Reflections From A Veteran

Reflections From A Veteran Reflections from a Veteran is my article length reflections on politics and an open invitation for productive political discourse. "Resilience Studies at Ft.

Education:
"Hard Knocks Military Academy." Leonard Wood."

09/04/2026

When Tragedy Becomes a Political Argument

Reflections From a Veteran

After a weekend in which forty-one people were shot in Chicago, President Trump used the tragedy to attack the city’s leadership, and Mayor Brandon Johnson answered with political attacks of his own. Watching both sides exchange political potshots amid such suffering was a disgusting display of being out of touch and uncaring.

For a city the size of Chicago, forty-one people shot may be little more than a rounding error. Yet those numbers represent real people. Dozens of families, friends, and loved ones experienced someone being hurt or killed that weekend. Their suffering should have mattered more than either politician’s desire to score points against the other.

Fifteen people were shot at a reunion gathering in Washington Park, leaving one dead and fourteen wounded. Earlier this year, fourteen people were also wounded at an outdoor gathering in Princeton Park. Both rank among Chicago’s ten largest mass shootings since 2013.

While Chicago’s overall crime rate is trending downward, the city still has a long way to go when mass shootings with double-digit victim counts continue to happen. “Crime is down” does not mean the problem is under control. What can Chicago learn from the circumstances surrounding these recurring attacks that could help prevent the next one?

Trump was wrong to use the tragedy to attack Chicago and claim that its violence had never been worse. Johnson was also wrong to answer Trump’s political attack during his direct response to the tragedy. Answering political questions at such a moment was as bad as the blind leading the blind. Both men focused on each other when the victims and their families should have been the focus.

While, yes, I am harder on Brandon Johnson than Donald Trump here, it is Johnson’s city—the city where he has spent decades living and working and which he now leads. Johnson especially owed those families his condolences. Instead, he chose to take political potshots at a national political figure, giving Trump the political equivalent of a paper cut. The political damage done to Trump was insignificant, but the lack of compassion shown toward Chicago’s grieving families was not. What should the people of Chicago reasonably expect from their mayor in the immediate aftermath of such a tragedy?

Johnson also called the violence a “setback.” That was deaf and blind to the very real tragedy dozens of people experienced that weekend. Family members, friends, and loved ones were either hurt or killed. That is not a setback. A setback is a missed phone bill. Being shot, losing someone you love, or watching that person fight for life in a hospital is a tragedy.

His response also reflected a broader pattern. Johnson criticized Trump for spending money on illegal wars and bombing children instead of feeding starving children. Yet Johnson has repeatedly cut services to Chicago’s citizens while committing substantial resources to illegal aliens and other recent arrivals.

His administration used Park District fieldhouses to house migrants, displacing camps, sports, recreation, and other services used by Chicago families and children. His cuts and restrictions also reached first responders, even though Chicago was already operating with a deficit of police officers, firefighters, and paramedics. Halting police recruit classes and restricting hiring in an already understaffed emergency system was inexcusable.

While Johnson presents these choices as acts of morality, Chicago’s citizens tend to pay for his performative morality through reduced services, unavailable public facilities, and understaffed emergency departments. How should city leaders balance helping new arrivals against their existing obligations to the citizens they were elected to serve?

The same tendency to place responsibility elsewhere appears when Chicago blames illegal guns coming from Indiana for its violence. Indiana does not experience nearly the same number of mass shootings with double-digit victim counts. Guns crossing the state line may help explain how some weapons reach Chicago, but they do not explain why people repeatedly fire them into crowded parties, funerals, vigils, and neighborhood gatherings.

Importantly, many of those guns are stolen out of Indiana. A fi***rm originally purchased legally and later stolen is not evidence that an Indiana gun dealer knowingly armed a Chicago criminal. Indiana should pursue gun thieves, straw purchasers, and traffickers, but Chicago must confront the people carrying those weapons and the conditions allowing double-digit mass shootings to continue.

While I pray for those injured and the families and friends of all the victims, I think we should all give our resounding condemnation to both President Donald J. Trump and Mayor Brandon Johnson. The fact that the two of them wished to use such a tragic weekend to exchange political potshots makes me think of two wild boars fighting in squalor.

The families deserved compassion. Chicago’s citizens deserved leadership. What they received instead was political theater.

