Public Policy & NGOs
Here's a look at documents from public policy and non-governmental organizations
Featured Stories
Wisconsin Republican Failure Files: Efficient Early Vote Edition
MONONA, Wisconsin, April 7 -- A Better Wisconsin Together, a state-based research and communications hub for progressives, posted the following news release on April 6, 2026:
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Wisconsin Republican Failure Files: Efficient Early Vote Edition
Republicans refused to meaningfully address 'Monday processing' before packing their bags and adjourning in March for the entire year
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Today, election officials could have started processing absentee ballots in Wisconsin's spring election, ensuring timelier results for Wisconsinites, but Republicans in the state legislature stopped that from happening.
A
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MONONA, Wisconsin, April 7 -- A Better Wisconsin Together, a state-based research and communications hub for progressives, posted the following news release on April 6, 2026:
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Wisconsin Republican Failure Files: Efficient Early Vote Edition
Republicans refused to meaningfully address 'Monday processing' before packing their bags and adjourning in March for the entire year
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Today, election officials could have started processing absentee ballots in Wisconsin's spring election, ensuring timelier results for Wisconsinites, but Republicans in the state legislature stopped that from happening.
Abipartisan bill that would have allowed election officials to start processing absentee ballots on the Monday before Election Day never made it out of the legislature this year after the Republican majority refused to meaningfully address the bill before packing their bags and adjourning in March for the entire year.
"Republicans abruptly went home for the year leaving loads of work undone, and Wisconsinites continue to feel the consequences," said Lucy Ripp, communications director at A Better Wisconsin Together.
Amid other recent attacks on absentee voting from Donald Trump, Ripp said this is yet another example of Wisconsin Republicans abandoning commonsense and their constituents in favor of MAGA party bosses like Trump and Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.
"Wisconsin Republicans, who are frequent absentee voters themselves, will do anything to score cheap political points, even if it means selling out and abandoning their constituents when it matters most," Ripp said. "Monday processing is just one of many commonsense bills with bipartisan support that Republicans stopped from becoming law for no reason other than their own partisan game playing."
You can reach your state legislator at 1-800-362-9472.
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A Better Wisconsin Together is a state-based research and communications hub for progressives and is an affiliate of ProgressNow.
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Original text here: https://abetterwisconsin.org/wisconsin-republican-failure-files-efficient-early-vote-edition/
[Category: Economics]
UPMC St. Margaret Family Medicine Residency Program Ranks No. 1 in Pa., Top 2% in Nation
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, April 7 -- The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center issued the following news release:
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UPMC St. Margaret Family Medicine Residency Program Ranks No. 1 in Pa., Top 2% in Nation
Family Medicine at UPMC St. Margaret recently earned three national and statewide recognitions across resident training, patient experience and physician leadership, continuing to set the standard for comprehensive, community-focused care and medical education.
The UPMC St. Margaret Family Medicine Residency Program ranks No. 1 in Pennsylvania for the third consecutive year by the American
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PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, April 7 -- The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center issued the following news release:
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UPMC St. Margaret Family Medicine Residency Program Ranks No. 1 in Pa., Top 2% in Nation
Family Medicine at UPMC St. Margaret recently earned three national and statewide recognitions across resident training, patient experience and physician leadership, continuing to set the standard for comprehensive, community-focused care and medical education.
The UPMC St. Margaret Family Medicine Residency Program ranks No. 1 in Pennsylvania for the third consecutive year by the AmericanBoard of Family Medicine (ABFM), based on the aggregate performance of graduating residents on their board certification exam over a five-year period. The program ranked first among 60 family medicine residency programs in Pennsylvania and placed in the top 2 percent nationally, ranking 15th nationally out of 840 programs in the United States.
"The impressive performance of our residents reflects the strong clinical training they receive at UPMC St. Margaret, UPMC Magee-Womens and UPMC Children's," said Jonathan Han, M.D., program director, UPMC St. Margaret Family Medicine Residency Program. "Our residents thrive in the learning environment provided by our dedicated and talented faculty and specialists, the strong support of our medical education staff, family health centers and UPMC St. Margaret."
