United States Constitution

If ever there were doubt that I am a bit of a geek, one need not look further than how I spent my summer vacation, because only a geek would spend a good chunk of July reading Supreme Court opinions and dissents. And if that weren’t enough, I washed it all down by rereading many of the Federalist Papers.

"And truth is like a punch or two. It hits you hard; it knocks you through." These are words from a song I like by Tired Pony called "Get on the Road." It's a song about...

Perhaps no lyric ever written so succinctly sums up my belief in the idea of America more than these words from that song. Those words cut through me harder than they normally do. We’re losing who we are. The list of things we’ll do is getting longer and the list of things we won’t, shorter. This week, 42 million Americans are facing their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits running dry because of the shutdown.

Once the customer, the American citizen in this case, has grown accustomed to a government service, it is hard, and in many cases unfair, to take it away. And it doesn’t matter if that service provided or right granted is Social Security, Trump-era tax cuts, Affordable Care Act subsidies, or reproductive rights. No one likes having something and then having it taken away.

I started this piece eight hours before Charlie Kirk was murdered and I finish it now while the manhunt for his killer is still underway. We do not yet know the motive. We do not yet know the shooter’s mental condition. We do not yet know the shooter’s political affiliation. And while we soon will, I fear the truth will not stop some from advancing theories of their own.

Fifty thousand more American families will feel the pain of losing a loved one to a bullet this year. This topic is as important as it gets.