Sincerely,

One who Trained as Liberty’s Sword and Shield

08/29/2026

The Hidden Tariffs Behind Free Trade

Reflections From a Veteran

I have come to realize that I am not a fan of free trade. It is not just the loss of American jobs and industries that concerns me, but also what I will call the hidden tariffs created by other countries.

Foreign governments prop up their industries so they can undercut American producers. I call these subsidies hidden tariffs because the average person understands what a tariff is. Rather than making American goods more expensive at their borders, these governments make their own goods artificially cheaper in our markets.

My concern is not that countries subsidize products intended for domestic consumption. It is that they also subsidize exports to the United States.

China is notorious for this, but it is far from the only nation that does it. When government subsidies are combined with extremely low labor costs, they create an advantage that American industries cannot reasonably overcome.

For decades, these lower-cost imports have undercut American industries and jobs. This has hollowed out our manufacturing base and, in many cases, pushed American workers toward lower-paying service jobs.

American corporations chose to manufacture in these countries, and American consumers chose to purchase their products. However, poor trade policy allowed those choices to gut American jobs and manufacturing. What enabled us to buy cheaper goods for decades has created a dependency that now leaves us vulnerable to shortages, rising prices, and foreign governments that may seek to leverage it as a tool of control against us.

We need fair trade, not free trade. We also need to reshore jobs and refuse to participate in predatory economies designed to gut our own.

I sadly do not have all the answers for how we can end our dependency on cheap foreign goods. What I can say is that it will be painful. There will be higher prices and shortages as jobs are brought home and these imports are slowly removed from our markets.

Rebuilding what we allowed to be hollowed out over decades will take time, sacrifice, and a willingness to accept short-term discomfort in exchange for long-term independence. But as a nation, it is something that must be done.

Sincerely,
One who Trained as Liberty's Sword and Shield

08/25/2026

When Helping Becomes a Publicity Stunt

Reflections From a Veteran

I'll be the first to say that I'm conservative and that many proposed social programs don't pass the smell test in my eyes. But at least in my case, being conservative isn't about refusing to help people. It's about making sure the programs we choose to fund are effective and efficient. If we're going to spend public money to address a real problem, then we have an obligation to make sure that money actually addresses it. The grocery program currently being ushered into New York City appears to be neither effective nor efficient.

For practical purposes, this program is a publicity stunt, not a true improvement for most people. Five subsidized grocery stores spread across a city the geographic and population size of New York cannot realistically serve most New Yorkers struggling with grocery costs. Within a single borough, one store can effectively be out of reach of many of the people who need it most. Universal eligibility does not create universal access, and putting one store in each borough doesn't change that.

This type of program can make a lot of sense in either a smaller community or one with few to no grocery options. If a rural town has lost its only grocery store, or a genuinely underserved community cannot attract a private grocer, government involvement may be an effective way of filling a hole the market has failed to fill. Neither scenario fits New York City and its population density. New York already has an enormous network of bodegas, supermarkets, independent grocers, produce markets, and other food retailers. The infrastructure needed to put groceries into neighborhoods largely already exists.

That makes spending tens of millions of dollars building new stores from scratch particularly difficult to justify in a city where land and construction cost what they do. The first store alone has reportedly been projected to cost around $30 million, while $70 million has been committed to the broader effort. If just one store can cost that much, we should be asking what else that money could accomplish before pouring it into concrete, refrigeration, shelving, and retail space. What other approaches could New York pursue with that same $70 million, and how many more struggling households might those approaches realistically reach?

That question becomes even harder to ignore when at least one of these city-funded stores is being built across the street from an existing bodega. Think about the contradiction there. The city wants to help communities struggling with grocery affordability, so it spends taxpayer money creating a subsidized competitor to a neighborhood business already selling food there. Why wouldn't we first ask whether that existing business, and hundreds of others like it, could become part of the solution?

There are more than a thousand bodegas and grocery stores throughout New York City. A means-tested program utilizing existing local grocers could have a huge impact on those communities. Instead of limiting assistance to five points on a map, it could potentially be available through a broad network of participating stores located where New Yorkers already live and shop.

Such an approach could accomplish at least four major public priorities with the same expenditure. It could make groceries more affordable for people who actually need the assistance, dramatically expand geographic access, support existing local businesses rather than forcing them to compete against taxpayer-subsidized stores, and help support jobs and additional hours as participating stores experience increased demand. Rather than creating a new retail network, the city could leverage one that already exists.

