White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

How Loneliness Became a Pandemic and What You Can Do

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You don’t have to be sitting by yourself on an island to be lonely. Loneliness is everywhere.

Studies from universities, governments and public health groups find that the world is in the grip of a loneliness pandemic. More than half the U.S. population is said to be suffering from loneliness. It is classified globally as a mental health problem.

Paradoxically, the studies place most of the blame on our interconnected society and social media: If we communicate electronically, we isolate ourselves. The COVID-19 pandemic also increased our social isolation, and working from home accelerated the trend.

I would suggest that we have been drifting toward loneliness for a long time. Years ago, I wrote about what I called the “box culture.”

In the box culture, people live in a box (apartment), ride down in a box (elevator), get into a box with wheels (car), drive to a stack of boxes (building), ride up in a box (elevator), enter another box (office), and stare into a box (computer).

That, I believe, led to greater isolation. No common dwelling; no common transportation, like a bus or train; and little common work habitat.

The phrase “my space” began to be part of the conversational language. A social networking service named Myspace was launched in 2003.

Email and texting gave isolation a boost even before COVID-19 gave it a massive steroid shot. Now we might be inhabiting “my isolated space.”

Adding to this world of paradox is perhaps the biggest paradox of all — the death of the telephone for the purpose it was invented: talking.

Not only has the telephone declined to near-oblivion as a way of talking to others, but it has also become something of a burden. I find that when I suggest a telephone call, the recipients want to set a time.

When did setting times for calls creep into our lives? It wrings the pleasure out of the telephone, which was always a spontaneous instrument.

When Irving Berlin wrote the song “All Alone by the Telephone” in 1924, he didn’t envisage that people would make appointments to talk.

We have robbed ourselves of the glorious spontaneity, or heartbreak, of the telephone. I have always thought of it as the instrument that can transmute life’s leaden metal into gold unexpectedly, as Omar Khayyam wrote, or as a ray of sunshine you didn’t expect to break through the fog, as Noel Coward wrote. Even just the laughter of an old friend can break out the sunlight on a dismal day.

I can’t catch the laughter in a text. Email is fine for a joke, but it fails where the telephone succeeds: catching the sublimity of laughter, the warmth of love.

Another source of isolation has been the conversion from shopping — the operative part of that word is “shop” — to online buying, a different experience. Or rather, another way of removing the warmth of human interchange from the transaction.

If you are among the legions of the lonely, I would like to suggest, aside from the highly recommended places people meet, like volunteering at a charity or an amateur theater group, going to a pub or to church, do something radical: Speak to a stranger.

My wife and I became friends with two people and their families because I spoke to a stranger in a hotel in Washington, and we spoke to one at a concert in Rhode Island.

We have friends who met while standing in line at an ATM and married not long after. Weight Watchers, when they held meetings, was recommended among the cognoscenti as a place to meet people.

These suggestions may sound trivial, but they are the commerce of life, some of which we have shelved in favor of electronic communications.

In particular, I feel for those who are shut-in by disease and suffer terrible loneliness. They are the loneliest of the lonely.

For many years, I have written and broadcast about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. It is a terrible disease whose victims have no energy, get no refreshment from sleep, and suffer a plethora of pain, usually for life.

Electronics may have robbed us of much human contact and caused a pandemic of loneliness, but not for those sentenced to loneliness by disease.

Inside the Civil War: New Letter Trove Takes You Among Soldiers, Widows, and the Enslaved

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J. Mark Powell’s new book, “Witness to War,” tells the story of the Civil War objectively through the letters of everyday people who endured it.

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, February 24, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — J. Mark Powell, a journalist with the InsideSources syndicate, became fascinated with the Civil War when he was just 9 years old.

The passion has lasted through the decades and now, aged 65, Powell has produced an extraordinary book, “Witness to War: The Story of the Civil War Told by Those Who Lived It.”

His book stands out in a crowded field of Civil War books (which are known to number over 60,000, and speculated at twice that) because it allows readers to experience the war firsthand through excerpts from 432 letters, written by everyday people: Union and Confederate soldiers, and civilians — men, women, a few children, and slaves.

