Justice by Means of Democracy: A Critique

In Justice by Means of Democracy, Danielle Allen seeks to bring John Rawls’ Theory of Justice into the 21st century. I come to Allen’s work by way of her foreword to Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, as well as a scholarly article on governance for AI and Ethics. I have vague memories of Rawls’ theory from my graduate program. My recollections are a framing of justice as fairness, and our class’s understanding of justice also as belonging. Our professor, Rueben Miller, winner of a 2022 MacArthur ‘Genius’ grant, asserts this in his 2021 book Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration. All of this to say, I do not come to Allen’s work as a blank slate.

In general, I appreciate Allen’s detailed and paced diagnosis of Rawls and her workings to address its aged errors. One never forgets that she is a Harvard professor, though. One of her common refrains, and the central idea of the book, is ‘egalitarian constitutional participatory democracy,’ a 21-syllable many-adjectived name that probably needs at least an undergraduate education to recognize on sight. I don’t think philosophy needs to be boiled down to a fourth-grade reading level to be persuasive. I do think that a serious attempt to spread ideas and change systems with momentum must be communicable. The viral nature of ideas has never been easier to identify than now, where the concept of virality has left epidemiology and taken up residence in sociology (such that there is a new word for this, ‘infodemiology’). For things to spread, they must have communication vectors. Naming is a powerful one, and this name is not infectious. Many of these heady texts have an audience problem: who will pick up the book based on the title, who will finish the first chapter, and who will champion the ideas in general? In other words, how effective can it be at facilitating the adoption of its theory?

Put aside my concerns over vocabulary and density (and this is dense, it took me nearly 20 days to read 220 pages). These are not specific to Allen’s work, and Allen is no worse than anyone else at communicating ideas. Certainly, she’s a better communicator in writing than Hannah Arendt, whose work is occasionally impenetrable (or sometimes impenetrably boring). The major strength of Justice by Means of Democracy is its willingness to discuss implementation, and to do so with an eye to the practical. Many grand philosophical texts are interested in starting from a place of nothing and building a system, or destroying systems with momentum ostensibly overnight, and rebuilding them in perfection. Most that do this aren’t worth reading, because they are impossible and senseless, barely inspiring. Allen does not make this mistake; if anything, she is too interested in our current systems remaining unaltered. Nonetheless, each element of her framework includes a detailed diagnosis of our current situation, what she views as the needed changes in philosophical approach, and typically, practical examples of existing policies or experiments that speak to her frame.

Allen does center her theory on certain assumptions that lead to meaningful error. First, and foundational, is the centering of employment as the foundation for human flourishing. Second, is how she appears to conceive of welfare and its sociopolitical impact, which may be cousin to old conservative tropes with little basis in reality. Finally, Allen espouses the need for a “middle course” when arguments cannot be resolved. She fails to contain the appropriateness of such a course to a specific set or even genre of issue, and in that failure, she flattens complex social problems into dyadic choices. As she highlights a 1792 letter from Washington to make this point, she also fails to consider the consequences of this exact method for handling conflict.

In this article, I will lay out these critiques, my understanding of Allen’s intention versus my understanding of her actual words, and seek to consider adaptations to resolve them.

On page 194, Allen begins to discuss safety nets and stable floors. I’ll address the safety net aspect, along with her idea of “disempowering dependency,” in the next section. First, we should consider what Allen believes human flourishing is, and what is foundational to achieving it.

Allen makes an intentional decision to hold off on addressing the economic concerns, stating plainly that these should be secondary in the structure of human aspiration and theories of justice. She is taking from Arendt, here, and considers that economic needs should be subject to the needs of society. In other words, if a functioning economy depends on the subjugation of members of the polity (or any polity), it is, in fact, not a functioning economy and should be adjusted. This is good.

Allen’s conception of “empowering economies” involves design principles:

1. Democracy-Supporting Firms & a Good-Jobs Economy

2. Investment in Bridging [Ties]

3. Democratic Steering

My concern is her first design principle, and specifically the good-jobs economy part. Itself, the theory of a good-jobs economy is perfectly well suited to our system, and is doubtless an improvement.

…the patterns of distribution that flow from underlying arrangements of production will not escape the problem of those who would fall outside the structure of employment, and, therefore, absent a foundation for flourishing, would fall below the threshold of material security necessary for political empowerment.

(p. 194)

Allen orients her argument around patterns of production. People with slightly stronger anti-capitalist frames may identify this as the true root of error in her thinking. For better or worse, our current systems do center production, and they do value people who can produce above those who cannot. Any theory that doesn’t recognize this is doomed, but any theory that ends here also fails to facilitate an equitable system. I feel Allen’s error is in the second half of the sentence, which could accurately be paraphrased as “employment is foundational for flourishing, and thus required to facilitate political empowerment.” Employment is not foundational to human flourishing. It is incidental, at best.