Most of all, this isn't some complicated new scheme.

We already have SNAP. We already know how to determine eligibility for food assistance, distribute benefits electronically, authorize participating retailers, restrict qualifying purchases, process transactions, and police abuse. Rather than spending $70 million building five stores, it would make far more sense to explore injecting that money alongside existing SNAP benefits or creating a similar city-funded grocery benefit for those just above the SNAP cutoff.

That latter group particularly deserves consideration. There are people who earn too much to qualify for assistance while still struggling to afford necessities. A means-tested city grocery benefit could taper as income increases instead of creating another hard benefits cliff. The objective shouldn't be finding another bureaucracy to build. It should be finding the most efficient way to turn limited public dollars into food on people's tables. How should we design assistance so that it reaches those who genuinely need help without simply creating another arbitrary line between those who qualify and those who are left struggling just beyond it?

Of course, any such program would have administrative costs. There would be questions about fraud, eligibility, retailer compliance, oversight, and how benefits were distributed. But those issues don't disappear under the current program. City-funded stores still require administration, oversight, procurement, staffing, inventory management, contracts, facilities, and safeguards against waste and abuse. Pointing to the administrative complications of an alternative doesn't justify ignoring the enormous administrative and capital costs of the option already chosen.

Those costs become even harder to defend when the current program is so limited and untargeted. There are only five stores, yet there are no guardrails to make sure the subsidy focuses on those who need it most. Someone who is financially comfortable can benefit from the same subsidized prices as someone choosing between groceries and rent, assuming either one can conveniently reach the store in the first place. When capacity is already so limited, why wouldn't we focus that assistance where it can do the most good?

Heck, if New York is determined to build five stores, it would make more sense to identify the five worst-served neighborhoods in a single borough and put all five there than to arbitrarily spread one across each borough. If those are the five communities with the greatest need, that is where the resources should go. Public programs should follow measurable need, not political symmetry.

Using existing stores would also likely face less opposition, not only from the opposing political party but from retailers themselves. Instead of telling neighborhood grocers that their tax dollars are going toward building subsidized competitors, the city could invite those businesses to become partners. Residents get help buying food, stores gain customers and revenue, neighborhoods retain their businesses, and additional economic activity can support local employment.

That is the kind of social program I can support as a conservative—not because it spends money, and not because it doesn't, but because it attempts to accomplish the greatest amount of good with the resources available. To me, that is what responsible stewardship of public money should look like.

There is a fundamental difference between visible government action and effective government action. Building a grocery store is visible. You can put a sign on it, hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and have politicians stand in front of it pointing to lower prices on the shelves. Injecting grocery assistance into thousands of transactions at existing neighborhood stores isn't nearly as photogenic, but if it helps vastly more struggling people, which one actually serves the public? When we evaluate a public program, how much weight should we give to what government can visibly point to compared with the measurable improvement it actually produces in people's lives?

That is ultimately how a program like this should be judged. Almost any expenditure of $70 million will help somebody. The real question is whether it accomplishes its stated purpose effectively and efficiently compared with reasonable alternatives. How many struggling households were meaningfully helped? How much grocery assistance actually reached them? How accessible was that assistance? And how much did taxpayers spend to deliver each dollar of benefit?

Our public resources are finite. Every dollar spent solving one problem is a dollar unavailable for another, which makes stewardship more than a conservative principle; it is a basic obligation of government. If New York wants to spend $70 million helping people afford groceries, then spend it in the manner that gets the greatest amount of food to the greatest number of people who actually need the help.

Five heavily subsidized stores scattered across a city of millions may make for wonderful publicity. They may even genuinely help the people fortunate enough to live close enough to use them. But that is not the same thing as meaningfully improving grocery affordability for New Yorkers.

And for practical purposes, when the publicity generated by a program is far larger than the problem it can realistically solve, what else should we call it but a publicity stunt?

Sincerely,
One who Trained as Liberty's Sword and Shield

08/22/2026

Indiana's Proposed S.O.R. Park Ban

Reflections From a Veteran

Indiana has, on more than one occasion, had a bill introduced that would ban those on the S*x Offender Registry, hereafter referred to as the S.O.R., from going to our state's parks. While I applaud the legislators for wanting to keep our communities safe, laws like these are futile and ultimately likely unconstitutional.

