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empathy
In a Trumpian World, Be Like Dolly
The best way to honor Dolly Parton’s legacy is to counter Trump’s cruel inhumanity with generosity, kindness, compassion, respect, and unity.
Sep 04, 2026
I’ve been a fan of Dolly Parton since her terrific 1980 movie (and hit song) 9-5, on the struggle of working women organizing for dignity and respect—and against sexual harassment. Along with millions of others, I’m saddened by the Queen of Country’s passing.
But I’m miffed about people who opposed what Dolly stood for now trying to claim her legacy as their own.
For instance, President Donald Trump has claimed that Parton was a supporter of his, even sharing a fake AI photo of the two of them together. Dolly’s sister Stella set the record straight, calling Trump’s behavior “deranged, ugly, and nasty.”
In life Dolly Parton was the opposite of Donald Trump. She was compassionate, humble, generous, humorous (including poking fun at herself), and accepting of people from all walks of life.
She never forgot where she came from and acted on her religious beliefs of “Love your Neighbor” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Dolly Parton turned down the presidential medal of freedom three times, saying she didn’t deserve it. Trump brags of his own self-importance, flies giant self-portraits from federal buildings, places his picture in passports, demands the Nobel peace prize, renamed the Kennedy Center after himself, and declares he is a genius.
As a tribute to her hardworking sharecropping father who never had the opportunity to learn to read, Dolly Parton created and funded the Imagination Library, providing hundreds of millions of books to young children—my grandchildren included. President Trump, who never lacked financial opportunity, is now pushing to slash funding for education, libraries, and literacy.
Dolly Parton embraced Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI.) She was supportive of the LGBTQ community, expressed support for Black Lives Matter, and uplifted those with disabilities. Trump has attacked DEI as “woke” and un-American, ridiculed the trans community, mocked people with disabilities, and labeled Black Lives Matter protesters as domestic terrorists.
Dolly Parton appeared with PBS’s Sesame Street characters to promote values of inclusivity and equality among children. Trump defunded PBS and Sesame Street, declaring them “radical left monsters.”
Dolly Parton celebrated women workers and was a proud union member for over 60 years. Trump crushed the union rights of over 1 million federal workers, paid millions in a lawsuit for sexual abuse, and carries on with the massive cover-up of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking.
Dolly Parton donated millions to medical research, including to children’s hospitals, cancer research, and the Covud-19 vaccine. Trump threatens the existence of rural hospitals with cuts to Medicaid, slashed federal funding for medical research, and eliminated the agency overseeing patient safety.
Dolly Parton donated substantial relief funds to those in her Tennessee Appalachian region whose property and lives were shattered by natural disasters. The Trump administration has undermined, delayed, and politicized disaster relief.
Dolly Parton had empathy toward the homeless and was known to give the “shawl off her back” to those in need. Donald Trump criminalizes the homeless and sent thousands of National Guard troops to rid DC of its homeless population.
Dolly Parton empathized with the plight of migrant workers. She loved John Steinbeck’s famous book The Grapes of Wrath and covered Woody Guthrie’s song “Deportee.” Trump demonizes hardworking immigrants as rapists and criminals and has unleashed an army of violent masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to terrorize our neighbors and communities.
I don’t have to agree with everything Dolly Parton did or didn’t do over the decades to recognize that she was a generous soul. She never forgot where she came from and acted on her religious beliefs of “Love your Neighbor” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Donald Trump hoards his riches and uses the power of the presidency to enrich himself, his family, and oligarch cronies to the tune of billions.
The best way to honor Dolly Parton’s legacy is to counter Trump’s cruel inhumanity with generosity, kindness, compassion, respect, and unity. And while we are celebrating her life, sit back with family and friends (as I have done) and watch, or rewatch, 9-5. You will laugh, cry, and applaud!
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How Riding the Subway as a Kid Changed the Way I See the World
At the time, I hated riding on the subway. But more than 50 years later, I’m grateful for that commute—for the way it forced a visceral reminder of our shared humanity.
Aug 23, 2026
It was 1974. The Bronx was burning. Abandoned cars littered the streets, and New York City teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. I’m still surprised my overprotective Holocaust-survivor parents let their preteen daughter ride the subway to school every day, but somehow they did.
For five years—from eighth grade through high school—I took the No. 5 Dyre Avenue train from our apartment in the Pelham Parkway neighborhood of the Bronx to my Jewish day school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The commute was nearly an hour each way and always coincided with rush hour.
Mornings weren’t so bad; I lived near the beginning of the line and could usually get a seat. But heading home, the 86th Street platform was packed five to eight people deep.
When it was my turn to board, I would throw my entire body weight onto the person in front of me, as the person behind me did the same. We all pushed forward together, forcing ourselves into an already crammed car, as more people tried to pack in behind us.
The more choices we have about how we travel or whether we go to private schools or fancy gyms, the easier it becomes to spend our lives among people much like ourselves. Distance makes it easier to dehumanize.
Once the doors closed, we stood packed together in a dense sea of bodies. When the train lurched, the entire crowd swayed as one. Usually, I breathed through my mouth to avoid the smell of sweat and bad breath. I tried to pull away from a hand on my behind that might have been accidental, but probably was not. I remember thinking I was too young for this.
At the time, I hated riding on the subway. But more than 50 years later, I’m grateful for that commute—for the way it forced a visceral reminder of our shared humanity.
Now, like three-quarters of Americans, I go everywhere by car. It’s faster and more convenient but I never see my fellow travelers—only their vehicles speeding past on the highway. And while I don’t miss the discomfort of the subway, I feel more cut off from other people’s lives.
When you don’t see people, you know them less. When entire groups remain unseen it becomes easier to turn them into abstraction—to fear them, dismiss them, or vilify them. It’s much harder to do that when you’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with someone, both of you grasping the pole as the train jolts you from side to side.
These were the days before smart phones or even portable music players. There was little to distract me from just looking and listening to the people around me. For two hours a day, I heard people speaking Spanish. I absorbed its rhythms long before I understood the words. Years later, when I finally learned the language, I picked it up quickly.
The subway exposed me to a depth of poverty I hadn’t seen in my own working-class Jewish neighborhood. I saw people asleep on the seats, curled around garbage bags that held everything they owned. There was a young man with no legs or lower torso who moved through the cars on a wheeled platform, collecting money. I watched him cross the treacherous gaps between cars as the train rattled and swayed.
The subway also showed me where people lived. Unlike highways, which are designed to bypass neighborhoods, the elevated train trestle cuts straight through them.