Residents participate in a longitudinal board preparation curriculum and attend a comprehensive board review course led by Rich Bruehlman, M.D., associate program director. In recent years, the course has expanded its reach, inviting residents and faculty from across Pennsylvania to participate virtually.
"This recognition is a testament to the dedication of our faculty and residents who shape the next generation of family medicine providers," said Andrew Ritchie, president, UPMC St. Margaret. "With the largest program in the top 15 nationally, we are here to provide the highest quality training for our residents, who deliver exceptional care and compassionate service to our families locally and across the region."
UPMC Renaissance Family Practice Recognized for Top Patient Experiences Nationally
That same commitment to excellence extends beyond education and into the patient experience. UPMC Renaissance Family Practice, a primary care practice where UPMC St. Margaret Family Medicine Residency Program residents care for patients, was recognized among the nation's top performers in patient experience, earning the 2025 Press Ganey Human Experience (HX) Guardian of Excellence Award(R). The award honors organizations that rank in the top 5% nationally for patient experiences over a one-year period.
Ritchie shares, "This recognition reflects the focus of our teams across the UPMC St. Margaret Family Medicine program to build trusted relationships with their patients and deliver compassionate, high-quality care at every visit."
Yearlong post-visit patient survey results rank the experience at UPMC Renaissance Family Practice consistently in the 95th percentile compared to practices nationwide.
2026 Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians Exemplary Teacher of the Year Honor
Further reinforcing UPMC St. Margaret's leadership in family medicine, the department recently celebrated Karen Moyer, M.D., board-certified family medicine physician, who received the 2026 Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians Exemplary Teacher of the Year Award, honoring family physicians who demonstrate outstanding commitment to teaching, mentorship and advancing the specialty of family medicine.
"For our communities, we are proud to provide top- tier patient experiences and medical education with compassionate, patient-centered care, ensuring our residents and physician leaders are well prepared to shape the future of the profession and serve families across western Pennsylvania.
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Original text here: https://www.upmc.com/media/news/040626-st-margaret-residency
[Category: Health Care]
Peterson Institute for International Economics Issues Commentary: Did NAFTA Really Kill Workers?
WASHINGTON, April 7 (TNSrpt) -- The Peterson Institute for International Economics issued the following commentary on April 6, 2026, by senior fellow Gary Clyde Hufbauer:
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Did NAFTA really kill workers?
The sensational title of a recent Working Paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) suggests that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) did kill workers: Trading Goods for Lives: NAFTA's Mortality Impacts and Implications.
The authors compared mortality in local labor markets exposed to competition from Mexico after NAFTA took effect in 1994 with mortality
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WASHINGTON, April 7 (TNSrpt) -- The Peterson Institute for International Economics issued the following commentary on April 6, 2026, by senior fellow Gary Clyde Hufbauer:
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Did NAFTA really kill workers?
The sensational title of a recent Working Paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) suggests that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) did kill workers: Trading Goods for Lives: NAFTA's Mortality Impacts and Implications.
The authors compared mortality in local labor markets exposed to competition from Mexico after NAFTA took effect in 1994 with mortalityin other labor markets. They found a 0.68 percent annual increase in age-adjusted mortality over the following 15 years and attributed the entire increase to NAFTA's impact on manufacturing jobs.
The New York Times was so convinced of NAFTA's killing power that it ran an even more sensational title in March: "A Lot of Life Years Lost': How NAFTA Shortened American Life Spans."
But the Working Paper's authors--Amy Finkelstein and Steven X. Shi of MIT, and Matthew J. Notowidigdo of the University of Chicago--erred in significant ways that fueled the exaggerated headlines.
The authors' econometric specification did not allow for the possibility that NAFTA may have reduced nationwide mortality even if it did not reduce mortality among those who lost manufacturing jobs as much as the rest of the population.