First, while I'm appalled by the crimes those on the S.O.R. have been convicted of, they still have rights under the Constitution, namely the First Amendment and its protection of our rights to association and free speech. While the Supreme Court has made it clear that restrictions on place and time are not necessarily violations of the First Amendment, broadly speaking, those are the restrictions usually found to be constitutional. Where should we draw the constitutional line between legitimate restrictions intended to protect the public and restrictions that deprive an unpopular group of rights everyone else retains?

Secondly, our state constitution explicitly prohibits ex post facto laws, or simply put, laws that punish someone beyond the completion of their sentence. Imposing additional restrictions afterward raises serious questions about whether we are protecting the public or simply continuing a punishment beyond what the courts imposed.

Thirdly, the number of S.O.R. registrants who reoffend is startlingly small. Very few such offenders do so repeatedly, and sadly, most victims are people to whom the offender had both access and a position of trust. A blanket restriction on access to state parks does little to address those circumstances. What measurable improvement in public safety should we require before restricting the liberty of an entire group of people?

Lastly, those who are repeat offenders will likely simply use a new hunting ground if they are blocked from one. No location restriction can block them from all potential victims, and who is going to screen every parkgoer to see if they are on the S.O.R. in the first place? A restriction that cannot reasonably prevent a determined offender from entering a park or seeking victims elsewhere does little to address the actual danger.

While I'm all for laws that protect our communities, these proposed bills are questionable at best and completely unconstitutional at worst, while providing little measurable benefit. Laws need to be several things if we are going to institute them: constitutional, limited in scope, effective, and efficient. These laws are none of those things. Rather, they're a waste of legislative resources to consider and, if instituted, create a dangerous false sense of security. How should legislators balance the desire to demonstrate that they are addressing a serious problem against the responsibility to ensure that the laws they pass actually make communities safer?

Unless a law provides a measurable increase in a community's safety and abides by the rights enshrined within the U.S. and state constitutions, how can it be justifiable? Pointedly, our rights are meaningless unless they apply to even the least favored among us. As much as it may feed our sense of moral righteousness, these sorts of laws erode the fabric upon which we founded our nation and create a precedent that invites repeated expansions that tear that fabric further.

Sincerely,

One who Trained as Liberty's Sword and Shield

08/18/2026

When Will We Demand Accountability in Education?

Reflections From a Veteran

We hear a lot about kids not being able to read or do math. Sadly, what we don't see nearly enough of is accountability. Much of the blame gets piled on teachers, but the truth is that education should be a partnership between parents, teachers, schools, and the school district. When any one of those fails to do its part, students are going to struggle to succeed.

A student without parental support for their education is unlikely to succeed. Teachers can teach, schools can provide resources, and districts can set standards, but education cannot simply stop when a student walks out the school doors. Parents have a responsibility to support their child's education, know when they are struggling, and work with the school to address those struggles. At the same time, schools and districts have a responsibility to respond when a student is falling behind rather than simply passing them on to the next grade. What should each part of that partnership be expected to do when a student begins falling behind?

This by no means excuses the parent who is checked out of their student's education. I fully understand that some parents are constrained by working too many hours or not understanding the work themselves. Having said that, I have witnessed hundreds of parents who are either fully absent or absent in practice for reasons entirely their fault. That is an almost insurmountable handicap, and we need to acknowledge that fact and find a way to help such students.

Parental involvement, however, is only one part of the problem. School systems also demand a rate of progress that often surpasses a student's adaptation and absorption rates. We have accelerated things to the point where grade schoolers are expected to begin working with algebra while many have not figured out multiplication and fractions at those ages. Pretending otherwise can only hurt the students and, ultimately, the country.

Math builds upon itself. A student who doesn't understand multiplication is going to struggle with fractions, and a student who doesn't understand fractions is going to struggle with algebra. Yet instead of stopping and making sure those fundamentals are understood, we keep moving. The curriculum says it is time for the next subject, so the class moves on whether the student is ready or not. How should schools determine when a student has actually mastered the fundamentals well enough to move on?

A student who fails to grasp those fundamentals has almost no chance to pick them up when increasingly complicated material continues being piled on top of what they already don't understand. We compound the problem by pushing students forward regardless of whether they are failing their classes. We call that advancement, but moving a student to the next grade does not mean the student has actually advanced.