The No. 5 ran through the South Bronx at a time when more than 80% of buildings had burned or been abandoned. On dark winter evenings, we passed through blocks of hollowed-out shells, with the occasional occupied apartment. From the train I could see into people’s living rooms, glowing blue from the television.
As a teenager, I didn't know much about redlining, disinvestment, or the policies that had helped create those conditions. I only knew that children my age lived there and I wondered what it was like to grow up in what felt like a war zone.
There are, of course, other ways to encounter difference. My husband, a nurse in one of the poorest communities in Massachusetts, has cared for people from all walks of life. But that’s a different kind of interaction. People meet him when they’re sick, in pain, or in crisis. When you commute, you’re simply sharing space.
But not all forms of transportation create the same kind of shared space. Recently, riding the Amtrak train home from Philadelphia, I watched miles of rundown brick rowhouses slide past the window. Some were boarded up. Inside the train, however, the conversations I overheard were about road races in Cancun and the best spin classes in Manhattan. The passengers' lives appeared far removed from the neighborhoods we were passing through.
Having last lived in a city decades ago, my rural life is now quieter, more controlled. I move from one place to another sealed inside a car. It’s comfortable and efficient. But it’s made my life smaller. It’s made it possible to live a life where one rarely sees anyone outside one’s own orbit.
How can that not affect one’s ability to empathize—if your neighbors, coworkers, and classmates all reflect some version of yourself? The more choices we have about how we travel or whether we go to private schools or fancy gyms, the easier it becomes to spend our lives among people much like ourselves. Distance makes it easier to dehumanize.
Which is not to say that riding the No. 5 Dyre Avenue made me a kinder person. I still judge people; I could be nicer and more patient. But the commute gave shape and texture to lives I might otherwise reduce to stereotypes. Day after day, it reminded me that everyone, just like me, was simply trying to get home.
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The Right Invests in Sex Ed—Progressive Philanthropies Should Too
While money pours into groups peddling abstinence-only programs, our health educators march on without funding for professional development and our sex ed advocates fight on without the resources to win.
Aug 18, 2026
Sex education is both everywhere and nowhere. If you scroll through right-wing news sites or visit a school board meeting, you’d think the content of our schools’ health curriculum—and who has the power to shape it—has become the all-consuming debate of the decade. On one side of the aisle, it has. Just this summer, the Trump administration canceled millions in funding to Teen Pregnancy Prevention programs, announcing plans to promote abstinence-only curricula that encourage marriage and procreation. The political left, on the other hand, has stayed far too quiet about sex ed. As leaders of nonprofit organizations working to expand access to research-based comprehensive sex education, we’re left wondering why programs with the power to build a progressive, empathetic, and pluralistic society barely make the progressive agenda—and are severely underfunded.
While the right has devoted time and resources toward rallying its base against comprehensive sex education, most progressive philanthropies and initiatives have yet to match their level of investment. Extremist actors and organizations have funded school board candidates; passed legislation promoting anti-abortion educational tools and mandating medically-inaccurate curricula; and fearmongered at the local, state, and national level. While money pours into groups peddling abstinence-only programs, our health educators march on without funding for professional development and our sex ed advocates fight on without the resources to win.
This dramatic imbalance in funding has little to do with what’s best for young people and much to do with politics, power, and extremism. The right has placed immense value in sex education as a tool to further its ideological agenda. Young people in the process of forming their own values and beliefs are particularly vulnerable to curriculum steeped in extremist political rhetoric, and the right has chosen the classroom as the place where the next generation of voters will encounter its narrow vision of conservative “family values.” For example, politicians in over 20 states have introduced or passed bills requiring public schools to show a misleading, manipulative, and scientifically-inaccurate animated video about fetal development in the classroom, often as early as third grade. The video, “Meet Baby Olivia,” was created and funded by the national extremist group Live Action for the explicit purpose of indoctrinating students and building anti-abortion sentiment. Politicians have also restricted LGBTQ+-inclusive messages, language, and pride flags from classrooms through “Don’t Say Gay” legislation and other tactics. By preaching abstinence and peddling shame and stigma in the classroom, the right is strengthening its hold on the American electorate for decades to come.
Students bear the brunt of this political strategy. Studies show that comprehensive sex education helps students become healthier and more successful adults. Sex education leads to lower sexually transmitted infection rates, fewer unintended pregnancies, and better self-esteem. Beyond that, sex education bolsters students’ emotional intelligence, offering young people the language to name their feelings, move through stress, and communicate through disagreement. Without it, students are left without the necessary tools to navigate puberty or to seek help in the face of mental health challenges and sexual violence or harassment. In other words, sex education quite literally saves lives.
We urge funders to see sex education as the upstream investment that pays off now—in the well-being of our youth—while also safeguarding the future of our democracy.
It is clear that the right recognizes the power of sex education, and that we should, as well. Comprehensive sex education includes lessons on empathy, fostering students’ understanding of difference and diversity, and how to respect those who do not share their backgrounds or beliefs. Conservative figureheads increasingly warn against “toxic empathy,” or compassion for people at the margins of society, in favor of rigid adherence to political dogma. Empathy is a threat to fascism, and the far-right is correct in tracing its origin to the classroom. By fostering empathy and emotional intelligence, well-funded sex education builds a strong citizenry that supports pluralism and democratic values. Sex education is a fundamental pillar of democracy, though it stands on shaky ground.
Although the foundations and philanthropies working to build a progressive, equitable, and democratic society have not matched the right’s investment in sex education, it isn’t too late to take action. Investing in sex education can take many forms. Progressive philanthropies can fund organizations that develop curriculum and train educators, support campaigns to enact pro-sex education legislation and stop harmful legislation at state level, or elect friendly school board candidates. Lawmakers and administrators require technical assistance to update their state’s standards and bolster public awareness, and educators desperate to give their students accurate information need professional development resources and support navigating attacks from extremist agitators.
To be sure, foundations have their hands full. Heightened attacks on civil liberties and bodily autonomy at every level of government have required funders to make tough choices. It may seem idealistic to propose investing in long-term strategies to safeguard democracy when so many issues and organizations need urgent support right now, for direct services and efforts to protect what remains of our access to abortion care and HIV prevention programs. As leaders at the helm of nonprofits, we understand what it means to make tough decisions. However, investments that bolster all of the issues and communities we care about are worth making. We urge funders to see sex education as the upstream investment that pays off now—in the well-being of our youth—while also safeguarding the future of our democracy.