These previously unpublished letters, which come from Powell’s private collection, cover the full sweep of the Civil War from Lincoln’s 1860 election to the war’s end in 1865.

Over the years, Powell bought the letters as he could afford them. He introduces each excerpt in the book as though he were introducing readers to a dear friend of his.

This week, Powell discusses the book on “White House Chronicle,” the news and public affairs program which airs on select PBS and public, educational and government cable access channels. The audio airs on SiriusXM Radio’s P.O.T.U.S., Channel 124, and as a podcast, which is available on Apple and Spotify, among other platforms.

On the program, Powell talks lovingly and passionately about how he cadged, bought, and otherwise assembled the letters.

They comprise the most extraordinary voice of people who endured through the war, from a widow imaging her husband in bed beside her to a letter describing how on the Saturday morning before the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Massachusetts 1st “intermingled freely” with Confederate soldiers, before “the two lines of pickets had to separate and ‘go to work’ as a Rebel expressed it.”

None of these writers, Powell told Host Llewellyn King and Co-host Adam Clayton Powell III, could have anticipated that these very personal communications would be published. He also explained how letters were delivered during the war, and how complex and conflicted feelings were about it, both as it raged and in its aftermath. One writer said, “Now that the cruel war is over, and I look back and see the many lonely homes, I wonder what it all meant.”

King said, “In the 29 years ‘White House Chronicle’ has been on the air, we have seldom had such a moving, insightful and totally absorbing episode as this one with J. Mark Powell, talking about the Civil War and the voices he has unearthed from this crucial chapter in American history.”

In one of the book’s letters, read by Powell at the end of the broadcast, a freed slave, Lizzy, expresses concern for her former owners, takes a dig at their parsimony with food, and celebrates her freedom in Canada:

[Location unknown; presumably Canada]

March 11, 1866

Dear Mistress

It has been quite a few years since I last wrote to yourself and the master in hopes that the two of you will also rejoice as I do for my brethren that have been freed by Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation. Colored by the thousands have found their way to Canada.

The master and yourself will be happy to know that I have been doing my part in helping as many as I can get established in their new home.

Mabel and Jobe have joined me here at the school. They have asked that I write you and let yourselves know that they are well.

In all, thirty-four of your former captives reside here with me. They hold no ill will toward you and the master.

We all worry that you will soon starve like we servants have in your keep. We shall write again soon.

Forever free,

Lizzy

Contact J. Mark Powell at WitnesstoWarBook@gmail.com or JMP.Press@gmail.com

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, Including at the Tech Giants

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For me, the most remarkable thing about Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance at a Los Angeles court, to answer questions about the addictive aspects of social media, was that he was there at 8:30 a.m. wearing a suit.

Sarah Wynn-Williams, in her excellent book about Facebook, “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism,” said Zuckerberg doesn’t see anyone before noon because he has to sleep, having been up most of the night.

This had Wynn-Williams, who rose to head Facebook’s international relations team, sometimes telling heads of state that they would have to wait for the great man to alight from his bed at noon or later.

Zuckerberg could be uninterested or uninformed about the country from which he was trying to get favors for Facebook, she wrote. As Facebook had electorates in its thrall, countries’ leaders were prepared to defer to the sleeping titan.

This doesn’t mean that Zuckerberg is evil, but it does point to enormous self-regard. His sleeping routine is a de facto declaration: I am so rich and so powerful that I can command world leaders to rearrange their schedules to accommodate mine. They did, according to Wynn-Williams.

While the venerable observation by Lord Acton in 1887 that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is nearly always directed at politicians and autocrats, it is as true for billionaires and their companies.

More so with the tech gargantuans who are a force in the financial markets and politics, and will control much of the future if their investments in artificial intelligence pay off. Among them are Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Tesla, Anthropic and OpenAI.

Another point Wynn-Williams made in her book is that most of the heads of state whom Zuckerberg treated with minimal respect won’t be in power in 10 years, but Zuckerberg, who is 41, may be around for half a century. The long game is his, along with his colleague-companies and their CEOs, especially when they own a commanding amount of the stock, like Tesla’s Elon Musk.

The effect of Big Tech as a lobbying force is apparent: Any CEO has access to the White House and is, in turn, cultivated by it. Congress has a permanent welcome mat out to Big Tech lobbyists and their campaign contributions.