But more important, statistical association is not the same as policy causation. The failure of US policy was not the creation of NAFTA. The failure was, and remains, the absence of a meaningful safety net for displaced workers.[1]
While presented as a provocative critique of NAFTA, the NBER Working Paper's statistical findings are hardly new. In 2006, a working paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago used quarterly earnings data to show that displaced manufacturing workers experienced a 15-20 percent increase in death rates over the following 20 years.
And the Chicago Fed paper was just one contribution to a large body of statistical literature on the association between job loss and mortality. Meta-analysis of 42 studies on mortality risk published in 2011 by the journal Social Science & Medicine found that mortality following job loss increased by 63 percent after taking into account multiple characteristics of individual workers.
What the NBER authors did in their title was to cherry-pick one cause of job loss, namely imports from Mexico, and suggest that NAFTA was uniquely responsible for "deaths of despair" (to cite the book by Anne Case and Angus Deaton).[2] The body of their paper, however, reports that manufacturing job loss, for whatever cause--trade, recession, technology--was statistically associated with higher mortality. There is nothing particularly unique about NAFTA, or imports from Mexico, or imports in general.
Between January 1994 and December 2008 (the period examined by the NBER Working Paper) US manufacturing jobs declined from 16.9 million to 12.8 million. The impact of NAFTA and imports from Mexico accounted for a small part of that loss of 4.1 million manufacturing jobs. To the extent imports are a source of job loss, between 1994 and 2008 US imports of manufactures from Mexico were only 10.2 percent of total US imports of manufactures.[3] Moreover, as Robert Z. Lawrence has documented, technology and shifting consumer tastes are more important sources of declining manufacturing jobs than imports. Meanwhile, the opioid epidemic, greatly expanding the supply of death-dealing drugs, erupted in the late 1990s, around the same time as larger manufactured imports from Mexico. Opioid consumption triggered by the loss of manufacturing jobs and abrupt earnings losses is not separately explored in the NBER paper.
In any event, policy causation deserves the focus of attention, not statistical association. Based on research by Lawrence, manufacturing jobs were destined to disappear, but the ultimate cause of increased mortality was the failed US policy response. Yet the NBER paper has little to say about policy causation. Other research is more informative.
The cited Chicago Fed paper found that the sharp decrease in average earnings following job loss was a major factor explaining higher mortality. A very good paper by Kerwin Kofi Charles et al. in 2018 supports the idea that it is the loss of manufacturing jobs, not imports, that is responsible for earnings loss. Focusing their attention of the "shock" of imports from China, they find that "the local labor market effects of local manufacturing employment due to Chinese import competition are very similar to the local labor market effects of manufacturing declines due to other forces."
Turning to the policy consequences of earnings loss, research comparing US and German mortality following job loss concluded that the much better German social safety net largely explains the much lower German mortality rate. Other studies report similar findings.
Considering the huge benefits from freer trade, it makes no sense to answer "deaths of despair" by abolishing NAFTA, its reincarnation in 2020 as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or other free trade agreements. Nor does it make sense to halt technological progress by guaranteeing lifetime jobs to manufacturing workers.
What does make sense is to repair the shoddy US social safety net for displaced workers. Temporary compensation for lost earnings and health care should be provided to workers who lose jobs through no fault of their own. Proposals have been floated for wage insurance, guaranteed minimum income, and universal basic income, but none have been enacted. The sole significant improvement in the US safety net in this century, the 2010 Affordable Care Act, is now threatened.
The real US policy failure is the absence of European-style programs for displaced workers. Manufacturing job loss is yesterday's story. It remains to be seen whether this US policy failure will be addressed before the artificial intelligence-tsunami displaces a large number of service sector workers.
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Notes
1. See C. Fred Bergsten (1975), The Dilemmas of the Dollar: The Economics and Politics of United States International Monetary Policy. George Shultz, then secretary of labor, decided in 1969 that it would be too costly to extent adjustment assistance to all displaced workers, and the trade adjustment assistance program (TAA) was accordingly limited to trade-displaced workers. But even for trade-displaced workers, TAA proved inadequate.
2. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, Princeton University Press, 2020.
3. Manufactured imports include SITC 5 (Chemicals and related products, n.e.s.), SITC 6 (Manufactured goods classified chiefly by material), SITC 7 (Machinery and transport equipment), SITC 8 (Miscellaneous manufactured articles). The data source is US International Trade Commission DataWeb.
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REPORT: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34855/w34855.pdf
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Original text here: https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2026/did-nafta-really-kill-workers
[Category: Economics]
OpenAI Releases Policy Guide to "Keep People First" - Nothing More Than Insincere Platitudes
WASHINGTON, April 7 (TNSrpt) -- The Food and Water Watch posted the following news release on April 6, 2026:
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OpenAI Releases Policy Guide to "Keep People First" - Nothing More than Insincere Platitudes
"The sudden explosive growth of the AI industry must be reigned in immediately."
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Today OpenAI released a policy report it said is meant to "keep people first" by addressing what it admits are major societal challenges that will inevitably arise from the explosive growth of the increasingly controversial AI industry.
In response, Food & Water Watch's Managing Director of Policy and
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WASHINGTON, April 7 (TNSrpt) -- The Food and Water Watch posted the following news release on April 6, 2026:
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OpenAI Releases Policy Guide to "Keep People First" - Nothing More than Insincere Platitudes
"The sudden explosive growth of the AI industry must be reigned in immediately."
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Today OpenAI released a policy report it said is meant to "keep people first" by addressing what it admits are major societal challenges that will inevitably arise from the explosive growth of the increasingly controversial AI industry.
In response, Food & Water Watch's Managing Director of Policy andLitigation Mitch Jones issued the following statement:
"These sorts of vague and unenforceable policy recommendations from massive, profit-hungry corporate players like OpenAI should be taken as nothing more than insincere platitudes from a Big Tech industry that is driving completely out of control towards a precipice of energy, environmental and societal crises of its own making.
"The sudden explosive growth of the AI industry - in particular the massive hyperscale data centers wreaking havoc on communities and utility grids across the country - must be reigned in immediately. The only way to effectively achieve this is to place a full halt on the construction of new AI data centers nationwide, until comprehensive rules are enacted by local, state and federal authorities to manage this aggressive industry in a just and sustainable way."
Last month Food & Water Watch released a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind report that makes a compelling, urgent case for a nationwide moratorium on the construction of new AI-driven data centers. The deeply researched report lays out the wide range of harms and hazards associated with the sudden explosion of the data center industry in America, including:
* Enormous and unsustainable consumption of power and water resources, already resulting in skyrocketing utility bills for families and small businesses.
* Dangerous new demand for fossil fuels, posing heightened risks of air and water pollution for impacted communities and a grave threat to our global climate.
* A host of other societal threats, from national economic catastrophe, to loss of critical farmland, to unrelenting noise pollution, to threats to children and democracy.
Later in March, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act, legislation that would impose a moratorium on the construction of all new AI data centers until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers and communities, defend privacy and civil rights and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment.
Last October, Food & Water Watch became the first national organization in the country to call for a full nationwide moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. In a letter to Congress in December, more than 230 national, state and local organizations from across the country echoed this call. Meanwhile, Food & Water Watch has been active in fighting numerous proposals in many states, including California, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
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REPORT: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/561e7512-253e-424b-9734-ef4098440601/Industrial%20Policy%20for%20the%20Intelligence%20Age.pdf
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Original text here: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2026/04/06/openai-releases-policy-guide-to-keep-people-first-nothing-more-than-insincere-platitudes/
[Category: Science]
No Labels Issues Commentary: What a Fiscal Crisis Would Do to Middle Class Families
WASHINGTON, April 7 -- No Labels, a political organization that advocates for centrism and bipartisanship, issued the following commentary on April 6, 2026, by senior writer Sam Zickar:
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What a Fiscal Crisis Would Do to Middle Class Families
A True "Nightmare on Main Street"
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The gross national debt now stands at nearly $39 trillion and is on track, according to the Congressional Budget Office, to grow by tens of trillions more over the next decade. The annual deficit is running close to $1.9 trillion. Washington spends roughly $7 trillion a year and collects only about $5.2 trillion
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WASHINGTON, April 7 -- No Labels, a political organization that advocates for centrism and bipartisanship, issued the following commentary on April 6, 2026, by senior writer Sam Zickar:
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What a Fiscal Crisis Would Do to Middle Class Families
A True "Nightmare on Main Street"
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The gross national debt now stands at nearly $39 trillion and is on track, according to the Congressional Budget Office, to grow by tens of trillions more over the next decade. The annual deficit is running close to $1.9 trillion. Washington spends roughly $7 trillion a year and collects only about $5.2 trillionin revenue. The gap is not new, but its size is.
