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The battle between good and evil rages on

LIttle boy walking

The author's son in Moscow, on the family's third visit to complete the adoption process. Vladimir Putin later cutoff off U.S. adoptions of Russian children.

Amy Lockard

Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “ the first lesson of history is the good of evil.” A contrary statement, but one that describes the impetus that must often take place to move people and nations to action. Such a time is now.

As children, we read stories of heroes and villains pitted in the struggle between good and evil. Cinderella and her evil stepmother; the heroes in the “Narnia” series and the White Witch; Mowgli and Shere Khan in “The Jungle Book,” Peter Pan and Captain Hook. On and on. Disney movies also brought fairy tales to a whole generation on the big and small screens. But rarely, even in those cartoon depictions, was evil defeated without sacrifice.

Perhaps we were more attuned to the struggle between such opposing forces as children, our perceptions stored away with other childish things. Yet, forces for good and for evil play out every day in our lives. For evidence, we need look no further than the daily news.


In our politically correct world, it is tempting to deny this. That is, until evil becomes an imminent threat, too close, too powerful. Yet, how much better to confront it before it runs rampant – as in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, as now in Ukraine.

We have a son, adopted from St. Petersburg, Russia. He was brought home just weeks before Vladimir Putin abruptly closed adoptions to the United States, an act of political retaliation for freezing Russian assets. (Read “ Red Notice ” by Bill Browder for a stunning story of the struggle between good and evil in Putin’s corrupt Russia.)

When adopting from Russia, three visits are required as well as suitcases of presents and money – presents over the table, money under it. When Putin closed adoptions in 2011, hundreds of orphans lost their chance at a home and a life. Older children especially were painfully aware of their loss; their prospective parents had met them, likely twice, and they were waiting only to go to their new homes.

Orphans punished, parents broken-hearted, millions of dollars lost. There is not much more one needs to know about Vladimir Putin.

As the years have gone by, Putin has only grown more openly ruthless. His illegal invasions of Ukraine (first Crimea in 2014, and then the rest of the country two years ago) is evidence enough.

It is well past time to recognize him for the villain he is.

We also have a son adopted from Ukraine. In April 2022, Kharkov, in the northeastern part of the country, was bombed. We watched on the national news as the children from Orphanage #4, where our son was, were evacuated.

Again, orphans. Always the innocent. Always those without resources to fight. That is how bullies operate. That is how evil flourishes.

In the United States, we will not tolerate bullying in schools. It is time we take that intolerance to the world’s “playground.”

Alexei Navalny, who crusaded against Russian corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin demonstrations, died Feb, 16h in Russia’s Arctic penal colony. He was 47. He had returned to Moscow of his own volition from Germany, where he had been recovering from nerve agent poisoning, blamed on the Kremlin.

Navalny returned to Russia because he was courageous, because he cared about his people and because he valued freedom over even his own life.

“Virtue is bold and goodness never fearful,” wrote Shakespeare.

President Joe Biden, along with many members of Congress from both the left and the right, have joined world leaders in blaming Putin, and the rotten political system he commands, for Navalny’s untimely death. Yet many shamefully have not.

It is past time to stop the disgraceful antics of some in Congress and the political finagling. It is past time we move beyond partisanship, fund Ukraine and continue to aid in their struggle.

In all the stories of all the great battles ever told, from the earliest literature to the Bible to “Star Wars,” the storyline is the same. The fight is ultimately between evil and good, between darkness and light.

We must channel our early understanding of the world. We know evil when we see it. We knew it as children; we know it now.

Let us be on the side of the light.

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This Isn’t My Story. But It’s One I’ll Never Forget.

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This Isn’t My Story. But It’s One I’ll Never Forget.

My colleague, Meghan Monroe, a former teacher and trainer in the Dignity Index, went out to lunch with a friend on the 4th of July. Her friend was late and Meghan found herself waiting outside the restaurant where, to her surprise, a protest march approached. It wasn’t big and it wasn’t immediately clear what the protest was about. There were families and children marching—some flags, and some signs about America being free.

One group of children caught Meghan’s eye as they tugged at their mother while marching down the street. The mom paused and crouched down to speak to the children. Somehow, Meghan could read the situation and realized that the mom was explaining to the children about America—about what it is, about all the different people who make up America, about freedom, about dignity.

“I could just tell that the Mom wanted her children to understand something important, something big. I couldn’t tell anything about her politics. I could just tell that she wanted her children to understand what America can be. I could tell she wanted dignity for her children and for people in this country. It was beautiful.”

As Meghan told me this story, I realized something: that Mom at the protest is a role model for me. The 4th may be over now, but the need to explain to each other what we want for ourselves and our country isn’t.

My wife, Linda, and I celebrated America at the wedding of my godson, Alexander, and his new wife, Hannah. They want America to be a place of love. Dozens of my cousins, siblings, and children celebrated America on Cape Cod.

For them and our extended family, America is a place where families create an enduring link from one generation to the next despite loss and pain.

Thousands of Americans in central Texas confronted the most unimaginable horrors on July 4th. For them, I hope and pray America is a place where we hold on to each other in the face of unbearable pain and inexplicable loss.

Yes. It’s complicated. There were celebrations of all kinds on July 4th—celebrations of gratitude to our military, celebrations of gratitude for nature and her blessings, and sadly, celebrations of hatred too. There are a million more examples of our hopes and fears and visions, and they’re not all happy.

I bet that’s one of the lessons that mom was explaining to her children. I imagine her saying, “America is a place where everyone matters equally. No one’s dignity matters more than anyone else’s. Sometimes we get it wrong. But in our country, we always keep trying and we never give up.”

For the next 12 months as we lead up to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we’re going to be hearing a lot about what we want America to be. But maybe the more important question is what we the people are willing to do to fulfill our vision of what we can be. The answer to that question is hiding in plain sight and is as old as the country itself: join with others and do your part, and no part is too small to matter.

At our best, our country is a country of people who serve one another. Some may say that’s out of fashion, but not me. Someone is waiting for each of us—to talk, to share, to join, to care, to lead, to love. And in our time, the superpower we need is the capacity to treat each other with dignity, even when we disagree. Differences of opinion aren’t the problem; in fact, they’re the solution. As we love to say, “There’s no America without democracy and there’s no democracy without healthy debate and there’s no healthy debate without dignity.”

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