A more damaging impact might be what Big Tech does to new tech.

The biggies buy up every startup that looks as though it might become a mega company. All of the Big Tech companies are conglomerates, and history has shown that conglomerates discard unprofitable enterprises and favor the cash cows. Tech autocracy is no kinder than any other autocracy.

Startups are what keep America ahead of the world in tech, and they are keenly watched for any sign that they may grow into another agent of change. Whereas at the beginning of the tech boom, successful startups headed for an initial public offering, and now they calculate from the get-go which behemoth tech company will buy them. The circle is closed.

The big get bigger, and the startup is absorbed into a giant organization, where it might prosper or whither. Either way, it is out of reach, including regulatory reach. It is in the castle walls.

As we see with the fate of CBS and The Washington Post, Big Tech can play havoc with the media and our right to know what is going on. The money is so large that it is almost impossible for politicians not to seek the favor of the mighty techs and their Vesuvian cash flow.

The obverse of that is what they might do if they overreach, as they may be doing now with AI investments, and bring down the stock market.

Big Tech has showered us with wonders that have made life easier and fun, but there is a price. The price is that we have handed the future to a group of companies that, understandably, are interested in self-preservation first, as with all autocracy.

The Danger of Being Inured to the Status Quo

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We have all had the experience of staying a few days in a hotel — say on holiday — which becomes home; quickly, it becomes familiar. Individuals adjust to change. People who come into money get used to being well-off, and people who lose everything get used to that.

So, too, with nations. They adjust with this attitude: That is just the way it is.

The danger to America is that we will adjust, take the aberrations of today as the norm, and that after this period of presidential excess, we will be inured to presidential excess.

We will expect future presidents to skirt the Constitution or ignore it, and to consolidate the dangerous concept of a unitary executive — where the president is all-powerful and Congress is a functionary, often subservient.

The danger is acceptance. When something is accepted, it becomes the new normal, ensconced and hard to remove. The status quo ante isn’t a guaranteed consequence of the next election.

Over 25 years, I went to Ireland once a year to attend an Irish summer school, akin to a Renaissance Weekend here or a mini-Davos. When I started traveling to Ireland, it was one of the poorest nations in Europe.

What was most disturbing wasn’t that Ireland, the mother-nation to so many Americans, was poor, but rather the terrible acceptance that poverty was inevitable, and that to be a poor nation was the destiny of Ireland.

Then came the Celtic Tiger period, 1995 to 2007. The computer industry set Ireland on the road to global success, and the Emerald Isle became the Golden Isle, basking in prosperity. Ireland gained swagger and became a self-confident place that could show the world. This adjustment came quickly.

At the end of World War II, Argentina had the fifth-largest economy in the world. It had a high per-capita income, and its currency was as stable as the U.S. dollar. Now, it ranks 24th in the world by nominal GDP, and 70th by per-capita income, although it is the second-largest economy in South America, after Brazil.

Worse, I have found on visits to Argentina that it has come to accept its status as a permanent economic basket case with inept political leadership.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has been on an upward economic path. It also assumed a world leadership role that made it the envy of the world, the place to emulate.

And for an individual, it was the place to migrate to. Talent and skill poured in, and the United States led the world in medicine, other sciences and technology. Also, in movies and popular music.

A second upward path began in the early 1960s with the civil rights movement, which opened a segregated society to all and became a beacon for the world.

Recently, on the PBS television program “White House Chronicle,” Freeman Hrabowski, spoke with me and my co-host, Adam Clayton Powell, about his astonishing ascent from a child who was imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama, in May 1963 for marching for access to a better school to his being sworn in as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 

“In 30 years, I went from being denied access to a White university, the University of Alabama, to becoming president of a mostly White university,” he said.

Civil rights and human rights were a second trajectory that took the United States to a special place in global esteem. A place of decency, values and hope. We exported those values and promoted them universally, until last year when they were abandoned.

We had accepted that we were a generous nation, concerned with the condition of the world outside our borders and anxious to share our bounty and to help.