These are not new problems either. I myself had a high reading level in school, but my younger brother read at roughly a third-grade level despite eventually being in high school. What student who only reads at a third-grade level can succeed there? More importantly, how many years was he simply shoved forward before reaching that point?

Look, my brother was likely never going to be a successful conventional high school student. Some students simply need a different educational track. But for years I watched my parents struggle to help him as he struggled, yet he kept getting passed on to higher grades and eventually to an alternative school. That is not a solution.

Moving a child to another classroom or another school doesn't magically give them the skills they are missing. If a student reaches high school reading at an elementary school level, handing them high school textbooks and expecting them to somehow catch up is absurd. At some point, we have to stop pretending that keeping students with their age group is more important than actually educating them at the level they are capable of learning.

The consequences also extend beyond the student being pushed forward. Each student like my brother who gets shoved ahead takes resources away from others who could succeed with a bit of help. Teachers only have so much time in a school day. Trying to mentor someone who is completely unprepared to receive the instruction being given means students who need just a little additional help may not receive it.

The problem doesn't remain purely academic either. A student who spends years failing knows they are failing, and their classmates know it too. Other students may ostracize them. Embarrassment and frustration grow, and behavioral problems often grow along with them. Now the teacher isn't simply trying to teach a student who is years behind but may also be dealing with the behavioral consequences created by years of frustration and failure.

Meanwhile, the average student doesn't get what they need and deserve. They may only need a little additional instruction to turn confusion into understanding, but they are often the easiest students to overlook. They aren't failing badly enough to demand attention, and they aren't excelling enough to stand out.

Then we fail our best students from the opposite direction. A student capable of moving at a much higher pace is often kept at the pace of everyone else. Once they have mastered the material, forcing them to sit through months of material they already understand isn't education. It is repetition. Eventually, that can lead to boredom, disengagement, and even students dropping out despite having tremendous academic ability. What opportunities should we give students who are ready to move beyond the material their age group is being taught?

So we are failing students left, right, and center. Failing kids get shoved forward. Average students don't get the help and attention they need and deserve. Our best students are kept from moving at their higher pace. Then we wonder why educational outcomes continue to disappoint us.

When, as a society, will we demand accountability and accept that some students need a different educational track?

That doesn't mean giving up on struggling students. It means actually educating the student standing in front of us instead of educating the grade printed beside their name. If a fourteen-year-old needs intensive instruction in elementary-level reading, then give them intensive instruction in elementary-level reading. If another student is ready for advanced mathematics years ahead of their age group, let them move ahead. If another student is better suited for vocational and hands-on education, give them that opportunity.

Different does not have to mean lesser.

Those tracks don't have to become permanent labels either. Students can move as their abilities develop. A struggling student who catches up should be able to move forward. An advanced student who encounters something they struggle with should be allowed to slow down. The purpose should be progress, not maintaining the appearance that everyone born within the same twelve-month period learns the same things at the same speed.

Accountability also has to exist throughout the partnership. Parents need to support their children's education. Teachers need to teach and identify where students are struggling. Schools need to provide teachers and students with the resources necessary to address those struggles. Districts need to stop creating policies that value advancement on paper more than mastery in reality.

Most importantly, failure needs to mean something. If a student fails to master the material necessary for the next level, simply pushing them into that next level is not solving the failure. It is passing the problem to the next teacher, where it will usually be larger and harder to fix. How many times can we do that before admitting the system itself has failed?

Education should be a partnership between parents, teachers, schools, and school districts, with the student taking increasing responsibility as they grow older. When any part of that partnership fails, the others may be able to compensate for a while, but they cannot compensate forever.

We need to stop measuring success by how quickly we can push children through twelve grades and start measuring it by whether those children are actually learning. A diploma cannot make someone literate. Passing a student into algebra doesn't teach them multiplication or fractions. Moving a child into high school doesn't suddenly give them a high school reading level. And holding an exceptional student back doesn't somehow improve the education of everyone else.

At some point, we have to stop pretending that moving every student along the same track at roughly the same speed is fairness.

It isn't.

Fairness is giving every student the education they actually need and the opportunity to progress as far as their abilities and effort can take them.

Sincerely,
One who Trained as Liberty's Sword and Shield

Address

South Bend, IN
46613

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Reflections From A Veteran posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category