To the Editor:
Re “Trump’s Celebration of Violence Wounds America,” by Phil Klay (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 7):
In Mr. Klay’s essay about how the Trump administration promotes the glorification of violence, it’s worth recalling that psychologists began documenting this danger decades ago.
The psychologist Stanley Milgram demonstrated in the early 1960s that simply asking someone politely to increase painful electric shocks administered to a screaming, innocent student led nearly 65 percent of participants to deliver maximum voltage. Philip Zimbardo’s infamous Stanford Prison Experiment showed that assigning someone a powerful title — a “guard” at a mock prison — unleashed escalating cruelty among normally moral college students.
What protects us from these base reactions, to which most of us are prone, is a strong institutional context that increases emotional connection to victims, provides social validation for resistance and maintains functioning judicial systems that undermine the legitimacy of destructive commands. This is why effective leadership in a democracy must be moral leadership.
Linda Berg-Cross Potomac, Md. The writer is a professor emerita of psychology at Howard University.
To the Editor:
For the people of a nation, an accurate measure of conflict lies not only in military victories but also in maintaining moral integrity, which forms the foundation for a lasting and just peace. The historian Will Durant wisely observed, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”
Although war’s physical destruction is temporary, the moral decay it encourages remains a persistent threat to peace. In the aftermath of World War II, despite the horrific crimes committed by the Axis powers, the Allies maintained their commitment to justice through the Nuremberg trials. By holding individuals accountable under legal standards rather than resorting to summary executions or collective punishment, the victors demonstrated a moral commitment to international law.
The goal of war is to create a peace better than the one that existed before the conflict. This higher goal can be reached only when moral clarity is upheld — a guiding light that is needed to build a fair future.
Emilio Iodice Rome The writer is the author of “The Search for Moral Leadership in the 21st Century: Lessons From History” and other books.
To the Editor:
The current administration has successfully tarnished the image of so many of our institutions: Elite colleges and universities, once-reputable law firms, media outlets and the like have all been affected.
The American military had consistently been one of the most highly regarded institutions in America. Now that it is being put in a position to execute illegal and immoral military operations it, too, has been tainted.
Phil Klay closes his essay with a profound question that every American should be asking: “Given that we are all, every day, imbibing madness, how do we guard our souls?” The moral injury being inflicted upon the citizenry of this nation is grossly underappreciated, and the ill effects thereof will be felt for generations to come.
(Rev.) Shaun S. Brown San Diego
To the Editor:
Those in the White House and the Pentagon who give these orders to fire on fishing boats clearly know nothing about the lasting wounds of war. Those soldiers ordered to kill civilians and noncombatants by their military superiors share a legacy of pain and guilt going back to soldiers following the same orders during the Vietnam War and wars thereafter.
As a psychotherapist who has treated United States military veterans since 1970, I know that the moral injury suffered by soldiers ordered to kill by their commanders (who often later deny the resulting atrocities or blame the soldiers) is devastating. That injury continues for generations in a soldier’s family; I now treat the grandchildren of soldiers so grievously injured.
No matter how the killings are euphemized, the American people cannot help but feel the horrors and disgust of living with the knowledge of these collectively committed moral crimes.
Bill Roller Berkeley, Calif. The writer is a family therapist.
To the Editor:
In some ways, I’m almost grateful to this administration for ripping away the facade of America as a bastion of moral fortitude. The nation has always striven to be just that on paper, and there has been times when it has moved in that direction, but overall, America has fallen far short of its lofty ambitions.
What we are seeing now is the ugly truth behind America. Voters knew this was coming. Roughly one-third of the nation voted for it because they wanted it, one-third voted against it and one-third didn’t vote at all because they didn’t care. If we are the government, and majority rules, then this must be who we are as a nation.
Duane Lanham Fairfield, Conn.
To the Editor:
Phil Klay may be correct about how the Trump administration’s actions are contributing to the denigration of the American soul, but they can also be seen as classic examples of bread and circuses. The spectacles of cruelty and the celebrations of violence that follow them are distractions from the real goal: regime change that will to make it easier to exploit another country’s resources.
Americans want to believe that our military adventurism has noble goals, but it is usually just about access to resources and profits. It is rarely that simple, though, usually leading to protracted wars that profit the military-industrial complex. The real cost is thousands of dead men, women and children — Vietnamese, Iraqi, Afghan and now maybe Venezuelan.
That is the true denigration of the American soul.
Rob Aft Los Angeles
In Search of an ‘American Evangelical Church’
To the Editor:
Re “The Christian Answer to MAGA Evangelism,” by David French (column, Nov. 17):
Mr. French wishes “the American evangelical church” would take a strong stand in support of immigrants and their rights similar to that of Pope Leo and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. But in fact, no such entity as the American evangelical church exists.
There are Americans who self-identify as evangelical Christians, but they do not belong to a single ecclesial institution, or look to any one person or group as representing their views or interests.
“MAGA evangelicals” do not exclusively belong to any one denomination. Amish, Quakers, Presbyterians, Pentecostals and strands of conservative Roman Catholics also, when polled, identify as evangelicals.
Even Southern Baptists did not identify as evangelicals until one of their own, Billy Graham, employed the term as a way of avoiding the label fundamentalist, which had become toxic in the decades after the 1925 Scopes trial.
In addition, unlike Roman Catholics, evangelicals do not have a shared body of biblically based social teachings upon which to draw. Focused as they are on individual salvation, evangelicals have yet to develop a vision of what a just society might look like. Mr. French has some good suggestions.
Kenneth L. Woodward Chicago The writer is a former religion editor of Newsweek and the author of “Getting Religion: Faith, Culture and Politics From the Age of Eisenhower to the Ascent of Trump.”
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