The very concept of who we were was tied up with the sense of America’s mission: a force for good at home and abroad; first to seek peace, to further self-determination and healing. America was beautiful in that mission.

Now, we are America the transactional. However, transactions by their nature aren’t generous; they aren’t uplifting. They don’t boost the spirit or inspire the future; they don’t soar. Instead, they say over and over again: “What is in it for me?”

That isn’t America, which is a great country, and a greater state of mind.

Washington Press Corps Is Swollen, but the News Evades It

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The Trump administration — with the power of the White House being felt from the universities to the Kennedy Center — isn’t the only top-heavy institution in Washington. The media is top-heavy, too.

While statehouses around the country go uncovered and local courts go about their business without the light of press scrutiny — a frightening reality — the White House and Congress receive more general coverage than they have ever had.

The press briefings at the White House are tightly packed with more standing than sitting. Droves of reporters roam the halls of Congress.

Washington, in media terms, is a two-ring circus.

This doesn’t mean that either the administration or Congress is being better covered. Here, more is less.

The politics that bitterly divide the country have also crippled the old camaraderie between those who made the news and those who reported it.

In the Capitol, reporters thought to have strong political views are favored accordingly. The old repartee, the fun, has gone. Access, the coinage of Washington, is only for those who are subservient.

The White House is a daily pitched battle between the press in general and the administration. Information doesn’t change hands in that atmosphere.  The White House press staff, led by the gladiatorial Karoline Leavitt, abuses and baits the press. It responds with barbs. It’s “Saturday Night Live” every day of the week.

The trend of over-coverage of Washington has been building for a long time, but it has accelerated in Trump’s second term. From day one, it has been a news gusher, a Roman candle of shining, and some dark things to write about.

Incessant coverage has also been driven by technological advances, enabling fast product delivery at minimal cost. When the entry threshold is low, many will avail themselves.

What is harder to get is the real news, what is really happening.

No more do reporters, as I did once, stroll through the West Wing. No more do high officials brief reporters confidentially. And, worse for governance, no longer do members of the administration or Congress seek input from the media.

John Sununu, President George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff, once told me, “What you tell us is as valuable as what we tell you.” The exchange of information, once seen as vital, is no more.

One phenomenon of the new media ecosystem is that magazines have started daily feeds dedicated to what is or isn’t happening in Washington and what has been triggered from Washington, such as the unrest in Minneapolis.

Weekly magazines and a few monthlies are now reporting daily. They are an inbox coagulant. These include Newsweek, The Economist, The New Yorker, The Spectator, The Atlantic, The American Prospect and many others. Even Vanity Fair often files daily.

Add to these the British newspapers that now treat the United States as part of their universe. The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail and The Daily Mirror all have daily American news feeds and virtual editions.

Then there are the non-commissioned combatants, the bloggers, some of whom are favored by the White House and hold White House press passes. No wonder you can’t get a seat when Leavitt’s daily briefing is underway.

It is theater. It is the greatest daily show on earth. The jugglers and the clowns are at work, tossing and catching, and somersaulting. Catch Leavitt on the high wire. Watch CNN’s Kaitlin Collins try to bring her down.

This lack of communication from officialdom extends across the Washington spectrum. Television producers have tired of inviting Cabinet secretaries and members of Congress to come on their programs only to get talking points. That is one reason so much cable television consists of reporters talking about the news they covered or the news they chased but didn’t catch.

As the late Arnaud de Borchgrave, the world-traveling Newsweek correspondent, once told me, “When you and I were young reporters, we wanted to be foreign correspondents. Now everyone wants to cover politics.”

True, and good luck with that.

Requiem for The Washington Post

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Think of a big-city newspaper as being analogous to a department store. You can get anything you want there, from breaking political news to dinner recipes. When you pick it up, you should be enchanted by the multiplicity of its offerings.

Think of big-city newspapers as you think of the way every city had its own particular and dearly loved emporium like Marshall Fields in Chicago, Bloomingdale’s in New York, and Garfinkel’s in Washington.

For decades, Washington’s great newspaper has been The Washington Post. In recent years, along with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, it has also been one of the three newspapers that can claim to be national.

The Post offered everything from history-changing exclusives to the daily horoscope. And great reporting and commentary.