By protecting and expanding access to sex education, funders will help raise a generation equipped to understand their bodies; navigate difficult conversations; and build strong, resilient communities. They will also lay the groundwork for a more progressive, more just society. What could be of more value?
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Americans Shouldn't Take Democracy for Granted—It Erodes Faster than We Think
There is cause for serious concern about the future of US democracy, as exclusionary rhetoric and practices contribute to political instability.
Apr 27, 2026
It takes decades to build institutions and the norms and values that keep them working, but far less time to destroy them.
Less than two years into the second Trump administration, the United States finds itself in an undeclared war with Iran, while at home, efforts to undermine institutions like the Justice Department and the legitimacy of elections continue to grow, alongside the threat of Christian nationalism, an ideology that weakens democracy by narrowing the definition of who belongs. At the same time, immigration enforcement has been at the forefront of normalizing the repressive use of state power, with two US citizens killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and deaths in ICE custody reaching their highest levels in two decades. There is cause for serious concern about the future of US democracy, as exclusionary rhetoric and practices contribute to political instability.
I grew up in a politically unstable system. In just a few years at the end of the 1990s, Ecuador went through five presidents, a civilian-military uprising, a banking collapse, rising inflation, and widespread social unrest. When I first came to the United States as an exchange student, I didn’t understand the importance of “institutional legitimacy,” the idea that an institution is rightful, appropriate, and deserving of trust or respect. In my home country, no such legitimacy existed—and the consequences were dire.
Now, I see Americans’ confidence in institutions—particularly those meant to protect the public and uphold justice, such as the Justice Department and the police—being weakened in real time. At the same time, President Donald Trump continues to delegitimize the entire US electoral system by promoting his (baseless) claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Because of this misinformation, the majority of Republicans believe this to be the case (62%), compared with 31% of all Americans, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), where I am the director of research.
As we move through this election season and approach the nation’s 250th anniversary, it is worth reflecting on how diversity, trust, tolerance, respect, honesty, and empathy are hallmarks of the American democratic ideal.
It is deeply troubling to see continued messaging from the president that risks undermining confidence in the integrity of midterm elections, instilling widespread fear around voting, and advancing immigration rhetoric and policies that demonize vulnerable minorities and limit their rights. Freedom House, an organization that monitors democracy levels worldwide, reports that over the past decade, US democracy has declined from 92 (out of 100) to 81 in 2025, reflecting a gradual erosion in key democratic indicators, particularly in the protection of minority rights.
Despite recent changes in the Department of Homeland Security’s leadership, the Trump administration has continued to pursue its aggressive immigration agenda, conflating undocumented immigrants with violent criminal convictions, and, most recently, with Trump’s push for the Supreme Court to uphold his executive order ending birthright citizenship.
Diversity strengthens democracies by bringing different perspectives to decision-making. It also cultivates empathy by exposing individuals to experiences beyond their own and encouraging tolerance and mutual respect. By contrast, autocracies favor conformity, distrust, the concentration of power, intimidation of critics, and targeting of minorities, like immigrants.
Most, but not all, Americans disagree with the Trump administration’s divisive, dehumanizing policies. PRRI’s recent survey shows solid majorities of Republicans (61%) and Christian nationalism adherents (57%) favor “allowing ICE officers to arrest and relocate undocumented immigrants to detention centers in states far from their home without allowing them to challenge their detainment in court.” They also favor “allowing ICE officers to regularly conduct surveillance and arrests at sensitive locations like schools, hospitals, places of worship, and social service locations” (54% and 53%), suggesting a willingness among these groups to expand state power at the expense of due process and civil liberties.
In addition, a growing movement is challenging traditional understandings of empathy. Data from PRRI finds that while most Americans agree more with the idea that “empathy is a moral value that is the foundation of a healthy society” (80%) than that it is “a dangerous emotion that undermines our ability to set up a society that is guided by God’s truth (16%),” a quarter of Republicans (25%) and nearly 4 in 10 Christian nationalism adherents (37%) agree that empathy is dangerous.
I find myself asking: At what point did we lose sight of the democratic principles we used to uphold? What happened to our commitment to human rights, the fight against corruption, limits on the unchecked use of power, and, simply put, the truth? When did we stop caring about other human beings?
As we move through this election season and approach the nation’s 250th anniversary, it is worth reflecting on how diversity, trust, tolerance, respect, honesty, and empathy are hallmarks of the American democratic ideal. What is happening across the country and abroad should serve as a wake-up call about our commitment to democratic institutions and values, compelling us to come together to repair the damage.
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The 'Empathy Deficit' of the Powerful
What is commonly thought of as power—power over others, aka, dominance—isn’t power at all. It’s an illusion of power that weakens, and perhaps destroys, those who hold it.
Apr 26, 2026
I’m trying to return to the book I started writing a decade ago, and doing so has pulled my awareness of and relationship to the events of 2026 into the larger consciousness the book is struggling to address: What is power?
Can we broaden and expand this word? Can we merge it with collective awareness—you know, the idea of working together? Can we expand our awareness beyond the sense of dominance: power with, rather than power over? Yes, power with, in the “love thy enemy” sense, but without the cynicism and ignorance that usually accompany the word “love."
When we think of power, as I discuss in the book, the word itself commands that we carve the concept into something isolated and wieldable: a sword, a gun, a scepter. Power means power over. There is no basic concept of power—seemingly no word for power in the English language—that also means collaboration, collective participation: people working together, individually empowered at the same time that the larger whole is empowered.
Even when we examine the dark side of power—as in, power corrupts—the examination seems to hover as a warning rather than open up to larger awareness. Consider, for instance, this 2017 article in The Atlantic by Jerry Useem, titled (fasten your seatbelts!) “Power Causes Brain Damage,” which discusses a concept he calls “hubris syndrome.” The essential point the article makes is that people who gain a significant amount of power over others lose the ability to empathize with—or mime, as the article puts it—people in general, the lesser mortals who must follow the boss’ orders. Why am I suddenly thinking of Donald Trump, the world’s “Power Jesus”?
Let’s break the automatic linguistic link right now between power and dominance. True power enlarges the whole; it doesn’t isolate.
This inability to express or feel empathy, it turns out, is serious. It isolates the powerful into their own stereotypes and egotistical certainties, which lessens their ability to make good, or even rational, decisions. (Right, Donald?). And hubris syndrome isn’t merely psychological; it’s also physiological.
Citing neuroscience research, Useem writes:
And when he put the heads of the powerful and the not-so-powerful under a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation machine, he found that power, in fact, impairs a specific neural process, ‘mirroring,’ that may be a cornerstone of empathy. Which gives a neurological basis to what (psychologist Dacher) Keltner has termed the ‘power paradox’: Once we have power, we lose some of the capacities we needed to gain it in the first place.
