Do we send her back on duty? Do we give her more time? How much more? A month? Three months? Until the child turns one? And if nothing changes, then what? Do we simply accept that she cannot perform that portion of the job for as long as she is breastfeeding?

I remember the problem because no answer made everybody happy.

And I believed the lieutenant. I want to make that clear. I did not think she had invented a breastfeeding problem because she didn’t want to work. I think she had a baby, she was trying to feed that baby, and she was looking at thirty-six hours away from her child and saying, I don’t know how I can do this.

That mattered. She had a responsibility for the child.

But something else mattered too.

Somebody had to go on alert. The mission didn’t disappear because one lieutenant had a difficult family situation. If she didn’t go, somebody else did. Somebody else stayed away from his or her family. Somebody else carried the burden.

And suddenly a question that sounds like a personnel problem becomes a philosophical one.

If we say everyone can do this job, can we also say some people don’t always have to do all of it? And if we say that, who decides when that is okay?

That question is bigger than breastfeeding. But breastfeeding is what makes the question difficult, because biology is not imaginary. Pregnancy is real. Childbirth is real. Recovery is real. Breastfeeding is real. None of those things disappear because an institution adopts a policy of equal opportunity.

That is where equality gets complicated.

We often use the word equality as though it answers a question. Sometimes it only starts one.

There is equality of access. Can you enter the profession? Can you compete for the position? Can you command? Can you serve in the operational role? Can you serve on the combat team?

And then there is equality of obligation. Once you have the position, are the expectations the same?

That distinction becomes uncomfortable because we like clean moral principles. Treat everyone the same. Accommodate people according to their circumstances. Both sound good until they run into each other.

One way of thinking about this is the difference between equality and equity. Equality says people occupying the same role ought to face the same essential obligations. Equity says relevant differences may justify different treatment. The hard part is deciding which differences matter, and how much difference in treatment is still compatible with calling it the same job.

Another way of thinking about it is role morality. Certain roles carry obligations that ordinary life does not. A judge cannot decide a case based on friendship. A physician cannot simply abandon a patient in the middle of surgery. A military officer accepts obligations that most citizens do not.

That does not mean the officer stops being a mother, father, husband, wife, son, or daughter. It means those obligations sometimes collide.

The philosopher W. D. Ross wrote about competing duties. You can have more than one genuine moral obligation at the same time. You can have a duty to your child, a duty to your fellow officers, a duty to the mission, a duty to obey lawful orders, and a duty not to place unreasonable burdens on other people. The fact that one duty is real does not make the others disappear.

That is the part that gets lost when we turn difficult problems into slogans.

Sometimes two good things really are in conflict.

You can even make what you believe is the right decision and still leave something valuable damaged. Maybe you order the lieutenant back onto alert. The squadron is treated fairly, the mission is covered, and a mother believes she has been forced into a situation that makes caring for her infant harder.

Something has been lost.

Or maybe you excuse her. The mother and baby are protected, but another lieutenant goes in her place. And another time. And another.

Something has been lost there too.

There is no administrative form that makes the loss disappear.

This question also has an interesting history in the American military. For much of the twentieth century, the institutional answer to pregnancy and motherhood was much harsher than it is today. Women could serve, but pregnancy would effectively end that service.

One of the important cases in that history involved Air Force Captain Susan Struck, a nurse who became pregnant in 1970 and challenged the policy that would have forced her out of the service. Her case became part of the broader movement away from treating pregnancy as automatically incompatible with military service.

That change was important.

But it didn’t eliminate the problem. It moved the problem.

At first, the institutional answer had essentially been: women can serve, but motherhood may end that service.

Then the answer became: women can serve and become mothers.

Which immediately creates another question: what happens when the obligations of motherhood and the obligations of military service conflict?

That is not an argument against women serving. It is simply the next question.

And over time the question became sharper. The military opened more roles to women: aviation, ships, operational specialties, and eventually direct ground combat positions. Each time a barrier came down, the debate centered on equal access.

But another question always follows behind it.

Does equal access imply equal obligation?

Or can equal access coexist with different obligations?

And if the answer is yes, how different can those obligations become before we are no longer talking about the same job?

This is where historical fights over equality become more complicated than they first appear.

A woman like Susan Struck was effectively saying that pregnancy shouldn’t automatically end her military career. I think she was right.

But once an institution accepts that principle, it has to turn an individual claim into a general rule. Not because every woman necessarily wants exactly what she wanted. Not because every future mother will make the same decision. Institutions simply cannot operate on individual intent. They need principles.

A person fights for the right to remain. The institution recognizes that right. Then, years later, someone else enters under that right and asks for an accommodation the earlier system would never grant.

That does not mean the original principle was wrong.

It means principles have consequences.

Rights create obligations. Access creates expectations. Equality is not complete until we talk about both.

There is an old philosophical test that helps here: ask what happens if the exception becomes the rule.

Not because exceptions are always wrong. They are not. But because a functioning institution has to know where exceptions stop.

Suppose any member with a serious personal obligation could decline an essential operational duty whenever the two conflicted. That sounds compassionate. It may be compassionate. But could the unit function?

If not, then you need a limiting principle.

Which circumstances justify accommodation? For how long? Who carries the burden in the meantime? At what point does accommodation change the nature of the position itself?

Those questions apply far beyond pregnancy.

A father can become a sole parent. A spouse can become seriously ill. A parent can require constant care. An officer can be injured. A family can suffer a tragedy.

Everybody eventually encounters something outside work that matters more to them than work.

And yet some professions exist precisely because society needs people who will sometimes place the obligation of the role ahead of the obligation of the moment.

That is especially true in the military.

Which brings me back to that lieutenant.

She had a baby. She wanted to breastfeed. She said she could not produce enough milk to leave the child for thirty-six hours. Her husband could care for the baby. Her authorized time away from duty had reached its end.

Her flight commander came to me and asked: What do we do?

I know what I decided.

I am not sure I want to tell you. At least not yet.

Because the more interesting question is what you would have decided.

Do you order her back on duty?

Do you give her more time?

If so, how much?

And what principle are you using to decide?

Because whatever rule you create for her has to become a rule you could defend for everyone else.

Maybe that is the hardest part of leadership.

Compassion is personal.

Command cannot always be.

So here is the question.

If we say everyone can do the job, can we still say some people don’t always have to do all of it?

And if the answer is yes, who decides when that is okay?

Sources

Air Force maternity-leave policy in effect beginning in 2016—12 continuous weeks of paid maternity leave: U.S. Air Force, “AF Implements New DOD-Wide Changes to Maternity Leave,” February 9, 2016 Air Force

Air Force parental-leave policy adopted in 2018—six weeks maternity convalescent leave, six weeks primary-caregiver leave, and three weeks secondary-caregiver leave; caregiver leave was in addition to maternity convalescent leave: U.S. Air Force, “Air Force Implements New Parental Leave Policy, Secondary Caregivers Given 21 Days,” June 8, 2018 Air Force

Contemporaneous Air Force summary of the 2018 policy, including its retroactive applicability and the distinction among maternity convalescent, primary-caregiver, and secondary-caregiver leave: U.S. Air Force, “Air Force Parental Leave,” June 18, 2018 Air Force

The 1948 law formally integrating women as permanent members of the armed services: U.S. Government Publishing Office, Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, Public Law 80-625, June 12, 1948 GovInfo

Historical overview of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, including the original limits on women’s participation and combat service: Naval History and Heritage Command, “Women’s Armed Services Integration Act”Naval History and Heritage Command

Captain Susan Struck’s challenge to the Air Force regulation requiring discharge of pregnant female officers; the appellate opinion describes her pregnancy while serving in Vietnam and the Air Force’s attempt to discharge her: Struck v. Secretary of Defense, 460 F.2d 1372, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1972 OpenJurist

U.S. Army historical discussion of Susan Struck’s case and its place in the changing relationship between motherhood and military service: U.S. Army, “Serving on Two Fronts—Finding Balance Between Motherhood and Military Service,” March 29, 2023 Army

The Department of Defense’s 2015 decision opening all military occupations and positions—including direct ground-combat positions—to qualified women beginning in 2016: U.S. Department of Defense, “Carter Opens All Military Occupations, Positions to Women,” December 3, 2015 Defense.gov

DoD’s implementation of women’s full integration into previously closed combat positions, including its stated emphasis on maintaining combat effectiveness and standards: U.S. Department of Defense, “Statement from Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook on Secretary Carter’s Approval of Women in Service Review Implementation Plans,” March 10, 2016 Defense.gov

W. D. Ross’s idea of prima facie duties—multiple genuine moral obligations that can conflict, requiring judgment about which obligation carries the greatest weight in a particular situation: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “William David Ross” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The philosophical concept of universalizability—the idea that a moral judgment should be defensible under the same standard regardless of which person happens to occupy the relevant position: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Impartiality,” section 4.2, “Impartiality and Universalizability” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Everybody seems to be scared of artificial intelligence. Or maybe the press makes it seem like everybody is scared of artificial intelligence.

AI is going to take our jobs. AI is going to replace artists. AI is going to manipulate elections. AI is going to become smarter than us. Eventually AI is going to destroy civilization.

Why are we always doing this?

Why do human beings always think civilization is about to end?

In my lifetime, first it was nuclear war. We are all going to die. Then the millennium change. Everything is going to stop working. Computers are going to fail. Civilization is going to fall apart. Then climate change. Now AI is going to destroy us all.

Before that, people thought Halley’s Comet was going to poison everybody.

In 1910, scientists detected cyanogen gas in the comet’s tail. Earth was going to pass through it. People bought gas masks and supposed remedies. Newspapers ran with it. There was real dread that this thing in the sky might kill everybody.

Then Earth passed through the tail.

And nothing happened.

That does not mean every warning is stupid. Nuclear war was a real danger. It still is. Y2K was a real computer problem. People spent years fixing it. Climate change is real. AI is going to create real problems.

But we have this habit of moving really quickly from, this could be bad, to, this could end civilization.

And I keep coming back to the same thing.

Every day has enough worry of its own.

Do not tax your life with the forethought of grief.

Enjoy the hard work of staying alive while you can.

There is that Wendell Berry poem, The Peace of Wild Things. I am paraphrasing it, but it is something like: when I wake at night and worry about my life or my children’s future, I go lie down by the water, among the wild things who do not tax their lives with the forethought of grief.

That phrase is just right.

The forethought of grief.

We do that all the time. We grieve things that have not happened yet. We suffer tomorrow before tomorrow gets here.

What happens to my children?

What happens to the climate?

What happens if the Russians launch?

What happens if the computers stop working?

What happens if the machine becomes smarter than us?

And some of those are reasonable questions. But at some point, you are just paying today for grief that may never come.

That does not mean do nothing.

Take climate change.

Climate change is not going to kill every person on Earth. Do you know what might kill a lot of people? Doing nothing to prepare for climate change.

If we need to shore up buildings, improve infrastructure, strengthen the electrical grid, prepare for drought, fires, flooding, storms, then do those things.

That is useful.

Sitting around worrying that civilization is going to collapse is not useful.

Worry is not preparation.

And I think AI is the same way.

There are reasonable guardrails we can put around artificial intelligence without acting like the machine itself is evil.

Start with personal responsibility.

No fake lewd photographs or videos using another person’s likeness. That should be illegal.

Not because AI made the image.

Because you used somebody else’s face to hurt them.

If an AI system hacks another company and causes millions of dollars in damage, somebody is responsible for that. “The AI did it” cannot become some excuse that means nobody is liable.

A person deployed it. A company built it. Somebody authorized it to do something.

Now, I do not think the AI company should automatically be responsible every time somebody misuses a model. That would be ridiculous.

If the company demonstrated reasonable guardrails, reasonable security, reasonable efforts to prevent abuse, then no, they should not automatically be liable because somebody found a way around those protections.

But if they knew there was a problem, knew their model was being used to do something harmful, had reasonable ways to stop it, and ignored it, then responsibility starts to move back toward the company.

That would make AI companies pay attention really quickly.

Not because somebody wrote a vague ethics statement.

Because there would be consequences.

There would be damages.

There would be liability.

And in a messed-up twist, I am not against the use of AI for military action.

I do not think that is contradictory.

The military already uses force that would be illegal in ordinary civilian life. The question is who is responsible.

If an autonomous or semi-autonomous system strikes a target, somebody in the chain of command still owns that decision.

“The algorithm decided” cannot be an excuse.

Somebody authorized that system. Somebody gave it the authority to act. Somebody remains responsible.

That gets into the philosophy behind all of this.

Sartre comes to mind.

Freedom creates responsibility.

You are free to choose, so you are also responsible for what you choose.

You do not get to hide behind the system. Or the institution. Or the role. Or, eventually, the algorithm.

John Stuart Mill fits here too.

Mill’s basic idea was that people should be left free to act unless their actions harm somebody else. The state should not interfere just because an action is unusual, risky, unpopular, or offensive. The line is harm.

That is pretty close to how I think about AI.

Do not regulate it because it frightens people.

Do not regulate it because it is new.

Do not regulate it because somebody can imagine a terrible future.

Regulate conduct when it causes real harm to other people.

That is a much cleaner rule.

If someone uses AI to commit fraud, punish the fraud.

If someone uses AI to create a nonconsensual sexual image, punish that.

If a company negligently deploys a system that causes foreseeable damage, hold the company responsible.

But do not build a giant apparatus around every hypothetical thing the technology might someday do.

You will never keep up anyway.

And I think the same principle applies to corporations.

Corporations have rights. They can own property. They can enter contracts. They can sue and be sued. They have legal protections.

Fine.

Then they also have reasonable responsibility.

You do not get rights without responsibility.

That applies to individuals. It should apply to companies.

So maybe the philosophy is something like this:

Maximum freedom, with responsibility for foreseeable harm.

Let people build things.

Let companies innovate.

Let people use powerful tools.

But when somebody gets hurt, ask the same questions we already know how to ask.

Who did it?

Who authorized it?

Who could reasonably foresee the harm?

Who failed to take reasonable precautions?

Fraud is still fraud.

Theft is still theft.

Defamation is still defamation.

Negligence is still negligence.

Calling it artificial intelligence does not make responsibility disappear.

And that brings me back to the larger point.

Maybe AI could someday create some civilization-level danger.

I do not know.

But every generation seems convinced it is standing at the edge of the end.

Nuclear war.

The millennium.

Climate catastrophe.

Artificial intelligence.

Before that, Halley’s Comet.

At some point, you have to live.

If there is something useful to do, do it.

If the climate is changing and infrastructure needs to be stronger, build stronger infrastructure.

If AI can be used to make fake sexual images of people, make that illegal.

If AI systems can cause real damage, establish liability.

If companies put reasonable guardrails in place, do not punish them automatically because somebody misused the tool anyway.

Do the work that needs doing.

Fix what can be fixed.

Prepare where preparation actually matters.

And then live.

Because every day already has enough trouble of its own.

There are people to love. There are things to build. There are things to repair. There are books to read. There is dinner to make. There is work to do.

There is a world that is still here this morning.

Do not tax your life with the forethought of grief.

Enjoy the hard work of staying alive while you can.

Tomorrow has enough worry of its own.

Sources

Public fear around Halley’s Comet in 1910, including concern that cyanogen gas in the comet’s tail might threaten life on Earth, and contemporary anti-comet remedies and gas masks: Library of Congress, “Halley’s Comet: Topics in Chronicling America”

Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things,” including the phrase about not taxing one’s life with the forethought of grief: Academy of American Poets, “Life Lines: Wendell Berry”

“Each day has enough trouble of its own”: Matthew 6:34, New International Version, via Bible Gateway

Finding satisfaction in one’s labor during the brief life God gives us, and receiving the ability to enjoy that labor as a gift: Ecclesiastes 5:18–20, New International Version, via Bible Gateway

Enjoying life, doing the work before you, and doing it with all your strength while you are alive: Ecclesiastes 9:7–10, New International Version, via Bible Gateway

John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, liberty, and the idea that coercive power is justified primarily to prevent harm to others: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “John Stuart Mill”; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy”

Jean-Paul Sartre on freedom, responsibility, and bad faith: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Jean-Paul Sartre”; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Authenticity”

Corporations and other legal entities as legal persons capable of owning property, entering contracts, suing and being sued, while also carrying legal responsibilities and liabilities: Cornell Legal Information Institute, “Legal Person”; Cornell Legal Information Institute, “Artificial Person”; Cornell Legal Information Institute, “Corporation”

AI risk management, governance, and reasonable safeguards designed to reduce harms while preserving flexibility and innovation: National Institute of Standards and Technology, “AI Risk Management Framework”; NIST, “Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework: Generative Artificial Intelligence Profile”

Cybersecurity risks, vulnerabilities, and resilience issues involving artificial intelligence systems: National Institute of Standards and Technology, “AI Research: Security and Resilience”

Autonomous weapon systems, human control, and legal and humanitarian questions surrounding machines that can select and apply force without further human intervention: International Committee of the Red Cross, “ICRC Position on Autonomous Weapon Systems”

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Hey, this is Joel.

I’m sitting next to a pile of flowers in the yard.

I spent some time this morning taking hops vines out of our hoop house, and now I’m sitting on a bucket, picking the flowers off the vines.

A buddy of mine brews beer. Sometimes he gives me some of it, so I’m going to give him a bunch of these.

I grow several different varieties of hops in the hoop house. I’ve got some New Zealand varieties, some Cascade, and some Chinook. The Chinook seems to yield better than anything else I’ve tried here at high altitude.

If you’ve never smelled a hop flower before, go get yourself a good, fresh West Coast IPA and really smell it before you drink it.

That smell is hops.

A West Coast IPA is usually very hop-forward, and when you break one of these fresh flowers open, there’s this strong green, citrusy, resinous smell. You immediately think, that smells like an IPA.

Except it’s really the other way around.

The IPA smells like this flower.

My hands are busy, so I obviously can’t type anything. I’m sitting here talking to my phone instead.

And with my hands busy, I’ve had some time to think about a few things from this week, even though I haven’t had time to write them down.

The first one is cattle.

I made a trip this week to the Buffalo Livestock Market up in northern Wyoming, and one of the things that stood out was the number of heifers.

For people who don’t spend much time around cattle, a heifer is a young female that hasn’t had her first calf yet. If you want to grow a cow herd, you have to keep some of those young females. You breed them. They have calves. They become cows.

That sounds simple enough.

Except right now those heifers are worth a tremendous amount of money.

An individual heifer can bring something like $2,500.

If you keep her, maybe she has ten or twelve or fifteen calves over the course of her life. Maybe keeping her turns out to be a tremendous investment.

But maybe cattle prices fall.

Maybe three years from now you look back and realize somebody was willing to hand you $2,500 for that animal and you turned it down.

And meanwhile, you have to feed her.

You have to carry her through the winter. You have to buy hay. You have to buy fuel. You have all the other expenses that come with running a ranch.

That was another thing people were talking about at the livestock market. Everybody hopes we get a lot of snow this winter.

Snow means moisture. Moisture means grass.

And grass matters because hay is expensive.

Fuel is expensive.

When diesel is expensive, even if there’s hay somewhere else, getting it to your ranch gets expensive in a hurry.