Now it is going from being a great department store to a convenience store, selling bread, milk and cigarettes — actually, politics and business with limited international coverage.

Having once worked at the Post, I feel this personally, as though a part of my life is being taken away.

I am shattered by the folly and the waste. I am also alarmed that now The New York Times will be too powerful with its online dominance. It got the internet right early.

Jeff Bezos, who bought the Post from the Graham family, failed to catch the wave. Instead, he was seen as being more concerned with placating President Trump. Betrayal, said much of the readership, who cancelled their subscriptions or stopped believing in the paper, despite some courageous and insightful journalism.

The seeds of the Post’s commercial success were sown in 1954. At that time, afternoon newspapers were dominant and morning papers were struggling. In the morning, Washington had the Post and the Times Herald. In the afternoon, it had the Washington Evening Star and the Washington Daily News.

Eugene Meyer, a financier, bought the Post in 1933. By all reports, he thought of it as a diversion. I am told he liked to bring bottles of whiskey to the paper and have impromptu parties with the ever-thirsty staff.

In March 1954, Meyer bought the Times Herald and folded it into the Post.

What wasn’t known was that television would soon shift the balance between morning and afternoon papers, and that afternoon papers would go into permanent decline and extinction.

Both the Star and the News in Washington were battling each other for the read-at-home market. Soon, those readers would be watching television.

Under Meyer’s daughter, Katharine Graham, the Post reached unbelievable heights in journalism and in wealth. It appeared invincible.

Just as television had doomed afternoon papers, technology was to threaten all traditional publishing and broadcasting. New media, such as Facebook and Google, delivered personalized advertisements directly to consumers, cheaply and effectively.

As the red ink spread, it was up to Donald Graham, Katharine’s son, to find an angel, someone to stave off bankruptcy, and follow the early example set by the Times of virtual publishing. He persuaded Amazon’s billionaire founder, Bezos, to buy the Post to save it. Ironical?

A word about Graham: I met him when he first came to the Post. I was asked to show him around the composing room. It was the beating heart of the paper, where the newsroom’s creative output was set in hot metal and assembled in steel frames, known as forms, that would become the pages.

I got on well with him, and we became friends. It must have been extraordinarily painful for him to sell the Post, to entrust it to a man with the money to keep it going until a new business plan paid off.

It began well. Bezos kept his distance until he, like other giants of business, felt he had to mollify Trump, ever a media critic.

The extent of Trump’s pressure became clear when Bezos canceled the publication of an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Emotions were running high, and it was seen by the Post faithful as betrayal: the hand of Trump in the temple of press freedom.

Subsequently, Bezos added insult by changing the direction of the Post’s admired opinion pages, undermining confidence in the readership and the staff.

You can change the product lineup in a retail outlet, but you will burn down the building if you do it in a newspaper.

The Washington Post of old was venerated for fearlessness; now it is despised as craven. It is gone, sunk, a wonderful memory for those who read it, and for those who worked there. R.I.P.

Energy and Government Are Inconstant Lovers

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Politics and science are always falling in love, but they seldom live happily ever after. Quick to embrace, messy to separate is the pattern.

Nowhere has this been clearer than with energy, where projects are dependent on some form of government approval, endorsement, funding and sometimes direct involvement — for example, when the Army Corps of Engineers designs a hydroelectric project or the government’s commitment to take nuclear waste.

The late Financial Times science editor, David Fishlock, with whom I collaborated for many years, advised me to be wary of government falling in love with science, because of the catastrophe that ensues when government falls out of love with it.

Consider the love affair between successive administrations, from Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford, and nuclear power. The administration of Jimmy Carter was cold to nuclear — a cooling that lasted long after he left office.

Carter, a nuclear engineer, delivered the lethal kiss when he described nuclear as the choice of last resort. He favored coal and conservation as the best energy policy, and created the U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corp. to exploit coal. Carter envisioned a time when coal would answer most energy needs: coal in the form of synthetic gas, liquid fuel for transportation, and plenty of coal-fired electricity.

Options were few.