Useem quotes authors David Owen and Jonathan Davidson, who define hubris syndrome as “a disorder of the possession of power, particularly power which has been associated with overwhelming success, held for a period of years and with minimal constraint on the leader.” Its 14 clinical features, he adds, include: “manifest contempt for others, loss of contact with reality, restless or reckless actions, and displays of incompetence.”
The idea is that we’re naturally connected and subconsciously “mimic” others: We laugh when others laugh, tense up when others grow tense. It’s not faking an emotion to fit in; it’s participating in, feeling, the collective emotion that fills the room. “It helps trigger the same feelings those others are experiencing and provides a window into where they are coming from,” Useem writes. But: Powerful people “stop simulating the experience of others,” leading to what the psychologist calls an “empathy deficit,” which saps the powerful of most, or maybe all, of their social skill, leaving them, even as they generate endless obeisance, socially isolated souls.
The conclusion to be drawn here is that what is commonly thought of as power—power over others, aka, dominance—isn’t power at all. It’s an illusion of power that weakens, and perhaps destroys, those who hold it. Consider the rise and fall of dictators, the toppling of empires, the comeuppance of kings and queens. Let them eat cake.
The article does an excellent job pointing all this out, but at a certain point it falls into a linguistic trap. Useem writes despairingly: “This is a depressing finding. Knowledge is supposed to be power. But what good is knowing that power deprives you of knowledge?”
My answer is this: Knowledge in all its basic innocence is, indeed, power, but rarely is this “power over” someone. Knowledge of how to walk, how to read... this is a child claiming her life. And the entire family is empowered. As the child learns how to function independently, Mom and Dad learn how to parent. Yes, knowledge—power—can be used to further the interests of our darkest impulses. We can use what we learn to blackmail, extort, cheat, bully, win, etc., etc. But let’s break the automatic linguistic link right now between power and dominance. True power enlarges the whole; it doesn’t isolate. As the child learns to function, the family grows.
Yes, the power of self-defense is sometimes necessary, at the individual and, yes, the national level. And power can enable us to win, whether a game or a fight. Hurray! But the point my unfinished book is trying to make is that such power exists in a larger context, just as we exist in a larger context—and this context is ever opening and expanding before us. The US relationship to the rest of the world is larger than Donald Trump’s, or any president’s, ego. It’s larger than our military.
Rather, every last one of us, from newborns to geezers, is a participant in creating who we are, and who we are becoming. Perhaps no one says it better than Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being."
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Time to Grow Out of 'Playing' War
By saying the quiet part out loud, Trump is revealing that war is based on the least of who we are, the least mature aspect of human nature.
Mar 14, 2026
Boys will be boys. Just ask the president.
At a gathering of Republicans a few days ago, Donald Trump talked nonchalantly about the recent sinking of an apparently unarmed Iranian frigate by the US Navy—in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,000 miles from the Persian Gulf. A total of 104 crew members were killed and 32 more were injured.
The president proceeded to make this more than merely another brutal, pointless act of war. He turned it into a glaring—shocking—revelation of truth... about the American-Israeli war on Iran and, quite possibly about all wars: about war itself. He was upset at first, he told the crowd, that the Navy sank the frigate rather than capturing it. But when he expressed this to the military officials, one of them responded, “It’s more fun to sink them.”
And the crowd laughed. Uh... are we “playing” war or waging it, with that trillion-dollar annual military budget America has? No doubt we’re doing both, but normally the “fun” part of war—the dehumanization of the enemy, the abstraction of people’s deaths (including those of children)—is airbrushed from public discussion by politically correct strategic and political blather. But this is Trump, spouting the quiet part out loud—in the process, causing the global infrastructure of nation-states, borders, and militarism to tremble. Could it be that war is based on the least of who we are, the least mature aspect of human nature?
A “global structure of nonviolence” is emerging—pushing, pushing against the deeply embedded infrastructure of war and us-vs.-them consciousness.
In contrast, I quote from a recent essay written by my friend Laura Hassler, founder and director of Musicians Without Borders:
Well, guess what. There are other forces alive in today’s world. Decades of resistance to domination and colonialism, the learnings of movements across the Global South, the freedom that Western hegemony for a few decades inadvertently released on its majority population, and access through social media to some of the reality of the actual horrors perpetrated in our names have together led to a worldwide awakening to fundamental injustices, and a worldwide longing for a livable, connected, survivable future.
She calls this worldwide awakening “Radical Empathy,” a term in widespread use, which means a deeply rooted sense of connection among people, well beyond merely sympathy and shared feelings. We are one planet, one people, and we will survive together or not at all.
“Radical Empathy must be fierce, stubborn, creative, persistent,” she continues. “We must hold on to each other, build community, be willing to take risks and accept consequences. Seek alternatives. Stand in solidarity with all who resist oppression and the violence of power and greed...
“And we artists must nurture artistic bravery, using the power of the arts to tell truth, to build community, to turn our capacity for radical empathy into a force for good.”
In other words, Radical Empathy isn’t simply emotional. You can say it’s spiritual, but it’s also political. It’s a movement: ever changing, ever manifesting in the moment, ever addressing conflict by reaching for connection and understanding. Yes, global nationalism still maintains the power to wage war. And war is everywhere these days. As Jeffrey Sachs noted in a recent interview, “World War III is here...” from Ukraine and Gaza and Iran to Asia to the Western Hemisphere. And the fighting across the world is linked.
But at the same time the world is changing. A “global structure of nonviolence” is emerging—pushing, pushing against the deeply embedded infrastructure of war and us-vs.-them consciousness. Finding understanding with your enemy—connecting with “the other”—can be incredibly difficult, especially in the midst of conflict, but Radical Empathy is making it a reality across the planet.
Laura Hassler’s organization, Musicians Without Borders, exemplifies this movement. The organization was founded in 1999, in Alkamaar, a city in the Netherlands. Laura, who was a choir director and organized music events, had put together a concert for the town’s annual honoring of the dead of World War II.
But as I wrote in a column several years ago:
The bloody war in Kosovo was then raging: Thousands had died; nearly a million refugees were streaming across Europe. Its horror dominated the daily news, and Laura couldn’t ignore it. She couldn’t simply focus on the war dead of half a century ago, not when the hell of war was alive in the present moment, pulling at her soul.