So there’s this national conversation about the cattle herd being historically small and ranchers needing to retain heifers so we can rebuild it.

But an individual rancher doesn’t operate the national cattle herd.

He operates his ranch.

He has bills. He has input costs. And he has an animal standing in front of him that somebody is willing to pay a lot of money for right now.

Sometimes people ask why ranchers don’t just keep more heifers.

Sometimes they can’t afford to.

And sitting here picking hops, I realized I’ve got a pretty good example right in front of me.

I’ve got thousands of these flowers.

Suppose somebody came along and offered me a nickel or a dime for every one of them.

At some point, the price might get high enough that I wouldn’t keep any to brew beer myself.

I’d sell them.

Not because I suddenly stopped liking beer.

Not because I don’t know they might be useful later.

The price somebody is willing to give me today changes the decision.

That’s basically the position ranchers are in.

The price can get high enough that you almost can’t afford not to sell the animal you would otherwise like to keep.

The second thing I’ve been thinking about is Iran.

Part of the reason I think about Iran more than most people probably do is my previous life working around nuclear weapons and strategy.

And I keep coming back to the idea that maybe we are just too impatient with Iran.

We want problems solved. We want regimes to change. We want countries to behave differently.

But Iran isn’t a new country.

Persia is one of the oldest civilizations in the world.

There’s a story about Alexander the Great that I keep thinking about.

Go back to 334 B.C.

Alexander is about twenty-two years old. He crosses into Asia with a Macedonian army and takes on the Persian Empire, one of the great powers of the ancient world.

And then he starts winning.

He defeats Persian armies. He defeats Darius III. He pushes deeper and deeper into the empire.

Eventually he gets through the Persian Gates and reaches Persepolis, the ceremonial heart of Persia.

Parts of Persepolis are burned.

So if you stop the story there, Alexander conquered Persia.

He did.

But then something interesting starts happening.

Alexander begins adopting elements of Persian royal dress. He brings Persian nobles into his government. He brings Persian soldiers into his army. He marries into the Persian royal family. He encourages his officers to marry Persian women.

And his Macedonian soldiers hate it.

They marched across the known world to conquer Persia, and now they’re looking at their king thinking, wait a minute.

We conquered them.

Why are you starting to look like them?

Persia could obviously be conquered.

Alexander did it.

But there’s something remarkable about a civilization that can lose the war and still influence the conqueror so deeply that the conqueror begins changing himself.

Alexander conquered Persia.

And then Persia changed Alexander.

I think we ought to remember that.

We don’t have to be Iran’s friend.

We don’t have to accept Iran possessing nuclear weapons.

We don’t have to accept attacks on shipping or attacks on its neighbors through militias and proxies.

But maybe we should stop assuming that the final answer is somehow to make Iran into us.

We’ve tried versions of that before.

In 1953, the United States became involved in the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and helped restore the Shah’s position.

Over the next couple of decades, the United States became very closely associated with the Shah while he pursued rapid modernization, military expansion, and increasingly authoritarian rule.

It’s probably too simple to say America was trying to make Iran culturally American.

But we were deeply involved in determining who governed Iran and what direction the country would take.

And eventually there was a backlash.

The Iranian Revolution in 1979 had a lot of causes. Religion mattered. Economics mattered. Political repression mattered. The Shah mattered. Foreign interference mattered.

And out of that revolution came a phrase Americans still recognize immediately.

Death to America.

Maybe there’s a lesson in that.

Iran does not have to become us.

We can deter Iran.

We can contain Iran.

We can protect our allies.

We can oppose nuclear proliferation.

We can respond when American troops or American interests are attacked.

But those things are different from assuming we are going to redesign Iranian society.

Even negotiating with Iran is complicated.

Iran has several centers of political power. The elected government handles diplomacy and much of the ordinary work of government. But the Supreme Leader has the final say on the biggest national-security questions, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps answers to him, not to the elected president.

So when an Iranian diplomat sits across the table from an American diplomat and signs something, the question isn’t just whether we got a signature.

The question is whether the person across the table actually has the authority to bind the parts of the Iranian system that have the missiles, the ships, and the guns.

Does the Supreme Leader support the agreement?

Does the security establishment consider itself bound by it?

Will the Revolutionary Guard carry it out?

You can have diplomacy happening in one place while military pressure continues or resumes somewhere else.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the Iranian diplomats are fake, and it doesn’t mean the Revolutionary Guard is some completely separate rogue government.

It means we need to understand who actually has authority before we congratulate ourselves for reaching an agreement.

And maybe the broader point is just patience.

Patience isn’t the same thing as weakness.

Sometimes patience means understanding the civilization in front of you well enough not to expect it to become something it isn’t.

Anyway, I’m still sitting here picking hops.

They’re going into a silver metal bucket.

When I’m done, I’m going to spread them out on a screen, let them dry for a couple of days, and then freeze them.

And while I’ve been doing that, I’ve also been thinking about Russia.

I read a piece this morning in the Wall Street Journal about something Russia has become very good at doing.

Russia takes actions against NATO countries that seem deliberately designed to stay just below the point where everybody immediately agrees an armed attack has taken place.

Cyber operations.

Sabotage.

Electronic interference.

Disinformation.

Using proxies.

Border pressure.

Things that can create real damage without a Russian tank necessarily crossing a NATO border.

And that creates a strange problem for NATO.

Article 5 says an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all.

But real life is messier.

Something gets sabotaged.

Who did it?

Can you prove it?

Was it an armed attack?

Was it espionage?

Was it a criminal act?

Was it a proxy?

How much evidence do you need before you respond?

And if you respond militarily, are you defending yourself or escalating something that was intentionally designed to sit below that threshold?

Russia may not just be testing NATO’s military strength.

It may be testing NATO’s decision-making machinery.

From Moscow’s point of view, the ideal action might be something serious enough to frighten people and impose costs, but ambiguous enough that thirty-two NATO governments spend the next two weeks arguing over what exactly happened.

I think we make a mistake if we assume there are only two possible responses.

Do nothing.

Or go to war.

There is a lot of room between those two things.

And geography gives NATO some choices.

One place Americans don’t talk about very much is Kaliningrad.

Kaliningrad is a small piece of Russian territory on the Baltic Sea, physically separated from the rest of Russia.

It sits between Poland and Lithuania.

Both are NATO countries.

Kaliningrad is extremely important to Russia. It is home to major Russian military forces and Russia’s Baltic Fleet. It gives Russia a powerful position in the Baltic.

But that geography also makes it vulnerable.

It is Russian territory surrounded on land by NATO.

And some of the land transit between mainland Russia and Kaliningrad crosses NATO territory.

So if Russia wants to operate in the gray zone, NATO doesn’t necessarily have to answer every provocation by firing a missile.

There are economic tools.

There are diplomatic tools.

There are transit rules.

There are inspections.

There are sanctions.

There are ways to increase pressure gradually.

You could imagine a ladder.

Russia takes some deliberate action against NATO infrastructure.

NATO responds by tightening restrictions.

Russia escalates.

NATO tightens them further.

At the far end of that ladder, you could even start discussing suspension of some rail transit.

The United States cannot simply close a railroad through Lithuania.

It is Lithuanian territory. European Union law matters. Our allies matter.

And completely closing access would be a very serious escalation.

But that’s exactly why it can matter as leverage.

Deterrence works when the other side knows there are things it values that can be put at risk.

Kaliningrad is a Russian strength.

It is also a Russian vulnerability.

And if a new American president really wants to understand Russia, I think one of the first places he or she ought to go is Finland.

Go to Finland and listen.

Finland shares about 830 miles of border with Russia.

The Finns have lived next to Russia for generations.

They have fought Russia.

They have negotiated with Russia.

They have traded with Russia.

They have deterred Russia.

They built their military and a lot of their civil preparedness around the fact that Russia is going to remain next door no matter who happens to be sitting in the Kremlin.

There’s something we can learn from that.

Sometimes Americans think distance gives us objectivity.

Sometimes distance just gives us distance.

If you want to understand somebody, listen to the people who have to live next door to them.

That doesn’t mean Finland is always right.

It doesn’t mean Poland is always right.

It doesn’t mean the Baltic states are always right.

But their experience matters.

We shouldn’t decide what Russia means from Washington and then call our European allies afterward to explain our decision to them.

We should listen first.

Sometimes the people who understand a rival best are the people who have had to live next door to it.

And then there was one other thing from this week that has almost nothing to do with Iran or Russia.

I went to a University of Wyoming football game Saturday.

Wyoming played Hawai‘i.

We recently dropped our oldest off at the University of Wyoming. Three weeks ago, maybe a month ago.

It was great to see them.

And it got me thinking about college.

A lot of people are worried about college right now.

And I understand why.

College is expensive.

Private universities can be extraordinarily expensive.

Tuition has increased tremendously over the last several decades.

And young people are looking at those numbers and asking a pretty reasonable question.

Is this worth it?

I think there was probably a period when too many people treated college as automatic.

You graduated from high school, so you went to college.

Nobody stopped to ask what you were studying.

Nobody stopped to ask what the degree cost.

Nobody stopped to ask what kind of job it might lead to.

Nobody stopped to ask how much debt you would have when you finished.

We should think about all of those things.

But I wonder if we’re starting to swing too far in the other direction.

Now there’s a growing cultural message that college just isn’t worth it.

If you’re seventeen or eighteen years old, I’d be very careful about letting that cultural mood make the decision for you.

When everybody starts moving in one direction, that’s usually a good time to stop and ask whether that direction makes sense for you.

That doesn’t mean every kid should go to college.

Absolutely not.

There are great careers that don’t require a four-year degree.

There are trades that pay extremely well.

There are people who would be much better off becoming electricians, plumbers, welders, mechanics, or entrepreneurs than borrowing a hundred thousand dollars for a degree they don’t need.

But the opposite is also true.

If you can get a useful degree in a field where there is demand, at a price you can reasonably afford, and you have a good chance of finishing it, that can still be a very good investment.

The question isn’t whether college is good or bad.

It’s what are you trying to do?

What education does that require?

What will it cost?

And what are you likely to get in return?

Don’t go to college just because everybody else went.

But don’t refuse to go because everybody around you suddenly decided college is a scam either.

Make your own decision.

And maybe that’s what all of these things I’ve been thinking about this week have in common.

The cattle market.

Iran.

Russia.

College.

The easy answer is usually the one everybody repeats.

Keep the heifers and rebuild the herd.

Make Iran more like us.

Either ignore Russia or go to war with Russia.

College is always worth it.

College is never worth it.

But reality is usually more complicated than that.

The rancher has to make payroll.

Iran has thousands of years of history.

Russia understands geography.

And an eighteen-year-old has to live with their own decision long after everybody giving them advice has moved on to something else.

Maybe the lesson from this week is just to slow down a little.

Understand the incentives.

Understand the history.

Understand the geography.

Listen to people who know something you don’t.

Then make your own decision.

Anyway, I’m still picking hops.

I keep looking down at this bucket wondering when it’s ever going to be full.

It’s like an infinite bucket.

It never fills up.

So I’ve still got plenty of flowers left to pick.

Thanks to you all for keeping me company while I sit on this bucket and pick flowers.

Sources

Cattle / heifer retention

USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, United States cattle inventory down slightly — Jan. 30, 2026. This supports the small national herd and current inventory context. USDA NASS

USDA Economic Research Service, Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook: February 2026. This is especially useful because it specifically discusses beef replacement heifers and says sustained heifer retention is needed before the beef cow herd can expand. Economic Research Service

USDA ERS, Livestock Production Cycles Affect Long-Term Price Outlook for Cattle, Hogs, and Chickens. Good background on the cattle cycle, historically low inventories, and why low supplies produce high cattle prices. Economic Research Service

U.S. Energy Information Administration, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices. Useful for the high-diesel-cost portion; national on-highway diesel was above $6.50 per gallon in the week of Sept. 21, 2026. U.S. Energy Information Administration

Alexander and Persia

Alexander the Great, World History Encyclopedia. Covers Alexander’s effort to integrate Macedonian and Persian elites, the Susa marriages, his marriage to a daughter of Darius III, adoption of Persian dress and manners, incorporation of Persians into the military, and Macedonian resistance to those policies. World History Encyclopedia

Alexander the Great & the Burning of Persepolis, World History Encyclopedia. Useful for the conquest and destruction of Persepolis. World History Encyclopedia

1953 Iran coup / the Shah

U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, Iran, 1951–1954. A 1954 CIA memorandum explicitly describes the U.S.-approved campaign to remove Mossadegh and replace his government with a pro-Western government under the Shah. Office of the Historian

The same official documentary collection includes Eisenhower acknowledging that the United States helped bring about Mossadegh’s removal and the Shah’s restoration. Office of the Historian

There are also contemporary CIA communications describing direct American support for the Shah during the operation. Office of the Historian

Iranian political structure / IRGC

Council on Foreign Relations, The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It explains that the IRGC answers directly to the Supreme Leader and that its command structure bypasses the elected president. It also covers the IRGC’s military, political, economic, and regional roles. Council on Foreign Relations

Russia / NATO gray-zone activity

NATO, Collective defence and Article 5. Particularly important because NATO explicitly says an “armed attack” is assessed case by case and that sufficiently serious cyber and other hybrid attacks can qualify under Article 5. NATO

Kaliningrad

Council of the European Union, EU sanctions against Russia: questions and answers. Useful for the legal and logistical reality of Kaliningrad transit; EU sanctions make specific provisions for goods moving between Russia and the Kaliningrad oblast. Council of the European Union

NATO material describes Kaliningrad as a Russian exclave on the Baltic surrounded by Lithuania and Poland and discusses the importance of civilian and military transit. NATO

Finland

NATO material gives Finland’s land border with Russia as about 1,340 kilometers, or roughly 830 miles. NATO

College costs and value

College Board, Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025. This is probably your best source for tuition, sticker prices, net prices, financial aid, and the long-term cost discussion. College Board Research

College Board’s archive gives you historical reports back through the 1990s if you want to make a precise claim about thirty-year tuition growth rather than simply saying college has become expensive. College Board Research

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Education pays, 2025. In 2025, workers with bachelor’s degrees had median weekly earnings of $1,578 and a 2.8% unemployment rate, with earnings generally increasing and unemployment generally declining as educational attainment rose. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Get full access to I Believe at https://joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe

Thoughts from the week, in podcast conversation form.

Joel: The watch is quiet. Dark. Day and night, you don’t know the difference.

Joel: Every twelve hours, you set the clock. If it’s more than a second off, fast or slow, it’s out of spec. And you have to set all three clocks at once.

Paige: Three clocks, one second. I hear that and feel like it’s important. I suspect you’re going to tell me it didn’t feel that way.

Joel: You’re just setting the clock. It’s standard. Wherever we were in the world, we all had to agree on what time it was.

Joel: I was a nuclear weapons officer for twenty-one years. For two of them, I commanded one of America’s nine squadrons that keep nuclear missiles on alert and stand ready, day and night. You get used to thinking in a common reference time. Somebody you’re working with could be six time zones away from you, but you still need to know what time it is for both of you.

Paige: Zulu time.

Joel: Right. You’ll have flashbacks, stories that pop into your head whenever some random event happens. One of those that caught my attention this week was this new Gallet watch. The Flying Officer. It’s only been out a couple of weeks. I haven’t seen one in person and I don’t know that I ever will. I’ve been looking at pictures of the face.

Paige: It’s an old name. The first one came out in nineteen thirty-nine. Harry Truman wore one.

Joel: Is that right.

Joel: There are reference cities around the dial. It’s a twelve-hour face, but when everyone somewhere on the globe operates on a single reference time you’re thinking about a twenty-four-hour day and a twenty-four-hour globe, so two places can share an hour position, twelve hours apart.

Joel: London is the reference to start with. Move clockwise, or to the right on the watch face, and it’s like moving east around the globe. Geneva then Cape Town then Nairobi. Go the other way, west into the Atlantic, and you’ve got the Azores.

Paige: You’re reading it like a map.

Joel: Yes. The globe on your wrist. After twenty-one years it gets ingrained. You think about people being in different time zones. It’s also just an interesting watch.

Paige: Fair enough.

Joel: Most of that job was waiting, alert. The watch. The capability is there. It’s ready. And the whole point is that you never use it.

Joel: That followed me to Leavenworth and to the Army’s Command and General Staff College. Twelve officers in our classroom. I was the only Air Force officer. There was a Marine, a Canadian armor officer, and everybody else was Army.

Joel: One exercise we worked through was a thought experiment conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The question was whether we go in, and how much we’d commit to a peacekeeping mission. One of the factions was openly hostile to the U.S. Disrupting our activities in the area. Threatening terrorist attacks. The Marine was confident we should get involved in almost every regional conflict, and that it would be over quick.

Joel: Most of the room said yes. I said no. I almost always said no.

Paige: Wait. One country punishing people in another. And you said no.

Joel: I did. Is it a tragedy? Yes. A vital U.S. interest? No. Would I support partners getting involved? Yes. Independent action? No.

Paige: Partners tend to wait for us. Rwanda was a hundred days.

Joel: I know. There’s a question of dependency there. And then we’d get to something I thought was important enough. Then what I was willing to accept in casualties was much higher than anybody else in the room.

Paige: That sounds backwards. The man who never wants to go is the one who’ll pay the most once he’s there.

Joel: Because I was looking at the objective. What were we going to achieve?

Joel: The others were more willing to get into smaller conflicts. As a nuclear weapons guy, I’d look at those and think, we’re not going to have a decisive, long-term impact. Our effects need to last for 40 years, maybe even a hundred.

Joel: If a major United States interest was threatened, that was different. But those are much bigger conflicts. World wars. Major conflicts involving our partners.

Paige: I’ll give you that being able to intervene isn’t a reason to. But decisive is a high bar. Haven’t you walked the tunnels the North Koreans dug under the DMZ?

Joel: I have.

Paige: Nothing was decided there. No treaty. An armistice, signed in nineteen fifty-three, and two armies still looking at each other across it. By your test, Korea was a waste.

Joel: No. It wasn’t.

Paige: Seventy years of Seoul.

Joel: Okay. Then decisive is the wrong word. Maybe durable. Does it last. Korea has. And we’re still paying to make it hold. That’s a cost I’d accept, for an ally, for a result that lasts that long.

Joel: But there’s a cost to every one of those. When you use resources in one regional conflict, you don’t have them for something bigger.

Joel: And we start from an extraordinary position. Oceans on both sides. No neighbor about to invade and subdue us. That gives us room to be patient.

Joel: America will never lose a war, because nobody can come here and conquer us. Just this week we signed a security agreement with Denmark and Greenland to increase our presence on that critical piece of geography while denying China and Russia access. Further protecting American security interests in our region.

Paige: Hold on. There’s a jump there. Keeping the homeland secure and winning a war abroad are two different things.

Joel: I agree that’s a logic jump. What I mean is that no other country is going to subdue the United States on our shores.

Joel: When we go somewhere else to fight, of course we can lose. We have a long logistical trail. We are at a disadvantage sustaining what we’re doing. And we can have enormous difficulty achieving our objectives.

Paige: Which puts the weight back on the objective. What counts as success, and can the force we’re using produce it?