I had worked with the Atomic Energy Commission’s Gorman Smith — who later became executive director of the U.S. Energy Association — on a study for President Richard Nixon on the crisis after the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, and we found the energy cupboard bare. At that time, only nuclear and coal were options. Natural gas was believed to be a resource of the past — the first deputy energy secretary, Jack O’Leary, described it as “a depleted resource.”

Wind and solar were in the dream stage, although the national laboratories were doing yeoman’s work on them.

What wasn’t known was the extent to which technology would upend the energy ecosystem and take it from dearth to abundance.

While Ronald Reagan’s heart was with nuclear, his energy secretary, John Herrington, spooked the debate with his constant leaking to The New York Times about the problems with nuclear waste, and particularly with the large nuclear reservation in Hanford, Wash., where defense waste is stored, dating back to the early days of the Cold War.

Reagan significantly advanced natural gas by deregulating the market and easing the restrictions imposed on it.

Deregulation primed the pump for the explosion that was to come with the perfection of an old technology, fracking, and other technological breakthroughs, particularly horizontal drilling and 3D seismic imaging in gas and oil exploration. A final tech boost to gas was the surge in deployment of aeroderivative turbines — jet engines on the ground — in the late 1980s. They burn gas far more efficiently than placing it directly under boilers, a so-called thermal gas system.

The Joe Biden administration was committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon. It shifted dramatically away from coal and gas and embraced renewables. That administration’s embrace was part of a worldwide transition to renewables, sometimes with aggressive encouragement through loans and tax breaks.

Now with Donald Trump, we have an administration that worships gas, venerates coal, and has come down heavily against wind, especially offshore turbines, even as the world — including China and Europe — has embraced them. It has also criticized solar power, but with less vehemence than its criticism of wind generation.

Nuclear is a favorite now with Democrats and Republicans. However, the Trump administration continues to hamper wind energy, going so far as to cancel offshore leases, while trying to resuscitate the coal industry.

Politics is at work, orchestrating what the administration hopes will be the end of wind and solar.

It also puts them at odds with the big tech companies, which are desperately seeking more green power for their data centers.

Another victim of the administration’s energy policy is hydrogen, a darling of the environmental movement.

The utilities have been here before and have developed a quiet skill in appearing to go along even while they plan — which they do in 25-year cycles — against the four-year political horizon. They have chosen not to challenge the administration’s position with a collective voice.

At present, the administration’s official line is that there is no global warming. The president has called it a hoax and a con. However, utilities are struggling with extremes of winter cold and summer heat that they haven’t historically experienced.

Keep quiet and keep the lights on is the undeclared utility strategy.

SCOTUS May Want to Check the Bible on Citizenship and Rights

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President Trump claims that birthright citizenship isn’t that: a birthright. He wants the authority to revoke the citizenship of U.S.-born children of immigrants here illegally and visitors here temporarily.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on birthright citizenship this spring. It will likely hand down a ruling by summer.  Before the justices decide, they may want to cast their eyes over the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible.

They will learn anew how inviolate birthright citizenship was to Paul when he entered Jerusalem. He had to invoke his Roman citizenship to save himself from flogging and torture. On another occasion, Paul used his rights as a citizen to demand a trial.

Here is what befell Paul in Jerusalem in Acts 22: 22-29:

22 The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”

23 As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air,

24 the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this.

25 As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?”

26 When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.”

27 The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”

“Yes, I am,” he answered.

28 Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.

“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.

29 Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.

In the 1st century, Roman citizenship could be had by birth, purchased or granted by the emperor. But citizens born to their status had something of an edge over those, like the commander, who had bought their  citizenship.

A Roman citizen enjoyed many rights, which are also contained in the U.S. Constitution but are being ignored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who are sweeping up people — some have turned out to be citizens and some have been deported in error.

These are the rights of a Roman citizen in the 1st century:

—Immunity from flogging and torture. These could be used to extract confessions, but were forbidden to be used against citizens.

—The right to a fair trial, which included the accused’s right to confront his accusers.

—The right to appeal directly to the emperor.

—Protection from degrading death, particularly crucifixion.

—Protection from illegal imprisonment. A citizen couldn’t be jailed if he hadn’t been convicted.

Trump is seeking a Supreme Court ruling to uphold his executive order (14161), ending universal birthright citizenship. The lower courts have restricted the order, and the president has asked SCOTUS to set that aside.