She decided, "We’ll perform music from the people suffering from war now—folk songs from Eastern Europe," she told me. Her impulse was to reach out, to connect, somehow, with those suffering right now, on the other side of Europe. And something happened the night of the concert. When it ended, there was a moment of profound silence... and then, as the audience stood, applause so thunderous that the rafters shook. It went on for 20 minutes.
One of the musicians, a political refugee from Turkey, said to her afterwards: "This concert was special. We should put it on a train, send it to Kosovo and stop the war!”
And they went to Kosovo. Gradually, Musicians Without Borders became global, working with local people in war-torn regions all over the world—people on both sides of the divide—to create music that transcends the war of the moment. The organization currently has long-term projects in the Balkans, West Asia, Eastern Africa, and Europe.
This is Radical Empathy, or at least one example of it—our complex force of hope even as the world’s leaders continue bleeding away the planet’s resources in order to play war. Radical Empathy transcends war. It’s who we are—when we find ourselves.
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When the Cruelty Is the Point, What Is Left? Radical Empathy
Radical Empathy must be fierce, stubborn, creative, persistent. We must hold on to each other, build community, be willing to take risks and accept consequences. Seek alternatives.
Mar 08, 2026
We always knew that humans could be monsters. We knew about Nazi Germany. We knew about the European slave trade, and about Jim Crow and its ritual lynchings. We knew about Europe’s genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, and about the cruelty of European colonialism in Africa, Asia, and across the world. We knew about the genocidal wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.
But we also knew about the other end of the spectrum: the people in Europe who hid escaping Jews in their attics. The abolitionists, the Underground Railroad. The nonviolent movement in India that freed millions from British colonization. The pacifists who went to prison in refusal to kill. The Suffragettes; the labor movement; the civil rights movement; South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement; the liberation movements in South America, Africa, and Asia; the Western anti-war movements that finally brought the horrific US-sponsored wars in Southeast Asia to an end.
Somehow, we (or perhaps I should just say I) saw these opposing forces as continuous struggles, continuous choices, continuous needs to resist, build alternatives, create community, connect. A flux with, more or less, equal chances of success if we just kept going. Somehow, we also held a common belief, especially following the traumas of World War II, that there were universal human values, that we as ‘humanity’ could name them and subscribe to them, and that they could protect us from the evils that haunted our world. This seemed to give us space to act for the good, the just, the value of the universality of human rights.
Today, I’m not so sure of that.
There is no time to waste, no neutral space "in the middle." Clearly, in our own innocence, we have not taken seriously enough the depraved power of greed and cruelty, nor understood how far evil has reached. They have grabbed it all… almost.
Like so many others, I am unable to ignore the news about the latest horrific war, launched by the US and Israel against Iran, also unable to ignore the Epstein files and the revelations of the systemic corruption, the evil—no other word for it—that is built into the structures of power that rule not only the US, but the entire "Western" world and all that it dominates, while pretending to represent "democracy" and "human rights."
And the direct connection of these forces to the most evil, or at least the most visibly evil, disaster of our current period: the ongoing genocide in Gaza. And the connection of that genocide with the global arms trade, the US-UK-EU-Israel weapons and surveillance deals. The establishment of concentration camps in Albania for refugees seeking safety in Europe, the cyber-technology that identifies desperate people at the EU border in Eastern Europe by the warmth of their bodies, and sics Frontex attack dogs on them.
"The cruelty is the point." I’ve read this so many times about Israel’s policies and practices toward Palestinians, so extreme in Gaza, only slightly less so in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Children shot in the head, chest, genitals—target practice for Israel Defense Forces soldiers. TikTok videos making fun of Palestinian mothers grieving for their murdered babies. Israeli soldiers blowing up hospitals, universities, schools, refugee camps, and then sharing this online as if they are party jokes. Even a so-called "humanitarian aid program," luring starving people with food, and then shooting them as they desperately scrounge for a pack of flour or rice.
"The cruelty is the point."
And now the back story is revealed: Epstein’s circle of powerful white men, linked to child trafficking, rape, torture of the most defenseless, the most innocent, the least resilient. Meanwhile, these men run the most powerful countries in the world, lead the international banking establishment, steal resources from the citizenry, protect each other, trade off deals, influence, and wealth: "the Epstein class," as it is now being called. Within this cabal of evildoers are the so-called "trans-humanists," wishing to leverage their power to give themselves eternal life—while meanwhile calling for the killing of "all the poor people."
Look at them.
Blank, empty eyes. Stiff bodies. Angry faces. Immature, not as innocent children, but as confused, grown-up boys who never learned the most important lessons, who think they’re powerful because they have a lot of money. People who have understood nothing of the essence of life, people who have probably never held a baby in their arms, never grown a garden or helped a neighbor, never walked through a forest in wonder. Rich kids with simple, underdeveloped spirits, lured by superficial values and massive monetary wealth, now imagining their own eternal longevity. Men coming from loveless backgrounds, who, in our societies dominated by competition, individualism, and greed, have come to own the Earth’s resources and rule our world. (Mostly white) men, compensating for their own moral voids with fantasies of unlimited power, fueled by cruelty.
It is easy to trace the origins of this evil: oppressive medieval Christianity, white European supremacy, patriarchy built on the violent domination of women, greed and vacuous cruelty. Domination through violence and fear of violence.
The cruelty is the point.
Well, guess what. There are other forces alive in today’s world. Decades of resistance to domination and colonialism, the learnings of movements across the Global South, the freedom that Western hegemony for a few decades inadvertently released on its majority population, and access through social media to some of the reality of the actual horrors perpetrated in our names have together led to a worldwide awakening to fundamental injustices, and a worldwide longing for a livable, connected, survivable future.
How to capture this reality, how to describe the alternative to the evil cruelty that so dominates the stories of our time?
Let’s consider the idea of Radical Empathy, which, I believe, is our only hope.
What is Radical Empathy? We know these two words but, together, what do they mean?
Empathy is the ability to feel what the other feels, not the "sympathy" of feeling sorry for someone, but the ability to identify with the feelings of the other, to engage with those feelings as one’s own. To connect with other people, with other living beings, to connect with the planet and all life on it. Perhaps we can describe empathy as a mix of compassion, identification, and solidarity.
And radical means going to the roots, going all the way to the source. Radical has often been interpreted simply as extreme, but that does not do the concept justice. Radical means rooted, grounded, solid, strong.
Combine these two, and see here a powerful concept to help us resist the cruelty and evil now dominating our airwaves, threatening the future of all human and other life on our beautiful planet, threatening the planet itself.