Joel: Exactly. Our strength is in restraint. In having the capability and not always exercising it.

Joel: Take Iran. We’ve been at war with Iran since the last day of February. Going on seven months.

Joel: I was thinking about Cyrus the Persian this week, and how far back that history goes.

Paige: About twenty-six hundred years.

Joel: They aren’t going anywhere. Whatever we do over there, they’ll be living there when we’ve gone home.

Paige: The country isn’t going anywhere. This government might.

Joel: It hasn’t yet. We can blow things up. We’re blockading their ports right now. We can do a lot of things to hurt Iran. If we don’t get a durable American result out of it, what have we achieved?

Joel: And I don’t think Israel’s immediate survival was at risk before this started. So why start a war when survival isn’t at risk?

Paige: Let me make the case straight, because somebody should. A government that says Israel shouldn’t exist was enriching uranium well past what any power plant needs, even though they had never made a bomb. If the test is immediate survival, then with a bomb, immediate comes after it’s too late. You of all people know what one weapon does to a small country.

Joel: I do. One weapon on a small country is a tragedy. But the state will survive.

Paige: A lot of that country lives around one city.

Joel: I know what I’m saying. If Iran ever used one, the world would stand against them. Israel would survive. That government wouldn’t. And it has spent more than forty years making sure it survives. That’s not a government looking to die. And remember, Iran never built a bomb. Our own intelligence says they had a weapons program and shut it down in two thousand three. Year after year, the same people said they hadn’t restarted it. It’s not in their best interest.

Joel: And we had limits on them. Inspectors in the buildings. We walked away from that in twenty eighteen.

Paige: The inspectors didn’t stop them from arming Hezbollah. Or Hamas. Or the Houthis.

Joel: No. And Israel has been dealing with that. It has plenty of capability to defend itself, which America continues to support. I don’t see it as a threat to the survival of the state. And what’s the alternative? That we should preemptively attack every state that threatens a partner?

Paige: Then we disagree about where the line is.

Joel: We do. But wherever you put the line, you still have to answer what the war achieves. How do we end this on terms favorable to the United States?

Joel: This conflict in Iran could go on for a dozen years. I don’t think we can count on them giving up because we’ve made them suffer enough.

Joel: People under bombs don’t quit. London didn’t. Hanoi didn’t. Tokyo didn’t. They dig in, and they blame whoever’s dropping the bombs. Over there, suffering can even be seen as legitimacy. As righteousness. The more pain we inflict, the more of it the regime gets to claim.

Paige: They quit in nineteen eighty-eight. Khomeini took the ceasefire with Iraq. He said it was like drinking poison, and he drank it.

Joel: After eight years.

Paige: After eight years.

Joel: That’s my dozen.

Paige: And a family burying a son doesn’t feel what the government tells it to feel.

Joel: Fair. They aren’t one thing. But look at what each side will put up with. Our prices go up, and we vote out the party responsible. Their people are dying. Their oil isn’t moving. And they’re still shooting at our ships.

Paige: One of their lawmakers said it this month. America is far away, so America doesn’t see this war as existential. They do.

Joel: So we can’t assume more missiles buy more of the outcome we want. We may just be spending our strength.

Paige: I don’t have an answer to that one. So name the outcome. Favorable terms could mean a lot of things.

Joel: Ships moving freely through the Strait of Hormuz. A predictable Iranian government that doesn’t threaten other countries in the region. I think that’s it.

Paige: Is the strait still ours to care about? Jimmy Carter said we’d go to war for the Gulf. Vital interests. That was nineteen eighty, and we were buying their oil.

Joel: We produce so much of our own now. I don’t know that the Middle East is as important to us as it was.

Paige: Oil trades in one world market. The strait closes, and the price goes up at a pump in Wyoming. We watched it happen this year.

Joel: So we still have an interest.

Paige: And everything you listed is a change in behavior. None of it requires Iran to like us.

Joel: I don’t think we get past the hostility. The regime’s, at a minimum. We’ve meddled in their affairs too long for them to forget it.

Paige: Then a deal has to work with the distrust still in it. And we have to offer something that makes keeping it worthwhile.

Joel: I don’t know what we have to offer that we’re willing to give up. Are we going to pull all our bases out of the Middle East? We’re not going to abandon Israel because Iran wants us to.

Paige: Those are enormous asks. There are smaller bargains. Money for specific limits we can check. That’s your Kennan essay. A country that’s profiting from an arrangement has something to protect. Friendship not required.

Joel: No. And I’d take something like President Obama’s agreement again. Ease the economic pressure in exchange for nuclear limits and inspectors. We should be willing to accept terms like that.

Joel: What I don’t hear much of is the Iranian side. What do you think they’re looking for?

Paige: Whether the benefit is dependable. We left the last agreement in twenty eighteen, and the inspectors said they’d been keeping it. We want to know they’re keeping the limits. They want to know that keeping the limits gets them what they were promised.

Joel: Yeah. Go on.

Paige: So it’s a question about us. Can we hold a bargain through a change of presidents? Your patience applies to keeping a deal, not only to making one.

Joel: What does dependable mean to you?

Paige: Something they can use. Picture being told you can sell oil, but no bank will process the payment, because the bank thinks sanctions are coming back. Permission on paper. Nothing in the account. Dependable doesn’t mean unconditional. It means the terms for keeping it or losing it are clear.

Joel: What they say in public is a lot bigger than that. Tolls on tankers through Hormuz. Lift sanctions. Our bases out of the Middle East. And the hostility to Israel existing isn’t going away.

Paige: Some of that’s an opening bid. Some of it they won’t move on. We don’t know which is which, and we can’t assume.

Joel: And we still have to make it hold. I think that takes other actors. I go back to the DMZ. Somebody standing in between.

Paige: Korea’s an odd model. That command is American-led. It isn’t neutral. But the idea travels. A third party both sides accept, so nobody has to take the other’s word.

Joel: Yes.

Paige: Then the monitors report our violations as loudly as theirs.

Joel: I think that’s a result of this war we won’t be able to avoid.

Paige: And it has to hold after the people who signed it are gone. Ours and theirs.

Joel: Right.

Paige: Let’s go back to the Zulu time thing. What happens to the clocks when you go off watch?

Joel: Somebody else sets them. Every twelve hours.

Paige: And if nothing happens?

Joel: Then it was a good watch.

Sources

Gallet Flying Officer

Gallet & Co. “Flying Officer Automatic 40 — AG1701131C1A1.” 2026.https://www.gallet.com/ca-en/watches/flying-officer/flying-officer-automatic/AG1701131C1A1/

Hodinkee. “The Gallet Flying Officer.” August 2026.https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-gallet-flying-officer

U.S. Nuclear Forces

Congressional Research Service. U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues, RL33640.https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33640.html

Korea and the Armistice

United Nations Command. “Armistice Negotiations, 1951–1953.” The 1953 Korean Armistice established the DMZ, Military Armistice Commission, and Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission. United Nations Command — Armistice Negotiations

United Nations Command. “Military Armistice Commission — Secretariat.” Current information on administration, monitoring, inspections, and enforcement of the Korean Armistice Agreement. United Nations Command — UNCMAC Secretariat

Iran’s Nuclear Program and the JCPOA

International Atomic Energy Agency. Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran, GOV/2025/24. June 2025.https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-24.pdf

Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. National Intelligence Estimate. 2007.https://fas.org/publication/nie_on_irans_nuclear_program_n/

U.S.–Iran Conflict

Council on Foreign Relations. “Confrontation Between the United States and Iran.” Global Conflict Tracker. August 2026.https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/confrontation-between-united-states-and-iran

Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Iran and the Emerging Security Order in the Middle East.” 2026.https://www.csis.org/analysis/iran-and-emerging-security-order-middle-east

Institute for the Study of War. “Iran Update Special Report: U.S. and Israeli Strikes.” February 28, 2026.https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-update-special-report-us-and-israeli-strikes-february-28-2026/

Congressional Budget Office. Estimated Costs of Operation Epic Fury. September 2026.https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2026-09/62756-Iran.pdf

Strait of Hormuz and Energy

U.S. Energy Information Administration. “World Oil Transit Chokepoints.”https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/special-topics/world_oil_transit_Chokepoints

Institute for Energy Research. “New EIA Report Shows Extent of Hormuz Oil Disruptions.” 2026.https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/fossil-fuels/gas-and-oil/new-eia-report-shows-extent-of-hormuz-oil-disruptions/

The Carter Doctrine

Carter, Jimmy. “The State of the Union Address Delivered Before a Joint Session of the Congress.” January 23, 1980. The American Presidency Project. This is the address in which Carter declared an attempt by an outside power to control the Persian Gulf an assault on U.S. vital interests that could be repelled by military force. Jimmy Carter — 1980 State of the Union Address

Arctic and Greenland Security

Reuters / The Guardian. “US and Denmark Reach Security Deal After Trump’s Threats to Take Over Greenland.” September 18, 2026.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/18/united-states-denmark-greenland-security

Strategic Bombing and Coercion

Pape, Robert A. Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996.

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The shovel rings.

Every year a couple or three fence posts rot along the front lane. Enough moisture gets in the wood and maybe a beetle or two, and the Earth wants to retake what it will. Everything eventually, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

She has a couple of spare fence posts in the barn. Not too many anymore. She shifts other posts to unbury them, and dust and soil puff up, catching in her nose. She carries one out and lays it on the ground next to the leaning post. It’s heavy enough that she can’t carry it and the tools and she has to go back to the barn for those, a shovel, pickaxe, post hole digger. She lays them next to the fence post.

She puts on her gloves to protect her hands while she frees the three cross rails from the stubborn upright. Tough yellow tan leather, turning black at the fingertips. Each rail has a screw holding it to the upright, red dust lining the metal edges. She removes them one at a time and wiggles the upright side to side pulling them away from their slot. They stack there, still attached to the side post beside the rotting upright.

Then she gets to the rotting fence post. First to remove it. The best way to make progress is just to break it. So she rocks it back and forth, pushes on it with her weight, until it gives at the base. Gray decay sifts into the grass.

With the post removed, she gets to work on the rotted wood under the soil line. The shovel makes quick work at first, each bite of the shovel bringing up soft, rotted wood. Before long, the digging has her breathing hard as the hole deepens. She stops to rest, then works the pickaxe through pockets of stubborn wood. At intervals, she leans over and reaches in, feeling for the bottom of the rotted post. Often her hand meets packed earth, only to find more rotted wood just beneath.

At last, her hand finds the bottom. She clears as much rotted wood as she can, sorting it from the soil piled beside the hole. Then she lowers the new post into place and shovels enough saved earth around the base to hold it upright. She sets the level against the wood and nudges the post till it stands true, unlike the last one, which still leans a little crooked. Only then does she fill the hole and tamp the earth firm around the post. When the upright stands true, she reattaches the three rails, driving each screw into the fresh wood. Then she gathers her tools.

Half a world away, in Sumatra, another shovel bites into the Earth for a cinnamon tree.

That evening, in the kitchen, she dusts the scraps of leftover pie dough with cinnamon. Her daughter’s favorite. The spice rises sharp in the air as she slides the small cookie sheet into the oven. While the scraps bake, she blind-bakes the pie crust and prepares the filling.

She makes the dough with lard and butter, flour, salt, and water, lard for flake, butter for flavor, salt because salt makes everything better. Rolled thin on the counter over a dusting of flour, wrapped around the rolling pin, draped over the blue fluted pie dish. Foil to line the bottom, then the pie weights to stop the bubbles. Into the oven.

She collects the other ingredients from the cupboard: pumpkin pie filling, Libby’s. Sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, flour, condensed milk. She grabs eggs from the counter, fresh from the chickens in the yard.

Pumpkin. Her favorite.

The directions say to mix the dry ingredients separately, but she knows it doesn’t matter. She opens the can of pumpkin and uses a spoon to scrape out the last bits. She adds the eggs. She adds the dry ingredients straight to the pumpkin and eggs, gives everything a good stir, then pours in the condensed milk and mixes it again.

About now the timer sounds. Potholders to grab the pie dish, foil and weights out, pie dish back in to finish the blind-bake.

The next morning, pumpkin pie for breakfast.

Out of the fridge comes the whipping cream. Two cups into the mixer, then sugar and vanilla. She starts it on low so the cream doesn’t splash out of the bowl, then turns it up to high until the stiff white peaks. The whisk turns faster than her hand could manage. She watches the cream thicken, stops the mixer, lifts the whisk to check.

Peaks.

She puts a dollop of the whipped cream onto her coffee, her favorite treat, then some onto the pie. She savors the vanilla in the cream, the bite of cinnamon and ginger mixed with the pumpkin, and heads into work.

At work, the accounting sheets are waiting. Each needs checked and then checked again. There are more sheets than she has time to go through carefully.

She opens a conversation with an AI. She details precise instructions. What she needs to check, what a mistake looks like, what should agree with what. Together they work on a piece of Python code to go through the documents one at a time.

The first try isn’t quite right. She changes a term, explains it again. They try another approach. She runs the code, checks what it finds, changes the code, goes back to the conversation. A couple of hours pass this way.

Eventually, it works. The code moves through the sheets finding the mistakes that need her attention.

She gets to work fixing them.

At a desk nearby, a mathematician works through a problem he has struggled with for years. He knows where he gets stuck. He can get partway to an answer, but the next step depends on something he hasn’t been able to prove. Every approach brings him back to the same place.

He’s tried changing his starting assumptions. He’s tried approaching the problem from other directions. There are papers on his desk with passages underlined, calculations in the margins. Books and old computer programs he keeps because he thinks he might find the answer there. Some of that work belongs to people who have been working on the problem longer than he has. Some will never work on it again.

He opens a conversation with an AI. Types the problem, gives it explicit details, explains where he gets stuck.

The AI says it’s thinking about it. Gives an answer back. He reads it chewing on a pencil.

For him to get to a final solution he has to prove every line, and he can’t get past the third.

He goes back to the AI and explains the mistake, walks it through his reasoning. Another answer. This one a different route that arrives at the same difficulty. He checks each step again anyway.

Over the next several days, he returns to the conversation. Sometimes it helps him work through a calculation. Sometimes he spends an hour finding out why a suggestion won’t work.

Then the AI suggests a way of writing the problem differently.

He copies it onto paper. Works through the first line, then the second. He tries a simple example whose answer he already knows.

It works.

He tries another. Then he goes back over what they have taken for granted, looking for something that slipped through unnoticed.

For the first time, he can see a possible next step.

There’s still work to do. He needs to know whether the approach works beyond these examples. He needs other mathematicians to look it over. A promising afternoon is a long way from his end goal.

But he turns to a fresh page.

We say she dug the hole by hand. We say she made the pie from scratch. And she did.

But where does ‘by hand’ or ‘from scratch’ begin?

She used a shovel. Somebody made it. Before someone could make the shovel, someone made steel. Someone extracted iron ore from the ground. Someone figured out how to turn it into something useful. They needed furnaces, fuel, equipment to move the material, tools to shape it, people to do the work. Every one of those had to be made or fed, too.

And the handle. A tree had to grow. Somebody cut it, moved it, dried the wood, shaped it to fit the shovel, and shaped it so that your hand could hold it.

Whatever fastens the blade to the handle has its own need: a pin, a screw, adhesive. How do you make resin from scratch? For every one of them, if you follow their trail backward, there’s more work.

Even if she could obtain everything herself, every ingredient, she would still need to know what to do with them.

Somebody makes every material. Somebody else discovered how. Somebody learned through years of mistakes what would work. What would hold together? What would fail or rust faster?

We could learn what they know, but we don’t have time to live every one of their failures.

She doesn’t need to know the history of metalwork. Other people have worked that out, and they gave her a tool she can hold. Most of their names don’t survive.

People observed things long ago, before there were papers to publish or patents to file. They tried something. They remembered what happened. They showed somebody else. Knowledge traveled through a family or a community across generations. It could be lost, discovered again, changed by somebody who noticed something others missed.

In the kitchen, she measures flour. She didn’t grow the wheat or grind it. If she had, she would use knowledge someone else taught her: when to plant, what to save for seed, how to recognize grain ready for harvest, how to turn it into flour, and how to make flour into something worth eating.

The cinnamon arrived in a jar from Sumatra, halfway across the world. In that jar, there are people who grew and harvested it, people who prepared it, people who moved it from one part of the world to another, and behind their work is knowledge that they didn’t have to discover for themselves.

When she turns on the mixer, she watches the cream turn into soft and then stiff peaks and decides when it’s ready. She can use the machine without knowing who built its motor or how they did it. She can take the cream out of the refrigerator without knowing how to make a refrigerator.

And we still say that she made whipped cream from scratch.

Then at work.

She knows the result she needs, opens a browser window, explains how she needs to check them. The first version fails; she changes the code, and it fails again. She changes her instructions; it fails. She works through it over and over, tries again, until she achieves her goal.

What part of that effort belongs to her? It’s a legitimate question. But we should ask the same question about the shovel, the flour, the refrigerator, the language she uses to explain the problem she has.

The question, really, is: what does it mean to do something by hand?

Human achievement depends on more human experience than any one person could ever accumulate.

We start ahead of the finish line, beginning our lives with answers other people long dead spent their lives finding, and many spent their lives failing to find.

Let’s pull on this thread some more and think about another facet of AI that no one is talking about: justice.

It’s one of our six national goals, and it means equal treatment under the law, but it also means that a boy or girl who grows up in a trailer and is willing to put in the work can become great.

And for AI especially, it’s not really a governance effort because it’s private enterprise. But let’s think about the effort in the context of: does it align with one of our national goals?

We’ve already talked about how knowledge is inherited, but access to that knowledge isn’t equal. Some people grow up with great teachers or great professional connections. Their parents have connections, their friends have connections, or they have people who can explain how to start something. Others have ability and ambition, but they don’t have these connections or the guidance.

Circumstances narrow our choices in life. If a boy or girl grows up in a trailer and they are curious and willing to work, their circumstances shouldn’t decide how far they can develop their abilities.

AI as a tool creates another way to learn and attempt things and to build knowledge and skills that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise. It’s a place to ask questions, request more explanation about something, practice unfamiliar skills, build something useful.

New abilities also create new opportunities. It can help finish a project, get a promotion, or develop new skills they can showcase to an employer or customer.

AI isn’t an end-all, be-all. But it offers concrete steps toward the goal of an ordinary, worthwhile life: to love your work, raise your family in a safe neighborhood with good schools, and eat and drink with those you love.

So let’s judge the technology not solely by the chatter, but by whom it enables and whether it advances our effort toward achieving a national goal.

America exists to protect and enable the weak, not the strong. And to do so, we must take deliberate effort to empower those born with nothing who are willing to work to become great.

So, what’s better?

Human achievement only?

Human achievement enhanced with AI ability?

And a question we need to ask. There are answers we need for tough questions. When will we get to those answers alone?

If one day the answer to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Problem about fluid motion helps us better model solutions for a changing climate, would we ignore the result?

Postscript.

My stories are mine. For this piece, I read into a microphone and used AI to transcribe for me. And yes, I use the hell out of it to help me write Python code.