For most Americans, these figures feel remote. They are large enough to be abstract, and for decades, the consequences of running them up have been easy to postpone. The question worth asking is what happens when postponing is no longer an option. What does a fiscal crisis actually look like for a family earning $80,000 or $90,000 a year?
The Job Market Seizes Up
The first thing that happens in a serious fiscal crisis is that credit tightens across the entire economy. When investor confidence in U.S. government debt starts to erode, as it did during the weak and poorly received Treasury auctions of November 2023 and in smaller episodes since, interest rates rise. When rates rise, businesses cannot borrow cheaply. When businesses cannot borrow cheaply, they stop hiring. When they stop hiring, they start cutting.
During the 2008 financial crisis, which was severe but ultimately contained by government intervention, roughly 13 percent of American households reported financial distress in November 2008, and that fraction climbed to about 17 percent by June 2009. When measured cumulatively, nearly 40 percent of households experienced some form of financial distress during that 17-month period. A fiscal crisis of the kind CBO warns about would be different in kind, not just degree. In 2008, the government could step in and backstop the financial system. In a sovereign debt crisis, the government is the problem. There is no institution large enough to bail it out.
For a middle-class household in which one or both earners work in sectors sensitive to credit conditions, such as construction, logistics, retail, or manufacturing, the first impact could be a pink slip. Unemployment would not look like 2008. It would look worse. When a similar dynamic played out in 2007, driven by collapsing mortgage securities rather than government debt, it led to hundreds of financial institution closures, a decline in housing values of roughly one-quarter, a contraction in output of more than 4 percent, and unemployment rising to 10 percent. A crisis rooted in sovereign debt, with fewer tools available to arrest it, could produce outcomes that compare unfavorably even to that.
Savings Erode Faster Than Most Families Expect
The median American household does not have much of a financial cushion. Most families living on $80,000 to $100,000 a year, after taxes, housing costs, and routine expenses, are not sitting on substantial liquid savings. A job loss in a normal recession is survivable for a few months. In an environment of spiking inflation and tightening credit, it is survivable for weeks.
Inflation is one of the mechanisms through which a fiscal crisis reaches into every household's budget. Rising debt increasingly creates a drag on economic growth, fuels inflation, and elevates interest rates for families and businesses. Inflation is not evenly distributed. It hits food, energy, and housing first, which are exactly the categories that consume the largest share of a working family's income. A household that was managing its budget adequately at stable prices finds the same budget unable to cover the same bills when prices rise 10 or 15 percent.
The savings disappear faster than expected because they are being spent on necessities at inflated prices while income stagnates or falls. Credit card debt rises to fill the gap. And then the credit cards hit their limits too.
Housing Becomes a Trap
For middle-class families who own their homes, a fiscal crisis poses a specific and painful problem. Rising interest rates make new mortgages more expensive, which depresses buyer demand and pushes home prices down. A homeowner who needs to sell in order to relocate for work, or who took out a home equity line to cover expenses, may find that the home is worth less than the debt against it.
For renters, the situation is no better. Landlords facing higher operating costs pass those costs on. Renters who fall behind have few options when shelter vacancy rates are low and shelter costs are rising simultaneously. The shelter system cannot absorb sudden surges. When the math no longer works and eviction follows, most working families in most American cities have no safety net below them.