The 14th Amendment grants birthright citizenship to any child born under the jurisdiction of the United States. But Trump’s executive order, according to the New York City Bar, “purports to limit birthright citizenship by alleging that a child born to undocumented parents is not ‘within the jurisdiction of the United States.’  It thereby posits that birthright citizenship does not extend to any child born in the United States to a mother who is unlawfully present or lawfully present on a temporary basis and a father who is neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident.”

If Trump prevails, the unfortunate children will be unable to get birth certificates, register for school, receive healthcare or any public assistance. They must either seek citizenship from their parents’ country or, more likely, join the growing ranks of the world’s stateless people, punished for life for the crime of being born.

Victims to be exploited down through the decades of their lives.

The United Nations estimates that there are more than 4 million stateless people in the world, but that is a gross undercount, considering the number of refugees across Africa and in Latin America. War and drought are adding to the numbers daily.

If the justices want another biblical example, they may turn to the Old Testament and its several warnings that the sins of the fathers will be visited on the children for generations. As Exodus 20:5 puts it, “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation.”

Those who support the Trump view may want to think about the iniquity they are promoting. No baby chooses where to be born, ever.

The Rule of Law Is the Foundation of Civilization

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The men you see in masks on your television savagely arresting people may not seem like your affair. But they are your affair and mine, and that of every other American.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates outside of the law. It doesn’t disclose charges, and no one arrested sees a court of law.

ICE agents are also the affair of the whole world, for while they are symbols of local terror, they are also symbols of America’s withdrawal from the one critical underpinning of civilization: the rule of law.

Without it, society isn’t much. No one is secure, even those in charge.

At another time, the victim may be the oppressor. When there is no law, there is only fear. One day, the persecutor behind the mask may find himself persecuted by another man behind another mask.

Once power is wielded indiscriminately, it is free to serve many masters.

During the government of Argentina’s campaign to suppress left-wing political opponents, known as the Dirty War, from 1976 to 1983, a new way of settling personal disputes emerged.

The police arrested so many and killed them secretly — between 10,000 and 30,000, and the victims became known as the “disappeared” —  that soon murder became easier. If you didn’t like a rival or even a family member, you “disappeared” them — and that was that. No one would report such disappearances to the police for fear that it was the work of the police.

When I was in Argentina after the Dirty War, I was told about a man who didn’t like his mother-in-law and disappeared her. Lawlessness breeds lawlessness.

Currently, in areas of America where ICE is present, there is a common assumption that if someone suddenly goes missing, it means ICE has detained them, and they are likely being sent to a detention center for deportation.

Mickey Spillane, the American crime writer, once said the only difference between the police and the criminals was that the police were employed by the government. We see that with ICE.

In 1215, at Runnymede, the nobles of England told King John to cut it out. They demanded an end to the arbitrary confiscation of property and his majesty’s habit of handing out sentences without trial.

Habeas corpus (“that you have the body”) dates in English law to before the Magna Carta, but it was codified there. The Napoleonic Code embraces many of the same elements as the Magna Carta, although Napoleon eschewed English common law when he revised French law into the code in 1804.

Now, about half of the world’s legal systems are based on the French code, and half, including 49 U.S. states, are based on English common law. Louisiana has a hybrid of the two.

Nonetheless, it is a tenet of both systems that the individual will face trial and know his or her accusers, that the accused could be tried by his or her peers, and that the accused has rights.

Historically, the British relied heavily on the rule of law. In fact, law and its application became a mainstay of maintaining order in Britain and in the Empire. It was part of the concept of British exceptionalism.

The dignity and openness of trials were an important part of the colonial ethos. In Southern Rhodesia, before the country suffered a civil war and became Zimbabwe, I was a defendant in a minor dispute with a hotel over a bill. Even though I had settled the bill, I was ordered to appear before the native commissioner’s court in the remote area of the country where the hotel was located.

The court was a room with a single table and chair. Everyone else sat on the floor. It was crowded with justice-seekers and defendants, all of them black.

Only the commissioner and I were colonials. I thought the process would be nothing more than a courtesy call, a wink and blink.