Around twenty-five hundred years ago we were thinking about the progress of knowlege: 8Ask the former generation and find out what their ancestors learned,9 for we were born only yesterday and know nothing, and our days on earth are but a shadow.10 Will they not instruct you and tell you? Will they not bring forth words from their understanding?” Job 8, 8-10, NIV

Sources

Steel production, iron ore, fuel, and the materials behind manufactured tools: World Steel Association, “Raw Materials”; World Steel Association, “The Steelmaking Process”

Indonesian cinnamon from Sumatra and the people involved in its production: McCormick Science Institute, “Cinnamon”; McCormick, “Empowering Women in Indonesia’s Cinnamon Supply Chain,” March 8, 2023

Human knowledge accumulating through social learning, innovation, and transmission between people: Maxime Derex and Robert Boyd, “The Foundations of the Human Cultural Niche,”Nature Communications, 2015

Returning to dust: Ecclesiastes 3:20, New International Version, via Bible Gateway; the wording “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”: The Book of Common Prayer (1662), “At the Burial of the Dead,” Church of England

Learning from earlier generations and the limits of one person’s experience: Job 8:8–10, New International Version, via Bible Gateway

How new ideas and technologies spread through communication, social relationships, and adoption over time: Everett M. Rogers,Diffusion of Innovations, fifth edition, Free Press, 2003

Navier–Stokes equations, fluid motion, and the Millennium Prize problem: Clay Mathematics Institute, “Navier–Stokes Equation”; Charles L. Fefferman, official problem description, “Existence and Smoothness of the Navier–Stokes Equation”

Mathematicians working with AI on fluid equations, building on earlier human research, and questions about credit and unpublished work: Tristan Buckmaster, public statement on his collaboration with Levent Alpöge and interactions with OpenAI, September 2026

OpenAI’s claimed Navier–Stokes solution and its account of the research process and concurrent mathematical work: OpenAI, “On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem,” September 8, 2026

Fluid-motion equations in numerical weather prediction and modeling systems used for weather and climate: Met Office, “History of Numerical Weather Prediction”; Met Office, “Unified Model”

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Taking stairs down two at a time from the giant stone building, music thrumming in her AirPods. She rounds the corner and her pace slows to a walk. The Commuter Express is still there, leaving the city. Three-tone white and green and blue, blue cloth seats, standing room only, people in suits and dress shoes. Above the windshield, Backlick Three Ninety-Five lit up in yellow.

A twenty-six minute bus ride to the commuter lot. I-95 and then the parkway.

The doors fold shut and then the hiss of air brakes. A young man moves his bag away from the seat next to him, but she reaches up to grab the strap hanging from the ceiling and braces for the turn onto the on-ramp. Eyes forward.

She’s twelve hours in. During the darkest time of the year this is her favorite moment of the day.

As they crest the top of the hill, a glowing river of red on her right. The HOV lane rules say minimum three passengers to get away from the gridlock, and most cars don’t have three. Their brake lights shine as far as she can see, the bus passing them one after another after another.

Next stop, the commuter lot. The bus empties in less than a minute. Her car is close, she parked at five-forty this morning.

On the way home, she stops at the supermarket. Less than ten minutes now to save the peace of a weekend morning with her coffee and the still of the screen porch, cardinals calling from the tree line and squirrels that chitter in the great woods that line the creek.

Vegetables, potatoes, take and bake sourdough. Then the meat counter for some beef. Even the ground is more than seven dollars a pound.

The world has gone mad.

Heifers

Before he can even get a toe to the wood floor she licks his foot. He walks out of the bedroom in the near-dark, and she’s already jogging a circle on the rug next to her food bowl. He puts a scoop in the bowl and hits the coffee grinder button as he walks through the kitchen. She finishes her portion, licks the bowl clean, and still beats him to the door.

While she is outside he goes back to the coffee. Ten after five he hits ‘Brew’ and the coffee maker starts to gurgle.

Out the sunroom window the sky to the east is a deep pink going yellow at the edge. Jesse is back at the screen door, ready for her treat. Red heeler, white Bentley mark on her forehead, nails ticking on the tile when the door swings. She wolfs the treat down in one bite and runs through the house ready to jump on anyone not out of bed yet.

He drinks the coffee with some cream. Only one cup anymore. Jesse is back now; she watches the sparrows flit from tree to tree in the dim light.

He grabs his felt with the cattleman’s crease. By six he’s in the pickup with the window down, diesel turbo whining along the two-track up to the north pasture to check water tanks. The tank on the north end runs off a solar well he put in four years ago, and the float sticks sometimes. Today the float is fine. The grass is not.

He borrowed eleven thousand dollars through a USDA program four years ago to drill that well. For a cattleman, water means grass. It opened up enough ground to add forty pairs on a section that used to just grow sagebrush. He’s looked into what a second one for the east side would cost more than once. Another sixty pairs, maybe, if the grass would carry them.

Imagine walking in to talk to a banker for a loan. Do you have any collateral? Sure do. It’s grass that I’m hoping will survive the drought.

The north pasture is grazed short and has been brown all year. He asks Jesse aloud if they’re going to see any snow this winter. Then the math. How many head, how many acres, how much fuel will cost to truck hay in at more than five dollars a gallon for diesel.

The math says what it said last year. Keeping cattle means losing money.

The pickup idles through and he counts heifer calves. Steers already a check coming regardless. This year’s crop looks good. The kind you want to keep.

He turns the radio up when the cattle market report comes on in the background. Heifer calves bringing between four-fifty and some near four-seventy-five a pound.

He glances through his heifers.

Near four seventy-five a pound means the calves in front of him are twenty-five hundred dollars. Apiece. Or he could lose money to keep them.

Then the news.

The announcer says the United States would import three hundred thousand metric tons of ground beef to be sold at twenty-five percent below current market prices. The president’s voice says the deal would reduce prices for American families while we work to rebuild the cattle herd and help our ranchers.

He shakes his head and turns the radio back down.

He looks at a heifer calf.

If he keeps her there’s no check in October. She eats hay all winter, and the diesel to deliver it costs more than the hay. Then hope she breeds next summer, lose money again next winter, and then still wait another year.

If. If. If.

If she breeds.

If they get enough snow to grow grass.

If the coyotes don’t find the newborn.

If all that happens, two springs from now she might put her first calf on the ground.

But he still hasn’t made any money. For that to happen that calf would still have to grow, get weaned, and sell for a profit.

This is twenty twenty-six. He could get paid in twenty twenty-eight. Somewhere around twenty-thirty, that calf is beef.

He has a choice and he doesn’t like either option. He could spend money buying hay and paying veterinary bills and hope for luck for four years but that means losing money and a ranch that loses money doesn’t stay a ranch. Or he could put a check for twenty-five hundred dollars in his pocket right now but every year he does that his cattle herd shrinks and then makes less and less money every year and the ranch doesn’t stay a ranch.

And the radio just told him the government will do everything it can to make the cattle market no longer profitable.

He spends the rest of the day checking calves and water tanks with Jesse.

Around the time he’s wrapping up he remembers a story his dad told him. His dad loved Reagan, always telling these old stories. 1989, just two months before the Berlin Wall fell, Boris Yeltsin visited a grocery store in Houston, Texas. He roamed the aisles of Randall’s, shaking his head in amazement.

He said if ordinary Russians ever saw an American supermarket, “there would be a revolution.”

He wonders what happens to the supermarket if ranchers can’t grow their herds.

They’re headed back for supper. Outside the window the heifer calves are strung out along the creek in the last light, grazing down by the water. They’re worth more money than any calves in the history of this ranch, every one of them a check he can’t afford to cash, and can’t afford not to.

We’ve Been Here Before, But We Were Coming From the Other Direction

Nebraska, 1934.

The Dust Bowl. America was five years into the Depression. Roosevelt had been president a little more than a year. Washington was inventing agencies faster than most people could learn their initials.

None of them could make it rain.

The grass had been gone two years. A rancher couldn’t keep an animal he couldn’t feed, and what he couldn’t keep, nobody wanted to buy. A calf was worth less than the corn it would have taken to fatten it, and the corn wasn’t growing either.

The Drought Relief Service started buying cattle. Not to eat. To get them off land that couldn’t carry them anymore. Four dollars a head for calves, around a hundred dollars today. Ten to twenty for cows and steers, two fifty to five hundred.

More than the packing plants could take. What they couldn’t take, trucks drove to pits we had already dug. Close to one in five of the cattle the government paid for were buried in the ground they’d been trying to graze.

There are two ways for a country to spend money on beef it doesn’t have.

There were ninety-two years between cattle pits in Nebraska and the meat counter in Northern Virginia. Then: not enough grass and water to grow too many cattle. Now: not enough cattle, and not enough grass and water to grow more.

So. Two ways for a country to spend money on beef it doesn’t have.

First, fast. Last week, Washington announced it would import up to three hundred thousand metric tons of foreign ground beef without the usual tariff. A ninety-day supply, priced twenty-five percent below market value.

This isn’t necessarily wicked, a country buying beef. But let’s be honest about what that leaves us with when the ninety days run out. Not an extra acre of grass. Not a foot of pipe for water. Not one bred heifer standing in the snow we are praying for this winter.

And another good question for this approach. Where did that beef come from? A calf that crosses a state line in America has an official tag and a history so USDA can ensure a safe food supply. Born here. Moved there. If it comes from a Western brand state, looked at by a brand inspector before it leaves the state. We know much less about beef imports.

The second way. Slow. Painfully slow. Grass, water, and heifers.

Grass. In August, a Republican from South Dakota and a Democrat from Minnesota introduced a bill to pay landowners to put marginal cropland back into permanent pasture. Up to twenty million acres under ten or fifteen-year contracts. Sunlight turning land into more grass to grow the national cattle herd.

Water. We need more water across the West, and taking more from the Colorado River and aquifers isn’t the solution. If we put marginal crop ground into grazing land, those acres need a fraction of the water draw irrigated row crops need. And the Colorado: a hundred-year-old agreement promised states could take more water than has flowed in the river in decades. Last week, Washington changed those rules. Nevada already sued, arguing that the new decision would leave it with less than half the water it already uses. Nobody’s building a pipeline or a desalination plant by November. No quick solutions, so we better get to work.

Heifers. Somebody has to feed her and take care of her, starting from the fall she isn’t sold to the fall her first calf brings a check two years later. Ask any other American small business the country relies on to skip revenue checks on half of their inventory for two years, and every one of them will go out of business. So ranchers need resources. Low-interest loans and tax credits to keep beef heifers. Marry the credits to the ear tags and brand inspections that already exist, so nobody collects on a heifer that quietly went to market. And put an end date on it. A bridge, not an entitlement. When we rebuild the herd, let it die.

Then comes the hard part. We wait.

The market isn’t broken. The price of calves is real: there aren’t enough of them. Anyone standing in front of a meat case promising lower beef prices by November is making a promise cattle biology doesn’t support.

Cheap beef means abundance. Abundance means more cattle than the market wants to pay for. That’s the market working.

Cheap beef means:

Heifers. Water. Grass.

Sources

U.S. cattle herd at a 75-year low, ground beef averaging $6.69/lb in Dec. 2025, Argentina beef tariff-rate quota raised to 80,000 metric tons: The White House, “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Ensures Affordable Beef for the American Consumer,” Feb. 6, 2026; Federal Register, Proclamation 11010, “Ensuring Affordable Beef for the American Consumer”

Trump executive order removing tariffs on beef, coffee, and tropical fruit, Nov. 14, 2025: PBS NewsHour / Associated Press

NCBA CEO Colin Woodall statement opposing Argentina beef imports: The Center Square, via Yahoo News

DOJ meatpacker price-fixing investigation, Executive Order 14364, Dec. 6, 2025: Wikipedia, “Executive Order 14364”

Nevada v. Department of the Interior, Colorado River Record of Decision lawsuit, Aug. 24, 2026: Office of Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, press release

Colorado River Record of Decision and Final EIS, governor statements: Office of Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo; Office of Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo

1934 cattle purchase program, packing plants, condemned animals: Wikipedia, “Drought Relief Service”

8.3 million cattle purchased, $111,546,104 cost, 1.5 million condemned: Wikipedia, “Jones–Connally Act 1934”

High Plains aquifer system, southeastern Wyoming extent and use: USGS, Scientific Investigations Map 3180; USGS, Fact Sheet 2011–3106, “Groundwater Quality of Southeastern Wyoming”

Status of the High Plains aquifer in Kansas, 2023: Kansas Geological Survey, Technical Series 25

Ogallala aquifer depletion rates, Texas High Plains: Texas A&M, Ogallala Aquifer Program; Texas Tribune

Irrigated vs. non-irrigated water use, Texas High Plains crop-livestock systems: Zilverberg et al., “Integrated Crop–Livestock Systems in the Texas High Plains: Productivity and Water Use,” 2014

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College girl. Blonde in a bright green shirt holding a clipboard, asking names and questions. Welcoming committee.

What’s your major?

Chemical engineering.

Oh, you’re one of the smart ones.

The van pulls forward through the maze of cones and kids wearing shirts that say “Unpack Your Future” that stand ready with laundry carts to take your life’s treasure into the unknown.

Who will you meet on your journey?

Through the great halls of stone and brick. Unknown sounds and the faces and voices of those someday familiar.

Will you take the long road home? Or the shortcut? The shortcut looks like the way home.

Your first meal at the feast.

Your first night in a strange room.

Act I. Argos

Christmas Eve. The long night and the wind howling pelting snow sideways against the windows and the drifts that bury the paths and block the roads. Dreams of tunnels and forts and marshmallows dripping with chocolate.

Bedtime in the far north.

Two bathed now in pajamas and blankets, snuggled in with the old gray dog.

Time for a story. The older is at the edge of story time and some nights he wants to listen and some nights not and days move on.

Tonight, a new tale.

Not an Odyssey. A tale of an Odyssey told from home. Those who remain behind.

The reader starts with the title. “Argos. The Story of Odysseus as Told by His Loyal Dog” by Ralph Hardy.

Book One. Chapter One. “On the Stupidity of Sheep.”

The two giggle.

The sheep refuse to find shelter from the storm. Their wool smells. Argos, the great hunting dog born of bear and wolf, their protector. Wet.

Chapter One ends: “Some men did return to their homes from Troy to tell the tale. But my master and his men have not. The mountain eagles circle higher and higher, riding the rippling currents, looking for him as I have asked, but see him not. The seagulls I have ordered to fly over every ship to see if my master is enslaved report nothing. Even the vultures, which smell death everywhere, are silent. And so I believe he lives.”

February.

Smoke in the kitchen. The microwave door hangs open and the smell of burnt oatmeal goes all the way up the stairs. The boy stands back from it with the look of a man watching his first ship sink. Windows open. Ten below outside. The whole house breathing cold air until the smell surrenders.

What’s done is done. The house stands.

Later we laugh and carry the old microwave out into the snow drift and the smell inside it will never go away.

That night, bedtime. Pajamas and blankets and the old gray dog.

Book One. Chapter Sixteen. “Tales of Hades:” “I pray that…you set me on a pyre there and burn me with my armor….Do this for me, or I am cursed for eternity.”

Honor by fire.

Some nights he listens from the doorway. Tonight, he is under the blanket.

March came and with it great snowstorms. First we dug tunnels tall enough for a boy to stand in. The roofs sagged and the mound slowly shrank.

The book was nearly done now.

Bedtime. The reader went up the stairs the way they had all winter.

The two bathed and in pajamas under the blanket. The reader had to coax one out to listen, the book was nearly done. The old gray dog circled twice and lay down with his head on a leg.

The last chapters. Odysseus returns at last, a stranger in his own home; only one creature in all of Ithaca knows him. Argos.

Act II. Lessons

Troy. The Trojan War. The legend Homer told took place around twelve hundred years before Christ. He told the tale around five centuries later.

Homer begins near the end.

For ten years, Greek warriors laid siege to a city that would not bend to their will. Troy’s location wasn’t an accident. It sat at a decisive point to control key geography. The straits didn’t cause the Trojan War, but they are why the city mattered.

Then the trickery of the horse. Warriors inside the gates. The city slept.

In the dark, the warriors climbed out and opened the gates for the army waiting outside. Houses burned through the night. Men who had names the day before, dead in the streets. They took women and children.

Odysseus wasn’t watching Troy burn from a ship. He was inside the horse and inside the walls when the city fell. By dawn, the Greeks had destroyed the city.

So. The war is over. There was a way home, and some of the other kings took it. He could go directly home, but there were other matters. Men he was tied to, arguments to settle, other things pulling at him, other routes to consider.

Odysseus has a choice.

The first: Go to class. Do the work. Come home when you said you would. Save some money. Keep the promise. Stay married. Train when you don’t feel like training. One foot in front of the other, the next step and then the next.

None of those things feel heroic while you’re doing them.

Or the other: the road that looks shorter.

And so begins the Odyssey.

Their first stop, a city called Ismarus. It had nothing to do with Troy, but they attacked it anyway.

After the assault, Odysseus told the men it was time to go. For ten years there had been a time for war. Troy had fallen. That time was over. But there was food and wine and things to steal and divide, and they stayed too long. By morning, more men had come down from the country and they had to defend themselves.

They fought all day, and by the time the Greeks got back to sea, six men from every ship were dead.

There is a season, a time and place for everything.

A time when your parents woke you up, reminded you where to be, knew where you were at night, and caught some of your mistakes before they became expensive. That season ends.

Then an island where three of the men ate the lotus and forgot why they were trying to get home. Not who they were, really. They didn’t forget everything. Just the part where, somewhere across the water, there was another life they were supposed to want and get back to.

They forgot.

They didn’t want to leave.

Odysseus had to drag them back to the ships crying and tie them down.

Remember why you came.

One of the great treasures in life is to find work you love. Don’t trade that away because something is easier or safer or more pleasant that makes you forget what you wanted in the first place.

When you are young, you want to burn the world to the ground. Remember.

Then the cave. The men find cheese and sheep and food, and they want to take some and get out. Odysseus wants to stay and meet whoever lives there, and that turns out to be a bad decision he could not have forecast at the time.

The Cyclops comes home, rolls a stone across the entrance, and eats two of the men. Later he eats more. Odysseus gets him drunk, tells him his name is Nobody, blinds him, and the surviving men escape when the Cyclops lets the sheep out.

It works. They’re back on the ship. They’re leaving.

But Odysseus can’t stand that the Cyclops doesn’t know who beat him. So Odysseus shouts his real name and where he’s from.

Turns out the Cyclops is Poseidon’s son.

You don’t need to tell people how smart you are, how talented you are, how hard you work, how much potential you have.

Don’t announce yourself. There’s plenty of time for people to know how great you are without you telling them. People will discover that on their own.

Then the King of the Winds. He gives Odysseus a bag with every wind trapped inside except the one blowing toward Ithaca, so only the wind that will carry them home is free.

For nine days they sail. Odysseus stays awake at the helm until he can’t take it anymore and falls asleep. When he does, they are close enough to Ithaca to see the fires of their home burning on shore.

But the crew has been watching him guard the bag, and out of envy they decide it must contain treasure he hasn’t shared with them. They open it.

All the winds come out at once.