The Children Bear the Long-Run Cost
Households that have not yet entered the workforce will face the most severe long-term consequences of sustained fiscal irresponsibility. Rising debt slows economic growth, drives up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, makes the nation's fiscal position more vulnerable to increases in interest rates, heightens the risk of a fiscal crisis, and increases the likelihood of other adverse outcomes. Slower economic growth means fewer jobs, flatter wages, and fewer opportunities for young people entering the workforce.
Under current law, CBO projects that annual deficits will grow from 6.2 percent of GDP in 2025 to 7.3 percent by 2055, which would be higher than any point in modern history outside of World War II, the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Over that same period, the debt held by the public -- the measure economists use to gauge fiscal health -- is projected to rise from roughly $39 trillion today to $52 trillion by 2035 alone. The compounding effect of carrying that debt means that a larger and larger share of every tax dollar collected will go toward interest payments rather than services, infrastructure, or any of the things that working families rely on government to provide.
This Is Not Inevitable
None of this is written in stone. What CBO projects under current law reflects a failure of political will, not a failure of mathematics. The problem is solvable but it requires leaders in both parties who are willing to say plainly what is at stake. Every year that Congress avoids making those choices, the available options narrow and the required adjustments become more severe.
To read more about what a fiscal crisis could mean for American families, read Nightmare on Main Street, No Labels' account of how the debt crisis could unfold and who would pay the price (https://nolabels.org/nightmare-on-main-street/).
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Sam Zickar is Senior Writer at No Labels. He earned a degree in Modern History and International Relations from the University of St Andrews and previously worked in various writing and communications roles in Congress. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area and enjoys exercise and spending time in nature.
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Original text here: https://nolabels.org/the-latest/what-a-fiscal-crisis-would-do-to-middle-class-families/
[Category: Political]
Catholic League Issues Commentary: Is Pacifism Moral?
NEW YORK, April 7 -- The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, an organization that defends the right of Catholics to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination, issued the following commentary on April 6, 2026, by President Bill Donohue:
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IS PACIFISM MORAL?
Let's cut to the quick. No, pacifism is not moral. Pacifism means that self-defense, and the defense of one's nation, is immoral. However pure the intent, pacifism holds that it is better to permit innocents to die than it is to use force to stop the aggressors. Now that is immoral.
This issue
... Show Full Article
NEW YORK, April 7 -- The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, an organization that defends the right of Catholics to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination, issued the following commentary on April 6, 2026, by President Bill Donohue:
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IS PACIFISM MORAL?
Let's cut to the quick. No, pacifism is not moral. Pacifism means that self-defense, and the defense of one's nation, is immoral. However pure the intent, pacifism holds that it is better to permit innocents to die than it is to use force to stop the aggressors. Now that is immoral.
This issueis back in the news largely because of the war in Iran. But it is also relevant again because of the recent death of Colman McCarthy, America's premier pacifist, and some remarks by Pope Leo XIV.
McCarthy wrote for The Washington Post for decades. He studied to be a monk and was popular in left-Catholic circles for his opposition to violence in any form and for any cause. He was 89.
He was such a purist that he even refused to stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner," objecting to the refrain "the bombs bursting in air." No doubt he hated fireworks. Any pacifist who views grades and exams as "forms of academic violence" surely must find Fourth of July celebrations to be verboten.
Though McCarthy was loved by his left-wing Catholic fans, he spoke with derision about Catholicism. "As the secretly elected leader of a male-run, land-rich, undemocratic, hierarchic, dogmatically unyielding organization headquartered in a second-rate European country, Pope John Paul II had few, if any, worries about accountability. He ruled, accordingly, as an autocrat."
Why the invective? Among other things, he hated the pope's defense of the "just war" doctrine. In his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, His Holiness wrote that "the intrinsic value of life and the duty to love oneself no less than others are the basis of a true right to self-defense" (his italics).
