The continuing disintegration of political cohesion in democracies throughout the world, the rise of authoritarian populism within democracies and the increasing suppressions of entrenched authoritarian regimes have created a growing crisis of failing governance around the globe.
The real-world turmoil and trauma driving our governing dysfunctions — political strife and economic inequalities, pandemics, floods, fires, debilitating storms, racial reckonings, and dehumanization of "others" — are bedeviling virtually every economic and political system on every continent throughout the world.
Representative democracies, including most specifically our own constitutional republic, cannot reform our cultural, economic and political institutions to better serve the needs and interests of our citizens and to meet the exigencies of the 21st century until we define a collective purpose and shared meaning that transcends ideology and special interests.
Narrow purpose, party dogmas and rigid ideologies of certainty are endemic to modern cultures, belief systems and political narratives. Spread relentlessly by hyperpartisan, for-profit communications companies and social media, our prejudices, biases and hatreds fester in the body politic like a metastatic cancer.
However, a healthy, constitutionally ordained representative republic cannot forever endure the toxins of resentment and vengeance without forfeiting the ideals of liberty, justice and opportunity for all.
Humans cannot thrive, much less survive, without a conscious, courageous and enduring declaration of faith in ourselves and our institutions.
Faith is not simply a religious precept; it is the foundation of human dignity and mutual responsibility. It is the means by which our species finds the will to hope and dream, accepts one another in spite of our differences and discovers common purpose in collective identity.
Faith requires a leap from logic; a belief in the future we have not yet seen or experienced. It begins as a figment of imagination. It manifests as a willingness to entertain affirmative human possibilities.
In these fraught times, it is worth trying to discern the elementary "faiths" that define 21st century core beliefs that are necessary to advance classic liberal democracy and combat authoritarianism in America and throughout the world.
The exigencies of the 21st century require a set of beliefs that transcend ideology, tribalism, nationalism, party and special interests. For Americans, this means conscious commitment to five basic faiths that advance an affirmative view of human nature and enable healthy self-governance:
- Faith in one another: belief that America's diversity, like diversity within all plant and animal species, is both a survival strength and a precondition for human thriving. As one of the most diverse countries on earth, America's continuing struggles for inclusion, cultural and social integration and political cohesion have been a central feature of our nation's experience since its founding. Only through respect for the dignity of each person and faith in Jesus' directive to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" can human beings discover our mutual interests, common purposes and shared destinies.
- Faith in our Constitution: belief in the ideals enshrined in our Constitution that liberty, justice and opportunity for all are the foundations of human creativity, security and prosperity; and that no matter how long or hard the struggle to realize these ideals has been, and will continue to be, we have abiding faith in our collective ability to perfect ourselves and advance our collective interests.
- Faith in government: belief that a constitutional republic form of self-governance, rule of law, and fair and free elections ensure a government capable of functioning by, for and of the people. It also includes believing that this system is best capable of reforming itself and protecting against capture by narrow ideologies and special interests.
- Faith in free markets: belief that civil and economic freedoms are inextricable liberties and the bedrock of our constitutional republic form of government. Innovation, capital formation, fair and free markets, wealth creation, and business success create engines of dynamic change, much of the work that inspires human productivity, and the profits, if fairly distributed, that can ensure prosperity for the greatest number. Democracies that enable, and appropriately harness the excesses of, free markets will optimize liberty, justice and opportunity for all.
- Faith in global interdependence: belief that our global challenges require whole-world solutions that are dependent on global cooperation. Adversaries and allies alike contribute to our global problems and must share responsibility for addressing them effectively. Innovating and empowering means, methods, and mechanisms for agreeing on the dimensions of common challenges, framing cooperative solutions and accepting mutual responsibilities for their amelioration is a 21st century imperative. We have become an interdependent world in which acceptance of our common interests and destinies is central to human, national and global survival and salvation.
Faith is the essential building block for constructive interpersonal relationships and productive institutional cooperation. Our collective abilities to thrive in the years and decades to come are dependent on restoring the values of truth, trust, reason and civility in our human interactions. It is in our self- and mutual interests to find the will, courage and strategies necessary to have abiding faith in ourselves, our institutions, our communities and our nation.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.