Radical Empathy must be fierce, stubborn, creative, persistent. We must hold on to each other, build community, be willing to take risks and accept consequences. Seek alternatives. Stand in solidarity with all who resist oppression and the violence of power and greed.
We must hold and nurture our sense of humor: not joke telling, but the ability to see oneself in perspective, gently; the ability to use our creativity and the power of the unexpected to flip the story, turn reality around and move it in another direction. We must have the courage to stand up to unjust power, take the risks, and accept the consequences.
And we artists must nurture artistic bravery, using the power of the arts to tell truth, to build community, to turn our capacity for Radical Empathy into a force for good.
There is no time to waste, no neutral space "in the middle." Clearly, in our own innocence, we have not taken seriously enough the depraved power of greed and cruelty, nor understood how far evil has reached. They have grabbed it all… almost.
What they do not yet control: our spirits, our creativity, our ability to defy cruelty, to invent and reinvent Radical Empathy. And, thank you life, they do not control the youth of our world, who increasingly stand bravely against the organized cruelty of today’s powerful.
There is no guarantee that Radical Empathy will prevail, that the powers of connection, compassion, and love will be able to carry us to a place of repair, redress, reconnection, rebuilding, for all who have suffered from the unlimited cruelty of our time. There is no guarantee that our children and our grandchildren will grow and thrive in a world of compassion and connection.
But even if we do not succeed to turn the global tide, we will still be living our best possible lives as changemakers, planting seeds of change, creating islands of survival.
I remember, reading Joanna Macy, her admonition to embrace your grief. Look straight at the horrors, acknowledge the dangers, the threats to our world, the destruction, the cruelty.
And then look beyond, choose, and move together.
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A 'Walk for Peace' by Monks vs. War Criminal Netanyahu in DC
In a single day, Washington hosts both a war criminal and monks leading a walk for peace. Which model will you choose?
Feb 11, 2026
On Wednesday, Washington, DC will witness two historic moments, both carrying the banner “peace.”
After 15 weeks, the 2,300-mile Walk for Peace, led by a group of Theravada Buddhist monks, will reach its conclusion at the National Mall. Meanwhile, just under two kilometers away at the White House, President Donald Trump will meet internationally wanted war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the prospect of imminent military escalation in Iran and Gaza.
On Tuesday, February 10, both Netanyahu and monk and spiritual leader, Venerable Bhikkhu Panakkara, invoked peace when explaining their respective journeys to the capital. Before boarded Wing of Zion, Israel’s state aircraft, Netanyahu told press, “I will present Trump with principles for negotiations with Iran that are important not only to Israel but to everyone who wants peace and security,” adding, “In my opinion, these are important principles for everyone who wants peace and security in the Middle East.” At the same hour in Washington, Venerable Bhikkhu Panakkara addressed the thousands gathered outside the National Cathedral, offering a different vision: “We are not walking… to bring you any peace. Rather, we raise the awareness of peace so that you can unlock that box and free it, let peace bloom and flourish among all of us, throughout this nation and the world.”
Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, will gather near the Lincoln Memorial to witness and honor the end of the monks’ spiritual trek from the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth, Texas. At least hundreds more, will gather to protest the arrival of Netanyahu.
For all that separates these events in character and intent, each carries a vision of humanity and America, a reflection of alternate futures for the country and the world.
The monks will walk from the Peace Monument near the Capitol down to the Memorial. It will likely be a continuation of the exchanges that have marked their journey: flowers, bows, clasped hands, and smiles. They arrive after bearing unusually cold winter months, following an ascetic tradition of eating just one meal per day and sleeping beneath trees.
Nearby, Trump and Netanyahu will be fortified away from protesters, protected by gates, barricades, drones, and agents, meeting in richly adorned rooms, exercising a power over the future of the Middle East that is both absolute and unpredictable. Netanyahu is reportedly expected to insist that to secure Phase II of the “ceasefire” Peace Plan that never was, Israel must escalate its ongoing genocidal attacks against the entirely displaced civilian population in Gaza. He is also anticipated to lobby for terms, particularly regarding ballistic missile programs, that could deliberately undermine a US-Iran deal—a predictable objective of the Israeli government.
Trump, who proclaims “peace through strength” as the White House doctrine, may be dangerously receptive to Netanyahu’s vision. Almost notoriously, he has sought to brand himself with peace—relentlessly chasing the Nobel Peace Prize, styling himself the self-proclaimed “peace president” at rallies, staging photo ops, making self-aggrandizing speeches, and founding the so-called Board of Peace, which he will soon celebrate at the newly renamed Donald Trump Institute of Peace in DC (formerly the US Institute of Peace). Peace has become a banner he claims, brands, and projects onto his political identity.
But while he may assert himself as the peace president, who has “ended eight wars,” he remains the president who in very recent months, has initiated sheer terror and chaos. He has kidnapped other Presidents, deployed the National Guard, and unleashed violent immigration agents on American cities; he has embraced systematic family separations of immigrants and migrants, celebrated patterned executions in the Caribbean, defunded healthcare and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for millions in favor of building out a military-grade Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget and a fantasy golden dome, wields tariffs and economic coercion as erratic weapons of global power, seeks to colonize and ethnically cleanse Gaza to fulfill his son-in-laws Rivera vision, escalates regime-change operations around the globe, and more recently has manufactured a humanitarian crisis in Cuba. He is also the once-close ally, confidant, and facilitator of Jeffrey Epstein, and, like Epstein, a sexual predator.
Here, in DC today, two very different notions of peace converge.
In the White House, some of the world’s most dangerous, most criminal, and cruel men convene with the fate of millions in their hands, scheming war and exercising it through greed, supremacist ideology, and a state apparatus that shields them from accountability. Their peace is loud, flashy, and enforced. It slaps itself on trophies and buildings. It holds ceremonies of the utmost excess. It is severed from justice and empathy. It requires death. It requires war. It is ever attached to “security.”
There is also a peace carried to mark the end of a long, deliberate walk across the city. This peace, marked on a white flag, is humble and steady, disciplined and tempered—peace as practice, not strategy, not spectacle, but ethic. A testament to humanity’s highest aspirations. People from across the country join it, of every origin, faith, and language, observing in reverence and quiet joy. They honor the hope and tradition the monks have devoted themselves to, a practice rooted in mindfulness, compassion, and self-restraint. Along the way, they may hear again what Venerable Bhikkhu Panakkara has repeated throughout the journey: “Today is going to be my peaceful day.” For the last time, the monks offer those who witness the chance to share in this intentional presence.