Odysseus wakes up and watches his home disappear over the horizon because the men he trusted thought he was hiding gold from them.

They end up back where they started.

You will meet people who have more than you. More money. Better grades. Better connections. There is always someone at the dance that is prettier than you. Maybe they earned it. Maybe they didn’t. It doesn’t matter.

Envy will make you destroy your own voyage trying to open somebody else’s bag.

Then the giants.

Eleven ships go into the harbor. The giants rain rocks down from the cliffs. None come out. The one ship that stayed out of the harbor cuts its line and gets away.

Time and chance happen to us all.

You will make good choices and still have terrible things happen to you. Keep going.

Next, Circe, daughter of the sun god. When Odysseus’s men reach her island, she welcomes them into her house, gives them food and wine, drugs them, strikes them with her wand, and turns them into pigs.

Odysseus forces her to turn them back.

And in a weird twist, they stay on the island for another year.

They fight no battles. There’s no rowing, no storms, plenty of food to eat and warm beds.

Eventually, the crew has to convince Odysseus that they should probably go home.

There will be times when you need to stop, recover, change your major, take an easier semester, sleep, heal, enjoy yourself. None of those are failure. But eventually, you should probably get going.

Then he goes to the land of the dead because Circe tells him that the way home now requires directions from people who are no longer alive. His mother is there, and she wasn’t dead when he left.

He asks her what happened and learns that she died while he was gone, grieving for him. He tries to put his arms around her. There’s nothing to hold. He tries again and again.

Twenty years is a long time.

There are people waiting for you—their lives keep going while you have your adventure. Things happen to them, too.

Next up, the Sirens.

Odysseus has heard rumor from Circe of what their song does to men, but of course he still wants to hear it. So he comes up with a solution. He has his men put wax in their ears so they can’t hear the song, and then he has them tie him to the mast so he can. Crazypants.

He tells them beforehand that no matter what he says, they are not to untie him.

When he hears the song, he immediately wants loose. He begs, pleads, orders them, fights the ropes. They keep rowing and tie him tighter.

Sometimes you know or suspect that you’re not going to make a good decision. Don’t put it off. Decide while you’re thinking clearly what you’re going to do when the circumstances make thinking clearly difficult.

And, maybe Odysseus shouldn’t have listened to the song at all.

You don’t have to figure out how close you can get to failure without being ruined. Maybe just put wax in your ears and keep rowing.

Then a monster on one side of a passage and a whirlpool on the other. The whirlpool will destroy the ship and kill everyone on it. The monster will take six men.

Odysseus knows this before they enter the strait, but he can’t tell the crew.

He chooses the passage where six men will die.

Some of you will do inherently dangerous things. All of you will face tough choices.

Another island, where there are cattle belonging to the sun god. The instructions are simple: don’t eat the cattle.

Odysseus tells the crew and makes them promise, and they promise they will not eat the cattle.

But then storms keep the ship on the island. The food runs out. Odysseus goes off by himself to pray, and he falls asleep.

The men have a choice: they can die from starvation, or they can risk the wrath of the sun god.

They kill the cattle.

When they finally leave the island, Zeus destroys the ship, and every one of the crew dies except Odysseus.

Eat your bread with joy, drink your wine with a merry heart, and enjoy the hard work of being alive while you can.

All the men who left Ithaca with Odysseus are gone. He survives, holding onto wreckage.

And the lesson here, which isn’t really part of the story, is that everybody who takes the shortcut thinks they’re going to be the one who survives it.

Maybe only one of you will make it.

Then Calypso and the seven-year wait.

She is more than a beautiful woman on an island paradise. Immortality, eternal youth, love, food, sex. Anything he wants. Except for the one thing. He sits by the sea, crying for home.

The gods tell her to release him and he builds a raft and goes back onto the water and Poseidon destroys it.

One day you might get an offer that seems like paradise, at least from the outside looking in. Judge well—there is no perfect offer, always a tradeoff, hidden or known. More money or stress or health risk or time away from family that will start their own Odyssey before you expect it.

Is it worth it? Maybe yes and maybe no. Only you can decide. Do it with your eyes open.

Twenty years after leaving Ithaca, Odysseus drifts ashore there asleep. And home isn’t the place he left.

Men fill his house, eat his animals, drink his wine, and court his wife because they think he is dead. His son has grown up without him. His father is old. His mother is gone.

Odysseus has spent the whole story trying to get home and when he finally gets there he goes in as a beggar.

Nobody recognizes him.

Well, almost.

Except for Argos.

When you go on your Odyssey, you can’t go home to the place you left, because neither you nor home waits in place.

Act III. For Those of You Leaving Home in this Season

As you go out into the world,

The Lord bless you and keep you;Make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;Turn his face toward you and give you peace.

To those left behind, we remember Argos and the blizzard.

Sources

Ralph Hardy, Argos: The Story of Odysseus as Told by His Loyal Dog, Harper Collins, 2016: Google Books, Argos

Troy, archaeological site at Hisarlık, location near the Dardanelles, and traditional Late Bronze Age setting of the Trojan War: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Archaeological Site of Troy

Homer, approximately eighth century B.C.; Homeric epics recorded in roughly their present form around 750 B.C.; Iliad covers only a small portion of the ten-year siege; Trojan Horse and Sack of Troy preserved in the wider Trojan epic tradition: Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Lore About the Trojan War”

Homer, Odyssey, Book 3. Division of the Greek leaders after Troy and the choices surrounding their return home: Perseus Digital Library, Odyssey Book 3

Odysseus and the Greek warriors inside the Trojan Horse and the sack of Troy: Perseus Digital Library, Odyssey Book 11

Ismarus and the Cicones; the Lotus-Eaters; Polyphemus, “Nobody,” Odysseus revealing his name, and Poseidon: Perseus Digital Library, Odyssey Book 9

Aeolus and the bag of winds; the Laestrygonians; Circe and the transformation of the men into pigs; the year spent on Circe’s island: Perseus Digital Library, Odyssey Book 10

Odysseus in the land of the dead; Tiresias; Anticleia, Odysseus’s mother; and the dead who cannot be embraced: Perseus Digital Library, Odyssey Book 11

The Sirens; Scylla and Charybdis; the cattle of Helios; destruction of Odysseus’s final ship and death of the remaining crew: Perseus Digital Library, Odyssey Book 12

Calypso; Odysseus held on Ogygia; his longing and weeping for home; offer of immortality; construction of the raft; Poseidon’s destruction of it: Perseus Digital Library, Odyssey Book 5

Odysseus carried home asleep by the Phaeacians and set ashore on Ithaca: Perseus Digital Library, Odyssey Book 13

Argos recognizes Odysseus after twenty years: Perseus Digital Library, Odyssey Book 17

“There is a season” / “a time for war, and a time for peace”: Ecclesiastes 3:1–8: Bible Gateway, Ecclesiastes 3

“Time and chance happen to them all”: Ecclesiastes 9:11, NKJV: Bible Gateway, Ecclesiastes 9:11

“Eat your bread with joy…drink your wine with a merry heart,” and the enjoyment of life and work: Ecclesiastes 9:7–10, paraphrased: Bible Gateway, Ecclesiastes 9:7–10

“The Lord bless you and keep you…make His face shine upon you and give you peace”: Numbers 6:24–26: Bible Gateway, Numbers 6:24–26

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Moths circle the streetlights in the mostly empty lot. Blacktop. White parking lines. Road noise. Pickup doors slam shut.

They’re supposed to park at the back of the lot. Nobody who would care is here at eleven, and they’ll be gone before Beth gets in.

She’s at the door, counting heads. Everyone calls her Lou.

“I need you to go get Charlie,” she says. “He was supposed to be here an hour ago.”

No problem.

Charlie lives in a trailer park pretty close. Tires on gravel. Sideways glances. He bangs on the dark trailer door and waits. Quiet inside. Does it again. After a couple minutes Charlie opens the door, eyes bloodshot, smelling like too much of something.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

The kid leaves. When he gets back she’s still at the door.

“He’ll be here,” she says. “He always comes.”

Trucks back up to the dock. Boxes come down the rollers. Cardboard stacks up faster than anyone breaks it down. Most of the crew is new. Maybe they’ll last the week.

Charlie comes in at midnight and works the line like a man paying something off. Nobody says anything.

At the first break she’s smoking and eating a sandwich. Lettuce packed separate. Bread spread thin with dressing.

John sleeps in the corner of the break room. Loud snores. He jerks awake, then nods off again.

Above the time clock there’s a board with the stock price on it. Employee ownership plan. Somebody on day shift writes the new number in every day.

“That’s not much mayonnaise,” the kid says.

“Miracle Whip. If I could afford mayonnaise, I would spread it thick,” she says.

He looks at his own sandwich. Eats the rest of it slower.

At seven the doors open onto full daylight. The crew walks out squinting. Engines start across the lot, one after another. They pull out and head toward town and bed.

He turns west, towards Midway, the sun in his mirrors. His shift at the dairy starts at seven thirty.

Act I. Keys

Lou’s ring of keys opens nearly every lock in the store. A key to the high valuables cage, the office, the cardboard compactor lockout. She carries them on a metal clip hung over her belt. When she walks the floor, you hear her coming.

She keeps a copy of the schedule on a sheet folded in her back pocket. Not her schedule, because she has that one memorized. Everyone’s schedule. Her handwriting, all capitals, pencil.

She schedules break times, teaches new workers how to unload trucks and run pallet jacks, moves people around based on who calls in.

The store stays open until ten. Night shift starts at eleven. She arrived by nine, through the auto-open doors in pale jeans, shirt tucked in. She walked with highkneed purpose, denim falling straight to white sneakers. Pencil ready. The evening crew has their aisles faced and the dock swept before she comes through.

Just before eleven o’clock, she’s at the door to let everyone in. Five tonight. Charlie, John, the kid, a new guy, and a woman who started Tuesday. The truck’s already backed in.

She takes the paperwork from the driver and signs it on her leg.

The night is orderly. Trailer, then the rollers, then her first Virginia Slim. Pallets to the floor, everyone split aisle by aisle, freight on the shelves, cardboard broken down flat and baled. Then the orders.

She’s quick to jump in and fix a jam or rebuild a corner of a pallet herself so a new guy can watch. Then she hands him the next box.

She explains to him, “A new truck every night. Nothing to stay in the stockroom, no back inventory. Six hundred boxes in, six hundred boxes onto shelves, cardboard baled, empty dock by seven, and another truck tomorrow.”

This summer the kid is new to nights. He’s been with the store for a couple of years on evening shift, and he picked up a second job on the university dairy for the summer. When he got moved to nights she asked him about his schedule. Night shift, off at seven, dairy until five, sleep until ten, five days a week.

“That’s not much sleep,” she says. She looks at him like he’s missing something obvious.

Once every couple weeks the kid isn’t there at eleven. If the truck is full and the crew is short, she’ll call. If the truck is light she’ll let him sleep until one before she calls.

When a truck pulls away she might sneak a puff outside the cone of the dock light. The moths shoot across the light in a streak.

Around four the night gets long. Whoever’s dragging worst finds her coming down their aisle with a mini candy bar. She doesn’t say anything about it.

The woman who started Tuesday asks her how long she’s been here.

Nineteen years, she says. Nights for sixteen.

A few nights later the woman asks about her hours.

Lou takes the sheet out of her back pocket and looks at it.

Thirty-two this week, she says. Forty next week.

She folds it back up.

Get a thousand hours in the year and you qualify for the profit sharing, she says. You still have to be here at the end of the year.

The woman says okay and goes back to her aisle.

One night she’s showing the kid how the order system works. He asks her why she doesn’t switch to days. Assistant manager, an office with a door and a chair.

That job takes a degree, she says. She scans the barcode in front of an empty shelf to place an order.

I’m fifty.

Act II. The Crew

Charlie arrives just after Lou most nights. He clocks in and heads straight to the dock to check out what the truck has brought him that night. He jokes with the college kids who are going home.

The kid only has to go to his trailer once. Nobody brings it up.

He works the west side of the store, toys and tools and home goods. He’s fast. Somewhere in the middle of the night he’ll say something the kid thinks about on the drive to Midway. One night, breaking down boxes: why would you worry about something that hasn’t happened yet? Then he tilts the bale of flattened cardboard on a pallet and gets the jack.

Nights suit me, he says.

John falls asleep whenever he sits down. Lou gives him jobs that keep him on his feet and moving. Clean and polish the floors, move pallets. When break time is up, they wake him up and tell him it’s time to go.

That’s just John.

Then one night in July, he’s different. Awake. Smiling when he comes through the door, talking during break. He tells everybody he got a machine that helps him breathe when he sleeps. Says he slept eight hours and can’t remember the last time he felt this good.

He looks ten years younger. He eats his whole lunch without falling asleep.

Along with Lou, they’re the regulars.

The day shift is the lifers, evening for the college kids, nights for those caught in between. The crew turns over all summer. A guy who wanted a job with air conditioning. A lady who needed a paycheck, then she was headed to Springfield. They’re friendly and they work hard. Then Lou crosses their name off the schedule.

The woman who started that first Tuesday lasts six weeks. One night she just stops coming in.

She didn’t quit because she hated anybody. Nights are hard on your body. You work while you’re supposed to be sleeping and you sleep while you’re supposed to be working, and most people’s bodies can’t take it.

Every so often a new person will ask: how long does it take your body to adjust? Opinions all around. Two weeks. A month. Six.

The answer for some of them? Never.

At three in the morning the store hums with noise from the fluorescent ballasts, John running the floor polisher, scrub pads turning circles on the tile, Charlie making the cardboard baler groan in the backroom. The whole town is dark, moths shooting across the parking lot lights, and they’re moving boxes in this lit-up one-hundred-thousand-square-foot metal box. Freight moving from a trailer to a shelf so a woman can buy diapers for her baby at seven a.m.

One night a new guy asks about the sign by the time clock. Employee ownership. What’s the dollar sign written in marker?

Lou explains. You sign up to buy company stock, they take money out of your check. For every dollar of stock you buy the company puts an extra fifteen cents into your account.

Charlie says he thought about it, but he can’t eat stock.

John says he signed up once and a doctor’s bill changed his mind.

Nobody asks the kid.

Lou puts her cigarette out and they go back to work. The stock price on the sign goes up just a little every week, all summer.

By August, Lou, John, and Charlie are the only people who have been there longer than the kid.

Act III. The Bobcat

The sun is low on the horizon. Morning near Midway.

He steps on the back of the bucket and into the cab. Safety restraint down, key on, and the diesel engine putters to life. Bucket up, tilt down to check the pins, everything checks out.

Most of the day is in this Bobcat. Mixing feed in the auger, evening out the corn silage row, unloading alfalfa bales off semis, cleaning the freestall barn.

Almost everyone who works on the dairy is a college kid, except for the manager and the guy who can fix everything.

Throughout the day, the college kids talk.

Did you hear Sean got a sweet job up in Minnesota?

Then the milk parlor, clean the udders, mastitis check, milk machine, clean again. The Holsteins give more milk, the Jerseys more milk fat. The Food Science majors who work in the ice cream parlor on campus will use it to make Tiger Stripe, golden French vanilla with a dark Dutch chocolate ribbon. Gold and black.

What do you think of the fall study abroad program in the Netherlands?

In the afternoon somebody asks what he’s doing next year. After you graduate?

I’m going to be a senior, but I’m not sure yet. I might go back to working with beef cattle. Or I might apply to vet school.

Somebody says that’s cool. The talk moves back to Sean’s job.

They hose and scrub the milk parlor down when they’re done milking. He drives east toward town, sleeps from five thirty to ten.

At eleven, Lou is at the door, counting heads.

Act IV. August

Two weeks left in the summer. Classes start soon, and the store trades the college kids of summer for the kids of fall.

David asks to see him one morning after the shift. White button-down collared shirt, dark pants, black shoes. Assistant manager. They meet near the high valuables cage.

“How have you been doing?” he starts.

Good.

No, really. Beth told me about the dairy. Nights here, days there. We think it’s too much.

The kid says he’s been getting along.

A flash of concern on David’s face. Classes start in a couple weeks, right? Take those weeks off. Your job will be here when you get back. You’ll go back to evenings.

The kid jokes the first thing he’s going to do is sleep for days. Then he asks who fills in on Lou’s crew.

Don’t worry about Lou. We’ll make sure she’s good. She knows what’s going on.

There is no last night. The shift before the meeting was it. Nobody knew except for Lou.

He sees her again in the evenings, at nine o’clock, passing. He walks the store, checking the facing before they turn the shift over to her and John and Charlie. She never says anything about the summer.

That year, evening shift helps nights unload the first truck before they leave.

Postscript

Thanks for joining me for The Night Shift. I’m Joel Douglas, and I believe in America.

Every bit of this story is true. That summer I was nineteen. The store was the Walmart in Columbia, Missouri, on Nifong Boulevard. The building is a Hy-Vee Grocer now. The dairy is the University of Missouri’s ‘Foremost Dairy.’ The only place you can buy Tiger Stripe ice cream is Buck’s in Eckles Hall. They have very limited hours.

The night crew is real. I changed most of the names. The mayonnaise exchange is near word for word.

When summer ended I worked there another year. When I graduated, the district manager offered me a spot in the assistant manager training program. Assistant manager, then store manager, then maybe district. The job that takes a degree. I was twenty and I had one, and I had to turn him down. I already had an Officer Training School slot in the Air Force.

The rules said they couldn’t make the same offer to Lou.

On my way out the store manager told me if I stayed on the books a couple more weeks, I’d vest in something called profit sharing. I couldn’t stay. I believe she kept me on the books anyway. That June a check came for five hundred and seventy-five dollars, and I didn’t know what it was.

Employee ownership was different. You could choose to buy stock out of your paycheck and the store kept the stock price on the sign next to the time clock. For every dollar of stock you bought, Walmart added fifteen cents to the same account. A fifteen percent match. Unheard of for 401Ks today. No degree or credit check or anything. You just had to choose to do it, and that probably meant you needed money left over at the end of the week.

About one in four Walmart associates buys stock. Charlie told you why. You can’t eat stock.

Now the philosophy.

Dennis Kelleher said on a podcast that the bottom 50 percent of Americans, about 165 million people, hold 2.5 percent of the wealth of the country. It’s the Federal Reserve’s own quarterly data.

Let’s think about the statistic first. The bottom half’s wealth has gone up, not down, for the last thirty years. Many of those are the youngest Americans who haven’t had time to own much.

If we judge across history, Americans are extraordinarily prosperous.

Owning wealth is different. Many Americans pay rent for shelter. Their health insurance is tied to a job. Their Social Security keeps them alive, but they can’t sell it or leave it to their kids.

Security is important, but it isn’t the freedom of choice that comes with ownership. A paid-off truck means you can take another job. Home equity means you can move. Savings mean you can tell a boss no. A retirement account means more of your future is yours.

Just like Lou explaining the store. Boxes come in, night shift puts the goods on the shelves. Nothing in the back room, no inventory. Another truck tomorrow.

We designed economic security the same way. Benefits arrive just in time, are consumed, nothing remains.

Then we act surprised the ownership column reads 2.5 percent.