McCarthy would have none of it. He believed that we have no right to kill an aggressor even in circumstances where that it is the only viable option. Moreover, he believed that even when someone was able to kill an aggressor from killing scores of non-combatant women and children, it would be better to let him slaughter the innocent. This is what pacifism yields--immoral outcomes.
Catholicism ascribes to the "just war" doctrine as broached by St. Augustine. He wanted peace as much as anyone but he also knew there were times when we had to fight in order to achieve it. He laid down several criteria for war, among them that the cause must be just; that there must be a probability of success; that the means used must be proportionate to the desired outcome; and that force should be invoked only as a last resort.
Many years ago when I was teaching at a Catholic college, I listened to a visiting professor lecture the mostly Catholic faculty on the merits of pacifism. He cited the tradition of the Quakers as exemplary and had the audacity to chide the audience for its affiliation with a religion that justifies war in some instances. He was not too happy with me when I stopped him in his tracks, arguing that the only reason any of us are alive today is because enough Americans rejected pacifism as a just option in World War II.
Pacifists may say they believe in peace, but in my book they confuse peace with surrender.
Pope Leo XIV has not openly rejected the "just war" doctrine, but recent comments he made about the conflict in Iran come close.
On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo XIV called for all nations to lay down their arms and choose negotiation. On March 1, he went further, saying about the Middle East, "Stability and peace are not achieved through mutual threats, nor through the use of weapons, which sow destruction, suffering, and death, but only through reasonable, sincere, and responsible dialogue." That comment drew the ire of Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn.
McGurn took strong issue with the word "only." He is, of course, right. Countless wars have resulted in peace. In fairness, the pope was not speaking from a traditional mantle of authority--it was a tweet. No matter, he left himself open for rebuke. It also needs to be said that there are those who wage war on innocents and explicitly reject dialogue. What then? There are times when we can't talk our way out of a confrontation.
St. Augustine won the debate in 418 A.D. when he wrote that "Peace should be the object of your desire; war should be waged only as a necessity...in order that peace may be obtained" (my emphasis).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church agrees with Augustine. "Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggression against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility."
The great American political philosopher, Sidney Hook (whom I greatly admired and studied under), once wrote that "Those who will never risk their lives for freedom will surely lose their freedom without surely saving their lives...." A better rejoinder to Colman McCarthy would be hard to find.
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Original text here: https://www.catholicleague.org/is-pacifism-moral/
[Category: Sociological]
Americans United for Separation of Church and State: Trump Administration's Explicitly Religious Easter Messages Advance Christian Nationalism
WASHINGTON, April 7 -- Americans United for Separation of Church and State issued the following statement:
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Trump administration's explicitly religious Easter messages advance Christian Nationalism
Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser issued the following statement in response to multiple federal agencies and Trump administration officials using official, government-maintained social media accounts to disseminate explicitly religious Easter messages:
"Members of the Trump administration once again misused public resources to advance their Christian
... Show Full Article
WASHINGTON, April 7 -- Americans United for Separation of Church and State issued the following statement:
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Trump administration's explicitly religious Easter messages advance Christian Nationalism
Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser issued the following statement in response to multiple federal agencies and Trump administration officials using official, government-maintained social media accounts to disseminate explicitly religious Easter messages:
"Members of the Trump administration once again misused public resources to advance their ChristianNationalist agenda. People of all religions and none should not have to sift through proselytizing messages to access government information. It's divisive and un-American. Our Constitution's promise of church-state separation has allowed religious diversity - including numerous denominations of Christianity - to flourish in America. The Trump administration should stop proselytizing and start honoring our country's foundational principle of church-state separation, the guarantee of religious freedom for all."
Americans United reminds government officials that official government resources maintained by tax dollars - including official government social media accounts and websites - should not be used to proselytize or disseminate religious messages. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison - the architects of the religious freedom protections embedded in the First Amendment - opposed the government making religious proclamations.
Americans United is a religious freedom advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, AU educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.
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Original text here: https://www.au.org/the-latest/press/easter-trump-messages/
[Category: Political]