Employment is a structure in our system, but it is as often one of denigration as it is of flourishing. Our only method of survival, now, is the selling of our time and skill and sweat, in varying combinations. Employment does not guarantee flourishing, and the extent to which it previously did has eroded steadily over the past decades. No longer does employment guarantee enough money for housing, food, education, medical care, or the other necessities of life. No longer does employment ensure any, let alone high-quality, health insurance. And no longer does employment even ensure meaningful access to social networks. Allen’s view of employment—even considering good jobs—is antiquated, if it was indeed ever true.

Allen contemplates an “empowering” economy, and one that she says should include a “jobs guarantee.” She does not tie this to the need to secure the means of living (housing, food, water, medical care), but rather to “avoid the erosion of skill and capacity, and therefore empowerment, in the citizenry” (page 185). She does not well describe how this jobs guarantee might work. She says that elected officials are ultimately responsible for pursuing and protecting the conditions by which good jobs are produced. I feel this leaves the theory open to a rather lazy attack, which is: does Allen mean to say that elected government will foist poor-performing employees onto employers, without any say in the matter?

Of course, Allen does not mean this, but as detailed as she is elsewhere, this feels vague and devoid of implementable suggestions. It also opens an attack vector for opponents, and it would be perhaps the very first one brought up to oppose earnest attempts at implementation.

I imagine she means something akin to the huge work programs of the New Deal, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority. A guarantee with this as template is not a bad thing. One wonders if a housing guarantee, though, would do more to advance “political empowerment.” There is also the question of how such a guarantee interacts with Allen’s later critique of social safety nets as “entangling.” Let us turn to this idea now.

Allen spends a lot of time talking about the empowerment of citizens. Empowerment is a word that is thrown around a lot in social work circles, and sometimes it is used disingenuously. Empowerment is giving authority or power to a person, enabling them to be agents of their lives. Empowerment is not, however, abandonment. I am concerned that Allen skirts this line too closely.

Only a few sentences after the previous quote, Allen continues exploring the foundations of flourishing:

This political economy, too, will need to secure a transactional welfare state, but the design of services should be understood conceptually as a second step after the design of the relational infrastructure. Moreover, the design should focus on providing a foundation for participation in economy and society—not a safety net in which to become entangled, but a stable floor, anchored by housing security, on which to stand and thrive.

(page 194, emphasis mine.)

Allen asserts: 1) the welfare state must be designed following the relational infrastructure; 2) the welfare state must orient around employment; and 3) it must not be an entangling net. Point 1 is fine and necessarily true. Much of social work and working with what Allen calls the “less well-off” involves building relationships and navigating those. In our system, an absence of money must be offset by at least a minimal level of social skill if one is to avoid disaster (which is not to say social skills are a substitute for money). Point 2 is true only in a system in which employment is necessary to live and in which unemployment is punished, and this interacts with point 3. The idea that welfare must not be an entangling safety net is a point that I think has merit, but that is deceptively phrased.

Follow Allen to a possible conclusion: a reasonable person could read the above and determine that a welfare system under Allen’s justice should involve strict work requirements. I do not know if this is Allen’s intent, but I see no other way to reconcile her desire for a jobs guarantee, her foundation of human flourishing as employment, and her denigration of welfare as disempowering dependency. Yet, there is no good research that connects work requirements to political empowerment, let alone human flourishing. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has quite a good landing page connecting research to refute this claim.

Our problem is not that people are not working or that they do not want to work. It is that the jobs that people without access to higher education (and even then…) do not pay enough to afford housing, food, medical, or child care. If a single mother is in a housing program with a work requirement, but childcare will cost more than her budget can sustain alongside her portion of rent, what is she to do? Allen may call this entanglement: the welfare programs have work requirements, but also income limits, and the recipient portions are barely sustainable on such limited income. Make too much, and she could lose her support and become homeless again. Make only enough to qualify for services, but not to thrive, and our recipient has become entangled. I grew up in exactly this situation.

Sometimes, the case manager suggests that the mom go back to school to get a better education, thus a better job, thus better income. But this does not work. In reality, this single mother bounces from temporary housing voucher to family support to emergency shelter, and around and around she goes.

This is Allen’s entangling safety net. Yet, this is not a permanent feature of safety nets. Our social safety nets were shredded by an overemphasis on employment and the concept of “minimally necessary assistance” by President Clinton, by way of PRWORA, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. PRWORA turned long-term cash assistance into limited (and state-controlled, via block grant) cash assistance, typically conditioned with work requirements for all but the most vulnerable, forbade non-citizens from accessing assistance (including, and especially, Medicaid), and more. This is a recent policy change, which Allen could and should have targeted in her critique of safety nets as entangling and failing the people they are meant to serve. To do so, she would need to reconcile with her idea of employment as the foundation for human flourishing.