So. Instead of using it as ammunition for political theater, should we try to change it?

Justice. One of our six national goals. Setting conditions so a kid born in a trailer can love their work and eat and drink with the people they love.

Food on the table. Heat in the house. In turn, a house to put the table in.

Is that enough? Should we make Americans buy stock? When bills are tight and a man picks up a second job, would we order him to buy equities with money he needs to pay a doctor’s note?

That would violate another national goal: liberty.

Lou never chose to be an owner. Sam Walton enrolled her automatically into profit sharing. The rule did it for her.

Let’s recognize it’s not just the choice. It’s tough to pass judgment on someone who can’t afford to buy mayonnaise.

But if we are serious, there are three principles that would move more Americans into the ownership half. None of them orders anyone to do anything. They are either automatic or a choice.

One. Make ownership easier.

Two. Make saving the default. Automatic.

Three. Stop government rules that punish people for saving money.

Three examples to go with them. An offer for first-time homebuyers: a three percent interest rate on a HUD loan, three and a half percent down, one time, owner-occupiers only, investors excluded. Combine this with building and zoning incentives.

Auto-enrollment retirement accounts that you have to opt out of. Congress has proposed these accounts many times through bipartisan efforts.

Raise the SSI asset limit and index it, so people can actually save money to buy something.

To move more Americans into the ownership half, we have to break the chain of just-in-time benefits.

I don’t know what happened to Lou. She’d be about seventy-seven now. I hope more than twenty years of profit sharing went home with her.

I hope she’s sitting down to supper with people she loves. Mayonnaise spread thick.

Eat your bread with joy.Drink your wine with a merry heart.Enjoy the hard work of staying alive,The Almighty takes pleasure in your pleasure.

Sources

Bottom 50 percent hold 2.5 percent of U.S. wealth: Federal Reserve, Distributional Financial Accounts; FRED series WFRBSB50215, Share of Total Net Worth Held by the Bottom 50%

Dennis Kelleher, Better Markets: https://bettermarkets.org/. Podcast episode here.

Wealth by age of family head: Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances

Associate Stock Purchase Plan. 15% match on the first $1,800, more than 400,000 participants, plan offered “for almost 30 years,” Sam Walton on share accessibility: Walmart, “Walmart Announces 3-for-1 Stock Split,” Jan. 30, 2024

U.S. associate workforce (approx. 1.6 million): Walmart, About

Walmart Profit Sharing and 401(k) Plan annual reports: SEC EDGAR, Walmart Inc. Form 11-K filings

SSI resource limits. $2,000 individual / $3,000 couple, unchanged since 1989: Social Security Administration, “Understanding SSI — Resources”

SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act: S. 1234, 119th Congress; H.R. 2540, 119th Congress

Auto-enrollment retirement accounts: S. 1526, Retirement Savings for Americans Act of 2025, 119th Congress

FHA loans, 3.5 percent down: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Let FHA Loans Help You”

Buck’s Ice Cream, Eckles Hall, Tiger Stripe (French vanilla with Dutch chocolate ribbon): University of Missouri CAFNR, Buck’s Ice Cream

Foremost Dairy Research Center: Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station, Foremost Dairy

Ecclesiastes 9, New King James, paraphrased.

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The dogwoods are blooming along the edge of the great lawn, dark pink and brilliant white. Below the hill, Brush Creek runs slow and clear past the parkway that shares its name. Beyond, Spanish mission buildings catch the morning sun.

Saturday in April.

The collie comes loping back up the slope. She drops the ball at his feet and barks and backs up, ready.

“What’s her name?”

The girl from the diner stands at the edge of the grass in a light sweater, holding two coffees. She hands him one.

“Penny.”

“You said you bring her out here on weekends.” She sits down on the grass. “So I figured Saturday.”

He throws the ball. Penny goes.

She has brought a stack of index cards, rubber-banded, thick as a fist. Names of bones on one side, in her small neat writing.

“You mentioned school.” he says. “What classes are you taking?”

“Medical school. UMKC.”

He looks at her. “Medical school?”

“It’s a six-year program. High school straight in. No college in between.” She turns a coffee cup in her hands, keeping them warm. “They gave me a patient the first month. Mostly I just took his blood pressure and listened to him talk about Korea.”

“So what’s the diner?”

“Tuition.”

“What about you?”

“Business school. Rockhurst.” He throws the ball again. “Nights and weekends at my uncle’s shop. Tool and die.”

“What’s a die?”

“A tool that makes the same part every time, until they eventually wear out.”

She does not look at the cards once.

They stay until the coffee is gone and then longer. Her hair is up and she smells somehow better than the dogwoods. When she leaves she touches his arm.

He has a four o’clock shift at his uncle’s shop.

Act I. The Match

North Kansas City. A machine shop a block off the tracks. Hydraulic presses shook the concrete. Screw machines never seemed to stop. Over the tool bay radio, “Show Me the Way” played for what felt like the hundredth time while his uncle studied another purchase agreement. The new Cincinnati machining center had arrived in July. Five years of payments sat beside it.

The shop makes tooling for the overhaul base at the airport. Engine stands, fixtures, jigs. TWA is the main customer, and they order more every year. The uncle takes the orders.

His brother has a desk by the window. Eight years older, married, Missouri Air Guard airlift mechanic. His unit gets called up in December to what his brother calls “the sandbox.” His uniforms still in the office closet because no one believed he’d be gone long.

By now he’s twenty. Still in business school across town, nights and weekends in the shop. With his brother deployed, the nights get longer. The uncle might be the boss on paper, but his brother ran the place.

In February, his mother calls the office phone. He yells into the phone, a finger in his other ear. A truck rolled on a road north of the border. His brother is alive. His back is broken in two places.

The shop fires up again Monday morning.

He signs payroll checks for the first time in March. He copies the way his brother wrote them in the green ledger. Six cents and change of every guy’s check comes out of every dollar for Social Security. The shop puts in the same amount.

A match.

It seems plain enough. The men put in their share, the shop puts in. Someday the government pays it back.

Both halves go to the bank in one deposit and then to the government every quarter.

He looks for something that says what the money buys. There isn’t one. Just a booklet of tax tables instead.

He changes his schedule to night classes. Tuesdays and Thursdays at six. In April a shipment comes back out of tolerance, a die is worn and no one measured it. The rework takes the nights for three weeks. He makes it to one final. Sleeps through the other. In the fall he signs up for two classes and drops one.

She calls the shop on Sundays now. He’s there catching up on paperwork when the machines are down. She is on rotations now. They meet at the lawn on Saturdays when she is off and he can get away. Penny is glad to see her.

His brother comes home in June with a cane. The cane is not going away. Some mornings he is at the shop, others he doesn’t make it. The uncle drinks his coffee on the floor and tells him. Your brother needs time. When he is right you go back to days.

A year later the shop takes on two more men for the TWA work. He is twenty-one. He runs payroll again, eighteen checks and the deposit. In early July he sends the government the largest check he has ever signed. Half came out of the men’s pay. Half from the shop.

Act II. The Stub

Match Day comes on a Thursday in March. Six years of school for one envelope, opened in a hotel ballroom with everyone else.

The envelope isn’t an invitation. It’s orders. Hers says Houston.

He drives her to the airport in June. Penny rides in the back with her head out the window. At the curb she holds the dog’s face in both hands for a while, and then his, and then she goes. The Tercel gets sold to a cousin. Everything else fits in two bags.

The years in Houston are call nights and loan payments. A hundred hours some weeks. She sleeps in the hospital more than the apartment.

The first paycheck comes at the end of July. She reads the stub in the parking garage, line by line.

Federal. State. FICA. She asks the chief resident what FICA is.

“Social Security,” he says. “Everybody pays it.” She does not read another stub.

Her mother mails the Kansas City paper now and then. The airline is in it twice, and then again, and she calls the shop on a Sunday.

“It is quieter here than it used to be,” he says.

He does not say more and she does not ask.

They trade cards at Christmas.

In her fourth year, a boy comes in at two in the morning with a burst appendix. Before she takes him back, his mother asks what it will cost. Not whether he will live. What it will cost.

She says she doesn’t know, and it’s the stone cold truth. The boy does fine. She never sees a copy of the bill and has no idea how much it costs.

She stays two more years after residency to learn children’s surgery. She is thirty-one, and for the first time in her life there’s nothing she wants more.

That fall, an envelope comes from the Social Security Administration. She’s curious.

Inside is every year she has ever worked and what she earned. She didn’t know someone knew all the history. The diner is there at the top of the list even though she earned nearly nothing. Eleven hundred dollars.

Below it is a number for what she will receive at sixty-seven.

At the bottom, a paragraph says Congress can change the law at any time, and that by the time she retires, the taxes coming in will cover about three-quarters of what the program has promised to pay.

She reads it. She reads it again. Puts it in the envelope where she keeps seven years of paper copies of her taxes.

Children’s Mercy calls that spring to offer her a children’s surgeon position.

She comes home.

The dogwoods are blooming when she signs.

Act III. The Letters

The uncle signs the shop over to him in ninety-eight. He keeps a key and his coffee mug and comes in on Tuesdays to stand on the floor. His brother signs as the witness.

A competitor buys the airline in the spring. They have overhaul shops and suppliers of their own in other states. Orders come in slower all summer and stop in October.

Twenty years of tooling sit on the racks in the back. Engine stands, fixtures, jigs. All of it built to print, property of the airline. Good tool steel, and none of it his.

He calls three numbers before someone on the other end of the line knows anything. “Scrap it or store it,” the man says. “Nobody is coming for it.”

The accountant doesn’t sugarcoat it. He can keep what he has in savings, or he can pay the guys their last payrolls.

He tells the men after the final shift, when the checks are ready. Fifteen men shake his hand. One doesn’t.

“Should’ve told us months ago, so we could have found another shop.”

The men get paid.

He takes the deposit to the bank; the men’s share and the shop’s match both. Then, an auction one day in March. The Cincinnati sells to a shop in Wichita.

He keeps the green ledger. Her Christmas cards are tucked inside the back cover.

The years go by at Children’s Mercy. Operation by operation. She gets good, and then she gets known. Residents ask to train under her.

She tells them never to call an operation routine where a family can hear it.

When the hospital raises money for the new tower, she gives enough that they ask about putting her name on something. She says no.

The fund she starts pays the bills insurance will not for the families who have to ask what it costs.

The auction is in the paper that spring, two lines. She reads them. At Christmas she signs the card the same as every year.

The uncle dies in November. A widower. No children.

He handles the arrangements and calls the number on the government website. The check that came that month has to go back, the woman on the phone tells him.

There is a death payment of two hundred fifty-five dollars, for a spouse or a child. He has neither.

“Then there is no payment,” she says. She is polite.

He thanks her before he hangs up.

At the funeral his brother reads the eulogy leaning on the cane. The page begins to shake. He steps beside him and holds the bottom corner.

The paper statements stop coming. A card in the mail says they are online now.

She creates an account and types a password twice.

There it is. A record of every year. Even the diner. Eleven hundred dollars.

The paragraph at the bottom is still there. The year beside it is closer.

She reads it once. She prints it and files it with the taxes. In the back of the drawer are cards children made for her after their surgery.

He gets a job fixing machines at other shops. First, at twelve dollars an hour, then eighteen, then twenty-six.

He gets a small house north of the river with a fenced yard. Penny lives long enough to see the yard. He buries her under the maple the next winter. He waits a year before bringing home another collie, and when her time came, one more. The yard is big enough for them to chase the ball.

He gets laid off and files for Social Security. He is sixty-two. Deposits come once a month.

At sixty-five a letter comes about Medicare.

Because of what she earns, her premium for the same coverage will run several times what most people pay.

Same card. Same doctors. She reads it. She reads it again.

The same week she sends her annual check to the fund at Children’s Mercy.

The year he is sixty-five, a letter comes from the Social Security Administration.

The trust fund is empty.

Starting in January, the checks will be smaller. About twenty percent smaller.

The law allows Congress to act at any time, the letter says. Congress has not.

He sells the house with the yard in the spring.

Moves into an apartment. Third floor. Rent set by his income.

There is no yard.

The park is a ten-minute drive. Some weeks they go twice. Some weeks they don’t.

The collie is old now. She brings him the ball anyway. She chews it and drops it at his feet and backs away, ready.

He rubs pain away on the side of his knee.

Then he throws it.

Postscript

Thanks for choosing to spend time with me.

Dogwoods and two grand lies. Bookends.

At the start, they fall in love on the grounds of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. April, when the dogwoods bloom brilliant white and dark pink. The Missouri state tree.

What look like dogwood petals are really modified leaves. The flowers are the small cluster at the center. The wood is hard. Close-grained. Used for tools and machine parts. Beautiful from a distance. Hard enough for tool work.

Now the other bookend. The two lies.

The first grand lie: We can change the terms for successful people without betraying them because we believe they can afford it. Tax the rich.

We tell ourselves this group doesn’t need Social Security. They must already have enough money.

But we also say Social Security isn’t an investment. It’s societal insurance. We buy it so the elderly can live above the poverty line and those injured, disabled, or otherwise unable to work can survive.

It works. Social Security keeps millions of Americans above the poverty line.

A short, rich man in Jericho once stood up at dinner and gave half of everything he had to the poor. Nobody voted. What he gave freely was evidence of his character.

What we are arguing about is different. Not what she gives, which is her business and enormous, but what we can force her to give.

Generosity is one question. Honest scales, weights, and measures are another.

So let’s ask: Social Security is social insurance tied to wages and not a general income tax. Should there be some relationship between what is insured, what is taxed, and what is paid out?

Our debate today is really about that principle.

Some argue that Social Security should transfer from the wealthy to the poor. They ask very high earners to finance more of the system, even if they receive little or no additional benefit.

Others argue that doing so changes the point of the program. They posit what is supposed to be social insurance should be income-transfer.

Maybe ability to pay is reason enough. But then we should say plainly what we are doing. Choosing one promise over another. Not keeping both.

The second grand lie: We can reduce benefits for unsuccessful or unlucky people without betraying them because that is what the math says.

Truth. Congress can change benefits at any time. Roosevelt insisted on payroll contributions because they gave workers a moral and political claim to their benefits and made the program nearly impossible to scrap.

And he addressed reality. Before Social Security, the poorhouse was real. It even had an address. Today Social Security lifts millions of Americans above the poverty line. In a small apartment, that means heat, groceries, and rent.

We will probably have to break faith with at least one of these groups. Someone will pay more than the agreed terms or receive less than the terms we promised.

Let’s thank them with a gracious heart and not pretend they owed it or deserved it all along.

And before we levy judgment on either group, let’s remember that none of us are good. We are not to judge between goats and rams.

So. Let’s pull out our Social Security Statements and ask what they actually promise, who made that promise, and whether anyone ever had the authority to make it.

And let’s stop believing there is someone else who can be made to pay the bill.

Sources

History and law

Luther Gulick, “Memorandum on Conference with FDR Concerning Social Security Taxation, Summer 1941.” Social Security Administration, Historian’s Office, Research Note No. 23. Gulick’s memorandum records Roosevelt’s argument that payroll contributions would give workers a legal, moral, and political claim to benefits and make the program politically difficult to repeal.

Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960). The Supreme Court held that paying Social Security taxes does not create an accrued contractual right to a fixed or unalterable benefit. Congress retained authority to revise eligibility and benefit provisions.

Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937). The Supreme Court upheld the old-age provisions of the Social Security Act under Congress’s taxing-and-spending power and its authority to provide for the general welfare.

Social Security Administration, “Historical Background and Development of Social Security.” A history of poor relief, almshouses, poorhouses, poor farms, old-age dependency, and the conditions preceding the 1935 Social Security Act.

Larry DeWitt, “The Development of Social Security in America.”Social Security Bulletin70, no. 3 (2010). A history of the program and the tension between individual equity (what contributors believe they earned) and social adequacy (what society believes beneficiaries need.)

Program rules and documents

Social Security Administration,The 2026 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees.The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance fund is projected to pay full scheduled benefits until the fourth quarter of 2032. After depletion, continuing income would cover approximately 78 percent of scheduled benefits.

Social Security Administration,A Summary of the 2026 Annual Reports. A shorter presentation of the retirement, disability, and combined-fund projections.

Social Security Administration, “The History and Development of the Lump-Sum Death Benefit.” Congress established the $255 maximum lump-sum death payment in the 1954 amendments.

Social Security Administration, “Lump-Sum Death Payment.” The current eligibility rules for the $255 payment to a qualifying surviving spouse or eligible child.

20 C.F.R. § 404.390, “Amount of the Lump-Sum Death Payment.” The federal regulation governing the amount of the payment.

Social Security Act § 202(i). The statutory basis for the lump-sum death payment.

Social Security Administration, “What to Do When Someone Dies.” SSA pays retirement benefits one month behind and pays no benefit for the month of death. A payment made for that month or a later month must be returned.

Barbara A. Smith and Kenneth A. Couch, “The Social Security Statement: Background, Implementation, and Recent Developments.”Social Security Bulletin74, no. 2 (2014). Documents nationwide paper mailings, their suspension in 2011, the online Statement introduced in 2012, and changes in Statement language and distribution.

Social Security Administration, “Your Social Security Statement.” The current source for accessing, reviewing, and printing a personal Statement.

Social Security Administration, “Social Security and Medicare Tax Rates.” Beginning in 1990, employees and employers each paid 6.2 percent for Social Security and 1.45 percent for Medicare.

Internal Revenue Service,Publication 15: Employer’s Tax Guide. The employer guide to withholding, depositing, reporting, and paying payroll taxes.

Social Security Administration, “Medicare Premiums: Rules for Higher-Income Beneficiaries.” Higher-income Medicare beneficiaries pay income-related adjustments for Part B and Part D.

Poverty and the program’s effect

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Social Security Lifts More People Above the Poverty Line Than Any Other Program.” The analysis estimates that Social Security lifts approximately 16.9 million people age sixty-five and older above the official poverty line.

Medicine and education

University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Medicine, “B.A./M.D. Program.” UMKC accepts students directly from high school into an accelerated program in which the B.A. and M.D. can be completed in six years.

University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Medicine, “Learning in Docent Teams.” Students begin clinical experiences early through UMKC’s docent system.

National Resident Matching Program, “Requesting a Waiver or Deferral.” A Match creates a binding commitment between the applicant and the residency program unless the NRMP grants a waiver or deferral.

National Resident Matching Program, “How the Matching Algorithm Works.” An explanation of how applicants and residency programs are paired.

Children’s Mercy Kansas City. Institutional background for the pediatric hospital and the fictional surgeon’s later career.

Rockhurst University, College of Business, Influence, and Information Analysis.Institutional background for his business studies.

Kansas City, TWA, and period setting

American Airlines, Annual Report on Form 10-K. American Airlines, through a subsidiary, purchased substantially all of TWA’s assets and assumed certain liabilities on April 9, 2001.

Kansas City International Airport, “Airport History.” Background on TWA’s historical presence and overhaul operations in Kansas City.

Dennis DeYoung, “Show Me the Way,” performed by Styx onEdge of the Century, 1990. Contemporary reporting on its Gulf War association. The song became associated with Gulf War requests and dedications during early 1991.

