Paterno, a former quarterbacks coach for Penn State University, ran for lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania in 2014 and consults on a variety of issues.
Wednesday morning in Happy Valley, through the open windows of my home office, I heard the chirping of a cardinal at the bird feeder, the voices of children walking to the neighborhood elementary school and the sound of a school bus slowing to a halt. Up and down the street mothers or fathers stood at the bus stop, holding a small child’s hand.
The simple things that happen every day in America are among the best. The excitement that comes with the new hope that rises with each day’s dawn.
But Wednesday morning we woke from another national nightmare, just days after another national nightmare that was just days after another national nightmare. No place is safe from America’s violent terror cycle that strikes homes, schools, stores, movie theaters, street corners and houses of worship.
And each time these mass shootings happen, opposing parties line up and fight with one side obstinately defending the status quo and the other looking to make sense of what happened, trying to lessen the violence in this country. Not much happens.
If we are to become the exceptional nation we claim to be, at some point, when more blood is spilled and more children are lowered into the ground, we have to act to correct a hard truth. From homicides to suicides, in cities and towns all over America, guns take the lives of too many children and adults every day.
The grief becomes frustration, and we are left to ask: “What is the soul of America?”
We are soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy. We are firefighters running into the twin towers on 9/11 to save others. We are the woman in Buffalo shopping every Saturday for food she took to a food pantry for others. We are the countless unseen simple acts of generosity, kindness and courage done for our fellow human beings.
We can proudly put the best of this country against the best of any other country.
But we are also a nation where a heavily armed 18-year-old man can walk into a store or a school holding the too-easily-obtained power to violently end the lives of others. We are a nation where some preach hatred and baseless theories to scare and intimidate people. We are a nation where many feel isolated and alone. We are a nation where charlatans twist religion and yell from the pulpit to cast condemnation on others who do not look or love or worship the way they deem acceptable. We are a nation founded in freedom’s cause that allowed slavery and a constitution that counted some people as fractional human beings.
So, dispense with the lecture about the founders’ infallibility. Like the Bible and nearly every religious text, the Constitution has passages we can pull to justify pretty much anything we want.
It is neither politically expedient nor acceptable to admit that our history and our soul are complex. In fact, some would have us erase our complexities from the history we teach our children. The truth is rarely ever wildly popular among all people. But the fact remains that by the very nature of our humanity, we are imperfect.
Are we so arrogant as to believe that, we, of all people who’ve lived across the ages, somehow we have slipped the bonds of human imperfection that many far wiser could not escape?
If we are honest as Americans, we must accept that part of our soul is violent. Part of us has always believed that might makes right. The source of that might has often been the weaponry of war, weaponry that is readily accessible to the best and worst of us.
At our best, the eloquence and leadership of great leaders repeatedly moved our nation towards a more perfect union. They pointed the way towards our ideals. But to move towards a more perfect union, to solve the violence in America, the bully and the bullet must not be mightier than the voices of millions calling for a more just nation. The money and power of entrenched interests must not destroy the dreams and rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Tuesday in a small corner of Texas, the inalienable human rights and dreams of children still new on their life’s journey were shattered. The best of our soul met the worst of our soul, and the worst marked those families, that community and our nation once again. Sadly, the most basic rights of children and people are taken by violence every day in America.
The time for rhetoric has passed. The time of politicians and lobbyists awash in money staking out intractable and uncompromising extreme positions to remain in power must end. Because, so too, the blood sport of power-play politics is part of our soul.
And sadly, so too are the anguished families waiting late into the night in Uvalde, Texas, clinging to the fading hope that their child would come home. Our soul includes the people who survived that carnage, their lives, minds and dreams forever changed. The most horrific end to a day had come to a place and a day that probably began much like the day of hope right outside my window.
The cries of their pain, the pain of their loss must shake our collective soul. If once again we can ignore the pain of unspeakable loss, what does that say about us?
The hard question persists. Even harder answers must emerge.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.