Finally, the great man with bushy, unkempt, white hair and a mustache called me to the table. He read the now-moot complaint and dressed me down in terms I have never been dressed down, even by irate readers.

He said I was a disgrace to Britain, to my ancestry, to my family, and to my school. But, he said, I had especially let down the Empire. I was warned that if I ever faced him again for any reason, no matter how minor, I would get strict punishment.

It was really a rough way to treat a teenager, but it was part of the justice of the day that had to be seen as even-handed and blind.

In “Oliver Twist,” Charles Dickens wrote that “the law is an ass.” I think it is a beautiful beast, despite running afoul of it in colonial Africa. We need it back in the U.S. stable.

Memories of PDVSA: The Same Problems, Just Worse Now

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In 1991, the state oil company of Venezuela, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., known as PDVSA, invited the international energy press to visit.

I was one of the reporters who flew to Caracas and later to Lake Maracaibo, the center of oil production, and then to a very fancy party on a sandbar in the Caribbean.

They were, as a British journalist said, “putting on the dog.”

At that time, PDVSA executives were proud of the way they had maintained the standards and practices which had been in force before nationalization in 1976. The oil company was, we were assured, a lean, mean machine, producing about 3.5 million barrels per day.

They were keen to claim they had maintained the same esprit under state ownership as they had had when they were privately owned by American companies.

They had kept political interference at arm’s length, executives claimed.

PDVSA’s interest then, as it has always been, was more investment, particularly in its natural gas, known as the Cristobal Colon project.

In President Donald Trump’s takeover of Venezuela’s moribund oil sector, natural gas hasn’t been much mentioned — although there may eventually be more demand for natural gas from Venezuela than for its oil.

We had a meeting with Venezuela’s president, Carlos Andres Perez, who was called CAP. He painted a rosy future for the country and its oil and gas industry.

CAP believed the oil revenues would modernize the country. Particularly, he said that technology was needed to make the heavy oil more accessible and manageable.

And there’s the rub. While everyone is quick to point out that Venezuela’s oil reserves are the largest in the world, all oil isn’t equal.

Venezuela’s oil is difficult to deal with. It doesn’t just bubble out of the ground. Instead, 80% of it is highly viscous, more like tar than a free-flowing liquid. And it has a high sulfur content.

In other words, it is the oil that most oil companies, unless they have special production and refining facilities, want to avoid. It takes special coaxing to extract the oil from the ground and ship it.

Venezuelan oil has a high “lifting cost” which makes it expensive to begin with. At present, that cost is about $23 per barrel compared to about $13 per barrel for Saudi Arabian oil.

During the energy crisis, which unfolded in the fall of 1973 with the Arab oil embargo, U.S. utilities considered pumping it with a surfactant (a thinner) to Florida and burning it directly in boilers like coal.

As evidence that the oil operation hadn’t been damaged by nationalization, executives proudly told us that PDVSA produced more oil with 12,000 employees than the state oil company of Mexico, PEMEX, produced with 200,000.

In other words, the Venezuelans had been able to resist the temptation to turn the oil company into a kind of social welfare program, employing unneeded droves of people.

Now I read the workforce of PDVSA stands at more than 70,000 and oil production has slipped to about 750,000 barrels a day.

By 1991, the oil shortage which had endured since the Arab oil embargo had eased, and PDVSA was worried about its future and whether its heavy oil could find a wider market.

Particularly, it was worried about the day when it would run out of the lighter crudes and would be left only with its viscous reserves.

Two oil companies have been shipping oil to the United States during the time of revolution and sanctions: Citgo, a PDVSA-owned operator of gas stations in the United States, and Chevron. Both have waivers issued by the United States, although Citgo is under orders to divest and is set to be bought by Elliott Company (owned by Paul Singer, a Trump supporter), which may play a big role going forward in Venezuela as its expertise is in lifting.

About that party on a sandbank. Well, PDVSA wanted to show the press that it could spend money as lavishly as any oil major.

We were flown in a private jet to an island, then transported on speedboats to a sandbank, where a feast worthy of a potentate was set up under tents. The catering staff had been taken off the sandbank, so the effect was that the party had miraculously emerged from the Caribbean Sea.