Dogwoods

Missouri Secretary of State, “Missouri State Tree.” The flowering dogwood became Missouri’s official state tree in 1955.

Missouri Botanical Garden,Cornus florida. The small central cluster contains the true flowers. The conspicuous white or pink structures are modified leaves called bracts.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, “Cornus florida—Flowering Dogwood.” Flowering dogwood wood is hard, strong, heavy, fine-grained, and shock-resistant. Historical uses include tool handles, mauls, pulleys, shuttles, and other working objects.

Scripture

Luke 19:1–10, King James. Zacchaeus gives half of his goods to the poor.

Matthew 22:15–22, King James. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Leviticus 19:35–36, King James. The command to use just balances, just weights, and honest measures.

Ezekiel 34, King James. The Almighty will judge.

Further reading

Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew. New York: Viking Press, 1946. Perkins’s account of Roosevelt, the New Deal, and the formation of Social Security.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Coming of the New Deal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958. The first published appearance of Roosevelt’s payroll-tax remarks based on Gulick’s account.

Larry DeWitt, “The Development of Social Security in America.” The single source for a listener who wants a deeper explanation of the program’s competing principles.

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May in Missouri. Warm, not hot like it will be in July. Humidity in the air, mist at the bottom of the hill hiding the green grass.

Bright white gravel under tires. He opens the passenger door. He is fifteen. His grandma drove him.

The Oldsmobile idles behind him until the screen door opens and a man comes out. Then she pulls away.

The man is the rancher’s son. Sixty years old, maybe more. His truck is running in the yard.

“You eat breakfast?” he says. Then, “Dad’s in the hospital. Nursing home after that, probably. He won’t be coming back to this.”

The house first. Old, white, small, on top of the hill. A garden plot on the side, a shotgun sitting by the door nearest the garden. Dogwoods and oaks, leaves out full now. One level. Two bedrooms, a kitchen, a sitting room. Clean. The beds made tight with homemade quilts. Glass jugs on the floor by the kitchen door. “Dad’s corn whiskey,” the son says. The boy can eat lunch in here if he wants. Running water. The well is outside.

A newspaper picture in a frame on the side table. Five generations. A new baby, and a great-great-grandmother still alive to hold him.

“That’s my mom,” the son says. “Holding the baby. That picture is ten years old now.”

Then the work. Build a cattle corral and an alley good enough to back a trailer in and load. Stay out of the old smokehouse. It’ll fall down any day now. One of those sheds needs knocked down before it falls down, you can use the tractor to help. The chicken coop needs cleaned out. Probably hasn’t been since Mom passed. Most of the perimeter fence needs checked. Water tanks sorted.

The truck is still running.

The son looks at his watch. Plenty to do.

“But there’s a job that needs done before all that.”

He points down past the pens, to a hog lot at the bottom of the slope. There’s a dead hog in it.

“Drag it down the hill and bury it,” he says. “Shovels are in the shed. Twenty years ago I’d have dug it myself.”

He shakes the boy’s hand. The truck backs around and goes down the drive and the sound of it fades and then it’s gone.

Quiet after that. Wind in the oaks. A rooster somewhere below.

Act I. The Hog Lot

He doesn’t start with the hog. He walks the place first, down the hill and through all of it, to get eyes on everything.

The corral isn’t started. The materials are already there, stacked and waiting. Old railroad ties. Cattle panels. Each tie has a mark on it, showing how deep to set it.

The smokehouse is tall and narrow. He’s never seen one before. A fire pit dug in the dirt floor with a simple metal ring, chains hanging overhead. He doesn’t go in.

The chicken coop is full of old bedding, gray with dust. Hornets have built above the door. He’ll have to take care of that.

One of the water tanks is dry. Wolf spiders in the bottom, big ones. He throws a rock in and they scatter, but they can’t jump out of the tank.

An old blue Ford tractor sits by the shed. Small. It doesn’t have a bucket to dig, and even if it did, he doesn’t know how to use it. He’ll have to learn. Shovels inside, and a manual post hole digger leaned in the corner.

The pigs and chickens are closest to the house. Cattle beyond. The fields run out to meet wooded hills. Forty acres. A big pond on the far end you can barely see from the house, a smaller one tucked in by the woods. The cattle are moving through the field toward water, and he watches them go.

He’s put it off as long as he could and another hour longer. He walks to the hog lot. A short metal hog house, small doors on each end.

The hog is dead in the far corner. Big. On its side. The flies rise off it when he comes near and settle again. No mark on it that he can see. No telling what killed it.

The son didn’t say how it died. He said drag it down the hill and bury it.

He takes hold of a hind leg above the hoof and pulls. It moves about a foot across the metal grate floor, the hide loose over the bone in his grip. He lets go and stands there. The air in the hog house is close now. He takes hold again.

It’s downhill. That’s the one thing going for him. He pulls and rests and pulls. The hog gathers grass and dirt ahead of itself. The flies come along. When he stops he can hear them. When he pulls he only hears his breath.

He drags the hog under the wire fence. At the bottom of the hill he picks a spot away from the ponds, where the ground looks soft.

Nobody said where. Nobody said how deep.

The first foot is topsoil and goes easy. Then the shovel rings. Rock. He works around it, pries it, lifts it out. There’s another one under it.

The afternoon goes like that. Ring, pry, lift. His hands blister. He walks up to the well, finds some gloves, has a drink and comes back down.

He stands in the hole and thinks about how deep is deep enough. Shallow, and something digs it up. Coyotes, or dogs from the next place over. Then it’s all to do again, and worse. He keeps digging.

The light goes long across the field. Whippoorwills call from the trees.

Gravel at the top of the drive. Headlights swing across the field and stop. The Oldsmobile sits up by the house, lights on, pointed down the hill at him.

She doesn’t honk. She waits.

He drags the hog to the edge and tips it in. It lands heavy. Filling the hole goes faster than digging it. He mounds the dirt over and stands there a minute in what’s left of the light.

Then he carries the shovel up the hill toward the headlights.

That night there’s supper, and dishes, and then she asks. What were you doing out there tonight? He tells her.

“Did you bury it deep enough to keep the coyotes off of it?”

“I don’t know,” he says.

They never talked about it again.

Act II. Corral and Alley

The next morning he starts on the corral.

The railroad ties outweigh him. He can’t carry one, so he tips them end over end to where they need to go.

The ground is the same ground he dug the grave in. Ring, pry, lift. Each tie has its mark. He digs until he thinks it’s deep enough, then tips each tie into the hole, lifts it out again, and digs some more until the mark disappears. He tamps the dirt back in layers, and pulls on the tie with his whole weight. It doesn’t move. He does the next one.

Whoever marked the ties isn’t there to ask.

His hands ache and cramp for ten days until they get used to the work.

He learns the tractor in the yard. The throttle is steady, and his foot coming off the clutch is not. It lurches and rocks and then it doesn’t.

He cleans the old bedding out of the chicken coop, swinging the spring door open and shut, and a hornet stings him in the ear. He buys hornet spray, empties it into the nest, knocks it off the coop with a fence post, and only gets stung the once. He cleans the coop down to the boards.

The shed comes down easy. The tractor pushes and the frame lets go at once. He drags the boards clear and stacks what’s worth keeping. It’s good work and it goes fast. The son comes out one day and asks what happened.

It was the wrong shed.

He spends weeks walking the perimeter fence and fixes what needs fixed. At noon he takes his boots off and eats in the kitchen, standing up. The house stays clean.

In late June he turns sixteen. He passes the test in town, and after that he drives himself out in the mornings. There’s a last morning she drives him. Neither of them marks it.

After that the mornings are his. He drives the Oldsmobile out himself, plays Metallica too loud the whole way. His grandma hates Metallica. Some evenings he drives to the next town to see a girl he met.

Alone, afternoons drift. He is sixteen. He daydreams. Some days he gets less done than he should, and nobody says anything about that either.

The cattle get checked every day. By the end of July the corral stands, ties to the mark, panels hung, an alley wide enough to back a trailer in. He would be home for football camp in August.

In the fall they sold the animals. The cattle went up the alley the boy built, into a trailer, and down the drive. They leased the ground to a neighbor. The boy went home, back to school.

The old man never came home.

Act III. Jennies

Two summers later.

Jerry and the boy ride in Jerry’s F-250 to the local college. Jerry is a rancher who needed another ranch hand.

Jerry is more than a rancher. He teaches economics at the college full time, with summers mostly off, and he lays carpet and linoleum in his spare time. He hates the flooring work. He does it if the money’s good, or if he likes you.

This job is at the college, and the money’s good. Industrial carpet in a dorm. Take out the old carpet, scrape and clean the floors, put in the new.

They set up in the gym. Huge rolls of new carpet, and the boy carries them by himself. The boy brings in the radio.

The college cheerleaders come in for practice. The Jennies. Three of them watch him carry a roll all the way across the gym. Then Garth Brooks comes on the radio, “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” and they start dancing, and they sing along.

He’s seventeen.

The old carpet comes out first. The boy cuts it loose and rolls it and carries the rolls out. Jerry tells him how the floors go: sweep, then sweep a second time. Every time you sweep again, you find something you missed.

The boy sweeps a room and calls it clean. Jerry sweeps it behind him and holds out his hand. Two staples and a chip of tile. He doesn’t say anything.

The boy sweeps the next one twice.

The boy is fast and thorough, but Jerry works most jobs with him the first time he does one. After a few rooms they have a system. Jerry measures the cleaned rooms and marks the new carpet. The boy cuts on the marks, carries the carpet down the hall, and lays it out nearly finished. Jerry follows behind and makes the last cuts, and that room is done.

The last cut at every doorway is Jerry’s. He kneels at the metal strip, sets the knife, and makes one pass. The edge lies flat. The boy watches how he holds it, where his weight is, what his off hand does. Jerry goes the speed he goes, whether the boy is watching or not.

The rooms go by. Measure, mark, cut, carry, lay, finish. Music from the gym comes down the hall all afternoon.

At the end of the day Jerry walks every finished room. He toes a seam. He presses a corner with his boot. He stands in each doorway, looking at the floor.

“Good,” he says.

They load the truck in the dark.

Jerry put him on for as much as he could work. Summer and winter both.

Tomorrow the work is hay and fences.

Postscript

Thank you for spending this time with me today.

The entire story you just heard is true, as close as memory gets. The ranch is real. Forty acres in Missouri. The mist, the shotgun by the garden door, the corn whiskey by the kitchen door. The hog and shovel are real. The railroad ties really came with a mark showing how deep. The wrong shed really came down. The Oldsmobile is real. The dancing Jennies are real, and so is “Callin’ Baton Rouge.” Jerry is real. His name is really Jerry. Sweep, then sweep a second time. That’s what he did, job after job.

The five-generations picture is real too. I never knew who the baby was.

I did omit a key detail. I was the boy. Fifteen, then sixteen, then seventeen. The old man in the hospital was my great-grandfather. He lived to be near ninety-five. The man with the running truck was his son, my great-uncle. My grandpa had passed, so my great-uncle paid my wages to my grandma. And the woman in the Oldsmobile, who waited with her lights on while I finished in the dark, was my grandma. I lived with her that summer and took care of the ranch until the family could figure out what to do with it.

What they figured out was to sell the animals. The cattle left through the corral I built. Years later, when my great-grandfather died, the family offered to sell me the land. I was a young man. I didn’t have the money. It sold to someone else and isn’t in the family anymore.

One more thing for the ledger. The whole truth. The same summer I buried that hog, I left the ranch for two weeks. For some reason I still don’t know, the state sent me for proctored IQ and ACT tests and called me gifted, and there was a program for kids like that at the University of Missouri, where I’d go to college a few years later. Make a note of that, not because it’s important for me, but because we’ll need it in a minute for the philosophy.

Now the question.

A political philosopher named Michael Walzer wrote a famous book about justice, and in it he took a hard look at the work nobody wants. Dirty work. Degrading. And he made a claim: When people gain the power to refuse that kind of work, that’s a sign a society is succeeding. Somebody complains the welfare state made people unwilling to take certain jobs? Walzer says good. That was the point.

Let’s hear that again. His premise, regarding work, is: The power to refuse degrading work is the measure of success.

I’ll be fair to him first. Some people might refuse the work because they believe a yoke must be difficult. But mostly they refuse because it’s hard and it pays badly and nobody thanks them. That’s not weakness. It’s just the math.

And I’ll be fair to the economists too. They’ll tell you that early hard work doesn’t make the man. The kid who works young and rises was usually the kid who already had advantages, and the work gets the credit. Believe them. You just heard about my two weeks at the university. I was that kid. If this story claimed the shovel made me, it would be a lie.

So what’s true?

Nobody told me how deep to bury the hog. Nobody checked. I worked on the ranch the rest of the summer and never checked. I didn’t want to know. My grandma asked the only question anyone ever asked about it. Did you bury it deep enough to keep the coyotes off? I said I don’t know.

Thirty-some years on, I still don’t.

The railroad ties came with a mark. Some man who wasn’t there set that standard, and it held long after he couldn’t come check it. But here’s what I learned about marks. A mark can tell you how deep. It can’t show you how. Alone, a boy guesses. Sometimes he guesses right and nobody ever knows. Sometimes he knocks down the wrong shed.

Jerry showed me how. Jerry worked the first day of every new job beside me. Jerry marked, and I cut on his marks, and he made the last cut at every doorway, and at the end of the day he walked every room. And I think about who Jerry was. An economics professor with a ranch of his own. The man with the most choices in the county spent his summer days on his knees in a dorm hallway. He had every power Walzer measures. Every power to refuse. He did the work if the money was good. Or if he liked you.

There’s another philosopher, John Rawls, and he asked a different question than Walzer did. Walzer looked at the hard work and asked who should have to do it, and what we owe the ones who do. Rawls said decide the rules before you know, because time and chance happen to us all. Decide the rules before you know whether you’re born the professor’s kid or the kid whose family is selling the ranch. Then tell me what’s fair.

Rawls asked the better question. Because you don’t know. You don’t know if you’re the boy with the marks or the boy without them. And nobody can honestly answer “nobody should have to dig.” The hog doesn’t care about our philosophy. The hog is dead and somebody has to bury it and the tractor doesn’t have a bucket. Somebody has to dig. When we gain the power to refuse the work, the work doesn’t disappear. It moves to whoever can’t refuse it, and we agree not to look.

So here’s my answer, and I don’t agree with Walzer. The measure of a society isn’t how many of us escape the work. It’s who climbs down into it on purpose, and who they bring with them.

Scripture says, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden. Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Something to note about that verse. The Greek word translated easy does not mean effortless. It carries the sense of something kind, good, or useful. Early Christians described Christ’s yoke as one that does not bruise the neck of the person carrying it. The burden is still a burden. But the yoke is easy, and the burden is good.

And a key point: a yoke is built for two. For Christians, that might mean the Almighty is on one side of the yoke.

In old agriculture, you pair a green animal with a seasoned one. The seasoned one carries the weight and sets the pace, and the young one learns the pull without being crushed by it. The burden never gets lighter. It gets shared.

I stood in my first yoke alone for a summer. It worked out for me. You now know some of the reasons why, and they don’t have much to do with the shovel. For most kids standing alone, the numbers say it doesn’t work out.

So here’s the ask. Be the one who chooses the work. The dirty job, the hard job, the one you’ve earned the right to refuse. Choose it in front of your kids, and teach them to choose it too. Not because suffering is holy. Because it’s work that needs done, and doing it next to someone is how people get made. Somewhere near you is a green kid. Don’t wait for a program to save them. A program can’t hold the other end of a yoke. Mark the cut. Stay in the room.

My great-grandfather’s ranch is still out there, but it’s not in the family anymore. The corral too, as far as I know.

And the grave? I never went back to look. It never stank. I never saw a coyote.

But they mostly move at night.

Sources

Philosophy

Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. Basic Books, 1983, Chapter 6, “Hard Work.” My copy from Apple Books.

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Belknap Press, 1971; rev. ed. 1999.

Scripture and Language

“My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28–30, King James Version.

Lincoln H. Blumell, “Is Jesus’s Yoke ‘Easy’? Reconsidering the Translation ofChrēstosin Matthew 11:30.” BYU Studies 65, no. 1 (2026): 6–36.

Labor Economics and Mobility

Christopher J. Ruhm, “Is High School Employment Consumption or Investment?” Journal of Labor Economics 15, no. 4 (1997): 735–776.

V. Joseph Hotz, Lixin Xu, Marta Tienda, and Avner Ahituv, “Are There Returns to the Wages of Young Men from Working While in School?” Review of Economics and Statistics 84, no. 2 (2002): 221–236.

Charles L. Baum and Christopher J. Ruhm, “The Changing Benefits of Early Work Experience.” Southern Economic Journal 83, no. 2 (2016): 343–363. An earlier version appeared as NBER Working Paper No. 20413, 2014.

Jared Ashworth, V. Joseph Hotz, Arnaud Maurel, and Tyler Ransom, “Changes across Cohorts in Wage Returns to Schooling and Early Work Experiences.” Journal of Labor Economics 39, no. 4 (2021): 931–964.

Thomas Le Barbanchon, Diego Ubfal, and Federico Araya, “The Effects of Working While in School: Evidence from Employment Lotteries.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 15, no. 1 (2023): 383–410.

Raj Chetty et al., “Social Capital I: Measurement and Associations with Economic Mobility.” Nature 608 (2022): 108–121.

Work and Identity

Blake E. Ashforth and Glen E. Kreiner, “‘How Can You Do It?’: Dirty Work and the Challenge of Constructing a Positive Identity.” Academy of Management Review 24, no. 3 (1999): 413–434.

Robin Nagle, Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Youth Labor Law and Agricultural Safety

Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Hazardous Occupations Orders, 29 C.F.R. Part 570.

U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, “Fact Sheet #40: Overview of Youth Employment (Child Labor) Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act for Agricultural Occupations.” Revised December 2016.

U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, “Child Labor Regulations, Orders and Statements of Interpretation; Child Labor Violations—Civil Money Penalties.” Federal Register 77, no. 103 (May 29, 2012): 31549–31551. Withdrawal of the proposed 2011 revisions to federal youth agricultural labor regulations.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, “Childhood Agricultural Injury Prevention.”

National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety, Cultivate Safety.

Music

Dennis Linde, “Callin’ Baton Rouge.” Recorded by Garth Brooks on In Pieces. Liberty Records, 1993. Referenced by title; no lyrics reproduced.

Further Reading

Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. Penguin Press, 2009.

Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster, 2000.

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Her eyes open at five twenty-eight. She lifts her head and switches the alarm off before it kicks on at five thirty.

She’s up and moving. Chores to do. Coffee, dishwasher, shower, lunchbox.

Their apartment is a one-bedroom in Lakewood, Colorado, on the west edge of Denver. Third floor. She starts the coffee maker and showers while it runs. On the refrigerator door, under a magnet, a printed listing for a two-bedroom on South Ammons Street. Four hundred ten thousand. Beneath the price, handwriting in blue ink: eighty-two thousand down. Below that a column of dates and smaller numbers, one for every month they’ve lived here. The paper has yellowed at one corner.