For all that separates these events in character and intent, each carries a vision of humanity and America, a reflection of alternate futures for the country and the world. Today in the nation’s capital, history is being made—among those who claim power and peace, and those who live it.
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What's at Stake When the President Uses the R-Word
The real question is not whether Trump is allowed to use degrading language, but whether a president who does so honors the dignity of the office—or hollows it out from within.
Dec 27, 2025
When a president uses language that dehumanizes, it is not a matter of legality, it is a matter of dignity, and it signals who our society values. Every utterance from the Oval Office carries weight; it sets norms, authorizes behaviors, and communicates whose humanity is recognized and whose is diminished.
When President Donald Trump referred to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz using the R-word, defenders rushed in with a familiar refrain: freedom of speech. He can say what he wants. He is protected. End of discussion.
But this is not a freedom-of-speech question. It is a freedom-of-dignity question.
Donald Trump is not a private citizen muttering into the void. He is the most powerful person in the world, speaking through a global amplifier backed by the authority of the presidency. The real question is not whether he is allowed to use degrading language, but whether a president who does so honors the dignity of the office—or hollows it out from within.
A president’s words do more than reveal character; they instruct the nation in who it is permitted to become.
Some defenders argue that only the N-word merits being reduced to an initial, that if Trump wants to use “retarded,” he can—and so can anyone else. They dismiss criticism as cancel culture, another example of Democrats weaponizing political correctness.
This defense is morally hollow. Saying, “Only the N-word counts” is an impoverished standard. Harmful language does not become acceptable simply because it targets a different group. The R-word is not neutral—it has been used for decades to demean, exclude, and dehumanize people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, reducing human beings to a punchline or a flaw.
This is not about partisan loyalty or performative outrage. It is about whether we believe people deserve basic dignity regardless of disability. If you had a child, a sibling, or a close friend with an intellectual or developmental disability, would you really argue that the most powerful person in the country should be excused for using a word that has long diminished their worth? Would that feel like free speech, or like indifference?
Leadership is not only about what one is legally permitted to say. It is about what one chooses to say. Leaders set norms. When they adopt language that punches down, they grant permission for others to follow. Calling that out is not political correctness; it is a minimal ethical expectation of public leadership.
BJ Stasio, a Peer Specialist 2 with the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, explains:
When national leaders use the R-word casually, it reactivates real harm for people who were once labeled, limited, and underestimated. As someone who has lived with that label—and now leads within the disability rights movement—I know firsthand what the stigma can do.
Nicole LeBlanc, a disability employment consultant and self-advocacy adviser, underscores the emotional and systemic toll:
Seeing the R-word insult return to everyday language is enraging. Many people with autism—especially those diagnosed in adulthood—carry complex trauma histories from bullying and verbal abuse. Research shows they are more likely to be bullied than the general population, leading to high rates of PTSD, anxiety, and other challenges. People with disabilities want respect, love, acceptance, and access to services that allow us to thrive, not just survive. Using hateful language fuels negative attitudes, health disparities, and higher abuse rates. Respect is not optional.
Emauni Crawley, a behavioral health coach and disability advocate, is blunt:
The manner in which Trump articulates the R-word is not a result of ignorance. It is an act of perverseness.
Dr. Gary Schaffer, professor of school psychology, mental health counselor, author, and a person with disabilities, adds historical context:
The R-word is not neutral. It is hate speech, reducing learning and behavioral differences to something laughable and diminishing a person’s value to society. When the president of the United States uses it openly, he gives a green light to discriminate, segregate, and withhold empathy—not only from people with intellectual disabilities, but from anyone with learning or behavioral differences.
This danger is not theoretical. Prior to 1975, many students with disabilities were denied access to education entirely because they were deemed incapable of learning. Language paved the way for policy. It always does.
Max Donatelli, a US Air Force Vietnam veteran, disability advocate, and parent, put it plainly:
The public disrespect shown by this president to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities is unprecedented. Our country deserves better. As a parent and advocate, we have found it challenging to rid our language of the R-word at the local, state, and national levels. We helped New York State end its use of it in the office that administers services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. What was once the Office for Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities is now the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities, thanks to significant advocacy. Our wonderful son Craig, who has Down syndrome, deserves the respect and opportunities afforded all citizens. The use of this slur is a stain on this presidency that won’t be forgotten by us.
The R-word entered medical and educational usage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a supposedly humane replacement for earlier slurs. By the 1960s and 1970s, it had become an everyday insult. Its harm was so widespread that it was removed from professional, legal, and clinical use, replaced by terms such as intellectual disability and developmental disability. Organizations like the Special Olympics have spent decades urging the public to abandon the word entirely.
Trump’s use of it is therefore not accidental, nostalgic, or brave. It is regressive. It communicates that labeling human beings this way is acceptable—even legitimate. Taboos are ethical boundaries. When a president violates them intentionally, the violation instructs.
Words alone are dangerous. When paired with policy, the harm compounds. Rhetoric that degrades, combined with policies that strip protections, sends a clear message about whose lives are valued and whose are negotiable. Programs like SOAR, which helped people with severe mental health challenges access Social Security benefits and provided housing, healthcare, and stability. Cutting them leaves people exposed. The erosion of special education, weakening of Americans with Disabilities Act guidance, and refusal to provide real-time American Sign Language interpretation at White House events send the same message: Accessibility is optional; inclusion is an inconvenience.
Harm becomes systemic not all at once, but sentence by sentence, joke by joke, policy memo by policy memo. The erosion of dignity rarely announces itself as violence. It begins as permission—to mock, dismiss, reduce. When that permission comes from the highest office in the land, it spreads.
This is not about fragility. It is about responsibility. A president’s words do more than reveal character; they instruct the nation in who it is permitted to become. When language degrades and protections are hollowed out, dignity ceases to be shared and becomes a privilege rationed by power.
The question is no longer whether such language is legal. It is whether we will accept a politics that treats some people’s humanity as expendable, and whether we will recognize, before it spreads further, that a nation willing to bargain away dignity at the margins will eventually find it gone at the center.
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What Christmas Once Meant—and What It Could Mean Again for a Divided America
Christmas, once a time to gather, reflect, and renew our obligations to one another, and the social rituals that once cultivated empathy and reinforced civic responsibility, have been reduced to a spectacle of distraction, dead trees, credit card receipts, and gift wrapping.