She pours coffee into a steel travel mug, grabs her lunch, takes the stairs, and scrapes frost off the windshield with a plastic dustpan she keeps behind the seat.

She drives west on Alameda with the defrost on high. At Kipling she turns north. On her right, Lakewood Park Tennis Center. On her left, a fence.

Chain link, eight feet, three strands of barbed wire on top. It runs past the first stoplight. It runs past the second. There’s a gate with a guard shack and a yellow crossing arm, and a white sign that says United States Government Property. The fence keeps going. It takes her a full mile to run out of fence.

She doesn’t look at it. It’s been there her whole life.

At six twenty, she badges into the warehouse. The reader beeps. Inside the break room, on the long table by the time clock, somebody has laid out nine folders in three neat rows. New hires start today.

She’s been here four years. She knows what’s in the folders.

Act I. The Wage

The safety video runs eleven minutes. She can hear it through the break room wall, the same narrator, the same music, while she tapes the first boxes of the morning. Nine new people in there with their folders open.

At seven forty, the break room door opens, and the trainer walks in. His name is Dave. He’s holding his own copy of the folder, open to the tabs.

Tab one is the handbook, he says. Tab two is your direct deposit. Tab three is your benefits election. Health kicks in at ninety days, dental at one eighty. Don’t wait on the paperwork, it doesn’t backdate.

Tab four, he says, is community resources. Food assistance, Medicaid, child care assistance, help on the winter heat bill. The applications are in there, filled out down to the signature line. Plenty of folks use them the first year. Nothing to be embarrassed about.

He says it the way he said the part about the fire exits.

She takes one of the nine, a young woman named Reyna, out to the floor and trains her on the scanner. Point, squeeze, wait for the beep. The screen above the aisle shows a number; that number is the building’s rate. Green means the shift is on pace to meet their quota. She’s never seen it red for a whole shift. Somewhere around ten, the number turns green and stays that way.

At lunch she eats what she packed at five fifty. Reyna sits across from her with a vending machine sandwich and asks if the insurance is any good.

It’s insurance, she says. The deductible is four thousand. You’ll want the paycheck to clear before you pick a plan.

Reyna nods and writes something in her folder.

At the end of the table, one of the other new hires has his folder open to tab four. He’s copying numbers off a pay stub that isn’t his yet, from the sample page, doing the eligibility math with the folder’s own pencil. First shift. He hasn’t clocked a full day.

The horn ends lunch at twelve thirty. Everybody stands at once.

Act II. The Plant

The afternoon starts out like the morning. Point, squeeze, beep. The screen stays green. Nothing in the building gets made in the building. It comes in full and goes out full. They work on line three. By last break, Reyna runs two under her rate. First day.

The belt on line four goes down midshift. Nobody in the building can fix it. The tech comes Thursday, from Phoenix. Nothing to be done, that entire line goes home early.

The horn releases the shift at four thirty. In the parking lot her phone buzzes. A text from the storage place on West Colfax. Your autopay of eighty-nine dollars was successful. Thank you for being a valued customer.

She was headed there anyway. Two plastic totes in the trunk. Christmas decorations, going back until December.

Unit two fourteen. She rolls the door up and the cold air inside smells like cardboard. The totes go on the shelf her husband built from scrap the first winter. Behind them, the rest of it. Her mother’s cedar chest. A kitchen table on its side, six chairs zip-tied to the legs. A crib in pieces, wrapped in a moving blanket, that was her mother’s before it was hers.

In the back corner, under a second blanket, the lathe.

It’s a South Bend, cast iron, older than everyone she knows. It took four grown men and a rented dolly to get it in here. She pulls the blanket square where it’s slipped off the tailstock, and under her hand there’s a small brass plate, screwed to the base, stamped with three words. War Production Board. She doesn’t know how to run it. Nobody living in the family does.

She rolls the door down and clicks the padlock.

Her grandmother calls while she’s still in the lot. She puts her on speaker and pulls out into traffic.

You eat yet? Her grandmother says.

I’m driving home to eat.

You’re still paying for that unit.

I’m still paying for it.

You ought to sell that machine. You’d get something for it. Nobody’s run it in ten years.

I’m not selling the lathe, Grandma.

Her grandmother is quiet for a second. Then she says, your grandfather ran that lathe thirty-one years at Gates. Nights, at the end. They were going to throw it away, so he took it for his woodworking. Gates got the machine from the ammo plant, surplus sale.

My mother made bullets out by you, on Kipling, the whole war. Rode the bus from Tenth Avenue, three shifts going around the clock, twenty thousand people out there. Half of them were women.

I know, Grandma.

It’s all offices now, her grandmother says. Anyway. You two are coming Sunday.

We’re coming Sunday.

Bring some folding chairs if you can.

They’re in the unit, she says. I was just looking at them.

Good, her grandmother says. Then you know right where they are.

Act III. The Ledger

Friday, twelve oh five. Reyna sets the folder next to her lunch and asks if she has a minute.

The application is filled out down to the signature line, like Dave said. What’s left is the list on the back page. Proof of who you are. Proof of where you live. Proof of what you make, thirty days of it.

I don’t have thirty days, Reyna says. I have four.

There’s a line for that. Employer statement. HR prints it, you ask at the window.

Reyna writes that on the folder.

Then they schedule you an interview, she says. It’s a phone call. Keep your phone on you at break, and if you miss it, call back the same day. Don’t wait.

Did you do all this, Reyna asks.

She folds the wax paper over the half of her sandwich that’s left. My first year here, she says. Yeah. She takes her phone, puts it speaker up on the table, and calls the number. It starts with a recording: Last year we proudly served more than one hundred thousand Colorado families.

The horn goes. Everybody stands at once.

Sunday, her grandmother’s house smells like a roast that went in at seven. A brick ranch off Garrison, two bedrooms, one bath, a furnace that runs loud. Her grandmother has lived in it fifty-eight years. Her husband carries the folding chairs in from the trunk and sets them up at the long side of the table.

The game is on low in the front room. Broncos Chargers. A small group watching it.

Any luck on a house, her grandmother says, passing the potatoes.

There’s a two-bedroom on Ammons we like.

What are they asking?

Four hundred ten.

Her grandmother sets the potatoes down. Your grandfather paid seventeen thousand five hundred for this house, she says. Nineteen sixty-eight. Back then he made nine thousand a year. We lived on one paycheck, pinched every penny, but I didn’t work until your mother was in school.

Nobody says anything. In the front room a whistle blows and the crowd complains.

After the pie her grandmother stands and favors the new knee, and waves off help before anyone offers it. The knee’s fine, she says. Better than the old one. Four hundred dollars, that’s what the whole thing cost me. Medicare and the supplement took the rest. Four hundred, for a knee.

Her grandmother brings out an old photo of her mother in a heavy machinery apron. Dirty. She brought out an old picture or two every time they ate Sunday dinner. This is my mother, your great-grandmother. She rode a bus to a three-shift line and came home tired. She went to work sick or tired or hurt, didn’t matter. They weren’t supposed to, but she got married the day before your great-grandpa left on the ship, and she told me she felt like she was making ammunition for him, and she wouldn’t let him run out.

The work was hot and she was on food rations. Everybody was. Almost no meat, no butter. Then, when her husband came home, they wanted to get their own place right away, but there were no homes for sale anywhere. They lived in a shack for a year until houses started popping up.

She likes the story every time she hears it. You need anything before we go, she asks her grandmother at the door. Groceries this week, anything.

I’m fine, her grandmother says. Check comes next Wednesday, the house is paid, what do I need.

She hands them the leftovers in a grocery bag, roast and potatoes in butter tubs, and tells her husband to take the chairs back to the unit. Then she looks at her granddaughter for a second longer than usual.

When I’m gone this house is yours, she says. You know that.

Grandma.

I’m saying it so you know it.

Act IV. Payday

Friday is payday. The deposit lands at six in the morning while she’s scraping the windshield.

That night after supper she stands at the refrigerator with the blue pen. Ninety minutes of overtime on the check. She writes the date and the number at the bottom of the column, under fourteen other dates, and puts the magnet back.

Her phone buzzes on the counter. The app that watches the listing sends one line. This home is no longer available.

She stands there a minute. Her husband looks up.

Somebody bought Ammons, she says.

He comes and reads the phone over her shoulder. Neither of them says anything. Then he takes the pen off the counter and draws one line through the address at the top of the sheet. Not through the price. Not through the column. Through the address.

We’ll find another one you like, he says.

The sheet stays under the magnet.

Saturday they take the folding chairs back to the unit. She lifts the blanket square on the tailstock before they roll the door down.

Monday she’s up and moving at five thirty. Chores to do.

She drives west on Alameda with the defrost on high. At Kipling she turns north. On her right, the tennis center, courts empty in the cold. On her left, the fence starts, and at Gate One there’s a line of cars idling, brake lights back to the road, federal employees waiting to badge through onto the ground where twenty thousand people made the ammunition, going in to work at the offices. The fence runs past the first stoplight. Past the second. A full mile.

This time she looks at it.

At six twenty, she badges into the warehouse. The reader beeps. In the break room, on the long table by the time clock, somebody has laid out folders in three neat rows.

New hires start today.

Postscript

Thanks for spending this half hour with me. This story is a fable on a bedrock of truth. I made up the characters, the house on Ammons, and the lathe in the storage unit. The warehouse experience is real. So is the fence on Kipling. You can drive by it yourself. And I did not make up the national power that once stood behind it.

Behind that fence is the Denver Federal Center. Today it holds more federal agencies than any place outside Washington. During the Second World War, it was the Denver Ordnance Plant, run by Remington. At its peak, about twenty thousand people worked there, half of them women. They made ammunition around the clock. After the war the buildings became offices that now administer programs.

The new-hire folder is real too. I’ve been a new hire in a warehouse. The Government Accountability Office found that millions of Americans work full-time while relying on food assistance and Medicaid. Many work in warehouses, retail stores, and restaurants. Some employers really do direct new workers to the applications.

This is not the corporation’s fault. A corporate executive works for the shareholders. His job is to make money for them within the rules. If he spends company money on causes the law doesn’t require, like cutting pollution beyond the legal limit, meeting hiring quotas, or paying more than the labor market demands, he is spending someone else’s money on goals they did not choose.

But just because the corporate officer has no duty to pursue social goals doesn’t mean no one does.

If public money is going to be used for the public good, that work belongs to public servants. These duties matter enough that we created a specific kind of institution to carry them out. That institution is not the corporation. It is our representative government.

Our elected officials have a duty to set the rules under which corporations operate. When they fail to do that, you, the taxpayer, make up the difference in wages.

Let’s pause to highlight the contradiction. We can’t support policies that allow businesses to pay unsustainable wages and at the same time oppose social programs designed to mitigate the consequences of low incomes. A lot of families receive help from social programs. Half of American children do.

Nothing in this story says those programs fail the people who use them. Since those programs began, poverty among older Americans has fallen from roughly one in three to less than one in ten.

This is not a sermon against the people sitting at that table. Love your neighbor.

But also: the principle to rend our hearts and not our garments means we have to do what matters. So we have a question to ask: Where does this arrangement leave us?

When the taxpayer makes up for low wages, much of the money never reaches the worker. In places where only a few employers do most of the hiring, wage subsidies draw more people into the job market. That larger pool of workers makes it easier for employers to keep wages low.

One study of the Earned Income Tax Credit program found that employers keep about seventy-two cents of every public dollar spent.

Let’s hear that again. The taxpayer means to help the worker. Most of the help ends up staying with the employer and not the worker.

That is not a failure of the worker. It’s the way the system works. The help keeps the person going while subsidizing the wages that made the help necessary.

Programs started in two key time periods really set it up this way.

The first was the nineteen thirties. At the time, Franklin Roosevelt’s relief chief, Harry Hopkins, said plainly that if you give a man a dole, you save his body and destroy his spirit. FDR was for work programs and largely against handouts.

The America of FDR’s time built its help around work and contribution. Public jobs built things you can still drive across today, like the Hoover Dam that is the cover image of this piece. They designed Social Security as insurance. A worker paid into it and later collected their earned benefit. It wasn’t a handout they had to apply for.

The New Deal was not free of mistakes. The same nineteen thirty-five law also created means-tested welfare, so to be honest we need to say that Roosevelt built both doors. But the main door was work. His programs asked what Americans could build, produce, and insure through their own labor.

Thirty years later, America had spent two decades as the world’s dominant economic power. Factories across much of the rest of the world had been destroyed in the war. We had money coming out of our ears.

In that setting, Lyndon Johnson sought to expand FDR’s goals. LBJ’s Great Society asked a different question: What goods and services should government “give” to people who don’t have them?

Medicare. Medicaid. Food assistance. Housing support.

Eligibility replaced contribution. The government bought services to give to someone instead of putting those people to work building something.

Johnson wasn’t wrong about the suffering. Some of what he built is now indispensable.

But our focus changed. We stopped asking what individual Americans could produce and began asking what we could give to them.

Our spending became open-ended. The government promised to buy whatever help cost, and help never got cheaper. Last year, the federal government spent nearly a trillion dollars on interest alone. The arrangement is expensive because it maintains and maintains and maintains.

There’s a constitutional problem here worth a minute of our time, including where the argument breaks down.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to spend for the general welfare. In nineteen thirty-six, in United States versus Butler, the Supreme Court said that the general welfare power was broad but not unlimited. Public spending had to serve the common good, not private interests. Taxpayer money could not simply support big business.

Then the Court contradicted itself. One year later, it upheld Social Security and more or less said that Congress gets to decide what counts as the general welfare. So no court is going to rule that a public benefit propping up the wage structure of profitable companies violates the general-welfare clause.

The Constitution gives us the principle. It leaves enforcement to us, the voters.

If seventy-two cents of every dollar intended to help a worker ends up on a corporate ledger, the answer isn’t a lawsuit. It’s citizens telling Congress that public money should build the public, not the corporation.

Behind all of this is one central idea. It’s not fairness.

Every great nation eventually faces a crisis it cannot buy its way out of. When that day comes, we will rely on the ability of ordinary people to preserve the whole.

So the test we should apply to the individual is: Does our arrangement build her ability, or does it only keep her struggling well enough to return tomorrow?

That question is bigger than one woman. It’s our factories, the skill of our workers, and the ability of our people to solve hard problems.

We can’t buy our way out of a crisis. We need the skills, factories, supply chains, and public will to make what the crisis requires.

The last time that day came, twenty thousand ordinary people went to work at an ammunition plant behind a fence in Denver and made what the country needed. And we’ll need to do that again someday.

So here’s what I’m asking you to do with all of this.

Ask one question. What got better?

The next government program that comes through your town, whatever it is, will report its numbers. People enrolled. Dollars delivered. Families served.

Don’t sneer at the numbers. They’re somebody’s grandmother, or somebody’s difficult first year.

But stop accepting those numbers as the answer. When we think they’re the answer, half of American kids end up needing social program support instead of us insisting on workers making enough that their kids don’t need the programs anymore.

Enrollment tells you what the program did. It doesn’t tell you whether anyone came out the other side stronger.

So. Again. Ask: What got better?

Did the help build the person? Did her skills grow? Did her wages cover her life? Did her savings get closer to what she needs to make the down payment on the house?

Did she make, master, own, or pay off anything that would last?

Or did our “help,” while trying to be perfectly kind, simply make her struggle bearable without helping her escape it?

A great society isn’t a stack of programs.

It’s a country where a woman who beats her alarm clock every morning of her life can build herself into someone the country may one day need.

Where, on the other side of the crisis, she can enjoy her bread, her wine, and her family.

We can build that. Or we can all just return tomorrow.

Sources

The fence and the ground behind it: the Denver Federal Center, formerly the Denver Ordnance Plant

Colorado Encyclopedia, “Denver Ordnance Plant”: Remington-operated; peak near 20,000 workers on three shifts in summer 1943; women about half the workforce; site is now the Federal Center.

“Ordnance Plant Has Fine Record,” April 3, 1943 contemporary news account, Plains Humanities Alliance, University of Nebraska. 15,000+ workers, 47 percent women at that date.

History Colorado, “Doing Our Part”: $122M Remington contract, January 1941, on the former Hayden Ranch.

“Denver Federal Center,” Wikipedia: largest concentration of federal agencies outside Washington, D.C.; West 6th & Kipling, Lakewood; former Denver Ordnance Plant. (For publication, confirm against the GSA Denver Federal Center page.)

Full-time workers relying on public assistance

GAO, Federal Social Safety Net Programs: Millions of Full-Time Workers Rely on Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs, GAO-21-45, October 2020, gao.gov. ~12 million working-age Medicaid enrollees and ~9 million SNAP recipients; two-thirds full-time; concentrated in restaurants, department stores, and grocery stores.

Employers capture the wage subsidy

Jesse Rothstein, The Unintended Consequences of Encouraging Work: Tax Incidence and the EITC, Princeton CEPS Working Paper 165, 2008, PDF. Low-skill single mothers keep $0.70 per dollar; employers capture $0.72; net transfer to workers under $0.28.

Supporting: Ioana Marinescu & Eric A. Posner, “Why Has Antitrust Law Failed Workers?,” 105 Cornell Law Review 1343 (2020), Cornell Scholarship. Documents labor monopsony and the antitrust litigation gap.

The alternative: FDR and Hopkins on work versus the dole

Harry Hopkins, “Give a man a dole and you save his body and destroy his spirit,” quoted in Democracy in Transition (D. Appleton-Century, 1937), p. 264; corroborated by PBS American Experience and the VCU Social Welfare History Project.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944 State of the Union / Economic Bill of Rights, “the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation,” FDR Presidential Library archive.

What the programs did accomplish (the Medicare / elderly-poverty improvements)

Elderly poverty fell from 35.2% (1959) to under 10% (1990s): SSA, “Reducing Poverty Among Elderly Women”, citing U.S. Census; NBER, “Social Security and Elderly Poverty”.

The fiscal cost of maintaining our system

Net interest ~$970 billion in FY2025, surpassing $1 trillion on the public-debt line for the first time: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget; Peterson Foundation.

Long-run trajectory (debt to 120% of GDP by 2036): CBO, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036, February 2026, CBO Pub. 62105.

The constitutional principle and its contradiction

United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936), Ballotpedia summary. Broad Spending Clause power for the general welfare, but the AAA struck down on Tenth Amendment grounds.

Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), Justia; Constitution Annotated. Upheld Social Security; Congress decides what serves the general welfare unless the choice is “clearly wrong.”

The oldest instruction (KJV)

Genesis 3:19; Ecclesiastes 9:7 and 9:10; Ecclesiastes 5:18–19. King James Bible Online.

Work and national power, the industrial-base warning

GAO, Defense Industrial Base: Actions Needed to Address Risks Posed by Dependence on Foreign Suppliers, GAO-25-107283, July 24, 2025, gao.gov. Over 200,000 suppliers; little visibility into lower-tier and foreign dependencies for parts, materials, and microelectronics.

A companion piece

Joel Douglas, “A New Economics: Reward Work, Build Opportunity.” January 2025. Lincoln’s free-labor doctrine and Theodore Roosevelt’s square deal; the constitutional-mandate argument this postscript inherits. joelkdouglas.substack.com

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