Dec 24, 2025
When we think of Christmas today, what comes first to mind? Twinkling lights along Main Street, the ceaseless hum of commerce, the relentless parade of advertisements promising joy measured in price tags. Rarely, if ever, do we pause to consider the ethical marrow beneath this season. And yet, for all its modern commercial veneer, Christmas—like the solstice festivals and civic rituals that preceded it—was once, and could be again, a moral and civic compass pointing toward generosity, compassion, and shared responsibility. Long before Christianity claimed this season as its own, human societies looked to the turning of the year and found in its darkness a lesson not only of survival but also of communal obligation, recognizing that vulnerability, scarcity, and the fragile ties that bind a community demand attention and care. In the forests of Northern Europe, the Yule log burned, a symbol of light returning to the world; in Rome, Saturnalia erupted in feasts and gift-giving, a deliberate inversion of hierarchy, reminding citizens that social cohesion required recognition of all members, even the lowliest; and in the Near East, solstice celebrations marked a liminal time when ordinary rhythms of life were suspended, and moral reflection took precedence over practical concerns.
Across cultures, these seasonal rituals share a common thread: attention to the vulnerable, cultivation of generosity, and the reinforcement of communal bonds. What united these disparate societies was the recognition that humanity flourishes not by the accumulation of wealth or the assertion of dominance, but by generosity, hospitality, and attention to the vulnerable. In these shadows of history, we find the first glimmers of civic duty: the ethical imperative to care for neighbors, to acknowledge the marginalized, to place the health of the community above the satisfaction of individual desire.
When Christianity emerged and incorporated the winter solstice into the story of the Nativity, it did more than assert doctrinal authority; it reinterpreted the old moral lessons through the lens of narrative: the story of a child born in a stable, heralded by shepherds and angels, whose birth was at once humble and cosmic, ordinary and transformative. Here was a story that celebrated vulnerability, humility, and hope, stripped of theological ornamentation, offering an ethical exemplar and telling the listener to pay attention to those on the margins, to protect the weak, to recognize that moral light can shine in the darkest of times. The ethical heartbeat of the season, however, has largely been drowned out in contemporary America. In our hyper-individualistic culture, compassion has been privatized, morality commercialized, and communal attention fractured across economic, racial, and ideological lines. Christmas, once a time to gather, reflect, and renew our obligations to one another, and the social rituals that once cultivated empathy and reinforced civic responsibility, have been reduced to a spectacle of distraction, dead trees, credit card receipts, and gift wrapping, obscuring the enduring potential for ethical reflection and civic repair.
No society is too divided, no darkness too deep, for human generosity, moral courage, and civic imagination to take root. The ethical and civic heart of Christmas, once recovered, can illuminate a path toward a more compassionate, cohesive, and just America.
To reclaim this potential, we must trace the ethical throughlines not only through Christian thought but through the shared moral heritage of the Abrahamic religions. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam converge in insisting upon care for the vulnerable, justice, and humility. In Judaism, tzedakah is not optional; it is the act of righteousness, the concrete demonstration that a society’s moral health is measured by how it treats those who have the least. In Islam, zakat functions similarly: wealth is a trust, a means to uphold social solidarity, and a moral duty to support the community’s weakest members. Christianity, through agape, extends love as an ethic: love of neighbor, love of stranger, love that is deliberate and disciplined rather than sentimental or fleeting. Across centuries and continents, these traditions converge on the principle that morality is communal, not merely personal, and a bridge emerges, demonstrating that the ethical lessons embedded in seasonal rituals are not the property of any one faith but a shared inheritance. Across other cultural and spiritual traditions as well, rituals of giving, care, and communal attention underscore the same principles. Recognition of vulnerability, cultivation of generosity, and attention to justice are civic imperatives, as resonant today as they were thousands of years ago.
The Christmas story, in this light, is as much civic as it is spiritual, emphasizing ethical action over dogma, placing the marginalized and vulnerable at the moral center. To give to the poor, to welcome the stranger, to act with humility—these are civic rituals enacted through narrative, story, and symbol. Stripped of theology, Christmas becomes a rehearsal of the social virtues that sustain society. Generosity, humility, and hospitality are not merely sentimental ideals; they are practical guides for civic life. The story of a humble birth, heralded by the lowly, reminds us that the moral and civic duties of a society are inseparable from the care of its most vulnerable members.
Practical reclamation begins with attention. Schools, community centers, and local governments can frame seasonal activities around service, reflection, and ethical engagement rather than solely entertainment. Families can teach children not only the joy of giving but the moral reasoning behind giving. Civic organizations can revive interfaith dialogues, exploring shared values rather than emphasizing doctrinal differences. Individuals, through conscious acts of care, become participants in a civic ritual that slowly restores trust, empathy, and moral imagination. Seasonal rituals thus function as rehearsals for civic life. Just as societies once lit fires to mark the solstice, today we can perform acts of ethical attention that illuminate darkness in the social fabric, reminders that light, generosity, and hope are communal achievements, not merely personal experiences.
The relevance is immediate. Economic inequality demands generosity and advocacy. Racial and religious divides demand tolerance and empathy. Political polarization demands engagement and ethical imagination. In all these realms, the principles embedded in Christmas—drawn from solstice traditions and Abrahamic moral codes—offer guidance. Ethical attention to the Other, practiced seasonally and deliberately, eventually becomes a civic habit. Healing the nation is not a single act but a series of small, cumulative practices: sharing resources, listening across differences, protecting the vulnerable, and actively participating in community life. These are the same virtues that sustained human societies through long winters and precarious times, centuries before the commercial trappings of modern holidays emerged.
The story of Christmas, then, is a story of civic possibility. It tells us that light can emerge from darkness, that generosity is stronger than greed, that community is more resilient than isolation, and that the vulnerable are essential to the moral health of society. These lessons transcend theology: they are part of humanity’s shared moral imagination. To celebrate Christmas as it was meant to be celebrated—ethically, communally, civically—is to perform an act of moral restoration. It reminds us that empathy, tolerance, and civic duty are not abstract ideals but practical obligations. In a nation so rent by difference, these seasonal rituals offer a roadmap for ethical engagement, one small act at a time. Though Christmas is the lens here, its lessons—the renewal of communal bonds, the practice of generosity, the cultivation of empathy—are universal, inviting all communities to participate in the ethical work of society.
No society is too divided, no darkness too deep, for human generosity, moral courage, and civic imagination to take root. The ethical and civic heart of Christmas, once recovered, can illuminate a path toward a more compassionate, cohesive, and just America. Each act of care and attention reveals the enduring power of shared moral practice and the pulse of civic life, offering the promise that, even in our most fractured moments, the light of ethical and civic consciousness can return, as reliably as the turning of the year itself.
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