Yet, it’s worth considering Allen’s stable floor. I think Allen confuses her point by connecting housing security as the anchor of a stable welfare state. This is inconsistent with her earlier description of employment as foundational to human flourishing. Which comes first, the housing or the employment? Well, 53% of people in homeless shelters, and 40% on the street, are employed (Meyer, 2021), so we can suppose that some believe it to be employment, and that employment is a shattered foundation. Why not center housing as the foundation of human flourishing? That place where humans so often experience love, joy, family, and rest? This would be consistent with her anchoring of housing to a stable-floor welfare state. In centering employment, Allen makes the classic mistake of empowerment: she passes into abandoning the most vulnerable, and does not satisfy her own commitment to difference without domination.

…some efforts to fulfill the requirements of the difference principle, by directing material benefit to the least well-off, may simultaneously erode the political capacity of the least well-off specifically, and the democratic citizenry generally, in cases where disempowering forms of dependency emerge. In such cases, the principle of difference without domination would suggest that we should find an alternative path to fulfillment of our material needs, one that does not sacrifice political liberties.

(page 55, emphasis mine.)

Let me translate the words I’ve emphasized: providing cash (or otherwise material) assistance to the poorest may weaken democracy and lead the poorest in particular to disengage politically. I find this to be an egregious misunderstanding of how welfare works in this country. Her misunderstanding is crystallized later in the book, when she asserts that those who are rent-burdened do not engage in their civic responsibilities because they do not expect to be in a community for long. She offers no citation for this claim, and it is contrary to my experience, having worked with people who are rent-burdened, near-homeless, and homeless. It is not an expectation of short-term residence; it is that these populations do not have the time or the bandwidth to engage with these ideas. Consider the single mother from earlier, when is she to vote? Allen does not highlight a practical solution to this (mail-in ballots for the housed, voter outreach / mobile ballot boxes for the homeless).

My read of Allen’s words is particularly ungracious. I do not believe that Allen is suggesting, intentionally, that providing welfare turns people into welfare queens, but I think that is how her words read, and that is a problem. With slight tuning, Allen’s theory avoids these traps. Allen clearly considers employment the primary system for human flourishing, and this root error spawns the entanglement problem. If one were to consider employment a subsidiary design, to use Allen’s term, with housing and the meeting of basic needs as the primary design, these problems resolve more naturally through an egalitarian participatory democracy.

If one accepts that people disengage from civic responsibility not for lack of interest or commitment, but for lack of time and bandwidth, then the solution is clear. Starting from a housing guarantee, providing for that basic security, alongside other minimal assistance programs, paired with easier access to the ballot box and opportunities for engagement, civic responsibilities are finally within the grasp of those “least well-off.” Interestingly, Allen specifically does not support or endorse a universal basic income, though this would be an achievable and adaptable method for accomplishing welfare via difference without domination. It would also sate her interest in an alternative path to fulfilling material needs. And regarding housing guarantees, I critiqued Allen for being imprecise with language around her job guarantee, so it is only fair that I am clear. I don’t think a housing guarantee necessarily looks like providing a bungalow to every family. There is ample opportunity for local decision-making and implementation strategies, meeting a certain minimum standard (for example, I would not consider congregate shelters to be suitable permanent housing).

It’s interesting to me that Allen does not consider these aspects, as much of her writing feels only slightly askew of them. I understand this to be an overcommitment to our current system, which is driven by a Protestant and punishing work ethic. I am not anti-employment, and have been continuously employed for years, and I consider myself a dedicated public servant. But we cannot establish labor as the foundation for human flourishing. Arendt differentiates between work and labor, which Allen fails to do by grouping them under employment. We know that Allen understands the difference. From her foreword to Arendt’s Human Condition:

In The Human Condition, Arendt famously expounds on the content and import of three core human activities: labor, work, and action. Labor is that which we undertake out of biological necessity; that which we do, in other words, to feed ourselves. Work is that which we do out of creative effort, to build the things—whether physical or cultural—that shape our world and establish our social connections with others. Labor and work overlap with each other since our romantic relationships are products of our social art and, of course, create the context within which we may also pursue biological reproduction. Finally, action identifies the effort we make together as political creatures, struggling in conditions of pluralistic diversity, to come to collective decisions about our policy’s course of action.

Allen herself identifies that labor and work are often flattened mere sentences later. She has followed Arendt back to the late 50s in search of labor and work, and yet has not carried forward the complexity of Arendt’s ideas into her view of a foundation of human flourishing. She does not capture the difference between subsistence and thriving, of privation and security, of exhaustion and passion.

I mentioned PRWORA earlier. This Act is also an example of what Allen calls a “middle course,” and a shining example of why such a political philosophy is an error. I will address this course now.

Allen quotes a 1792 letter from George Washington to Alexander Hamilton, sharing his famous concern regarding political factionalization. It is worth sharing here:

Differences in political opinions are as unavoidable as, to a certain point, they may perhaps be necessary; but it is to be regretted, exceedingly, that subjects cannot be discussed with temper on the one hand, or decisions submitted to without having the motives which led to them, improperly implicated on the other: and this regret borders on chagrin when we find that Men of abilities—zealous patriots—having the same general objects in view, and the same upright intentions to prosecute them, will not exercise more charity in deciding on the opinions, & actions of one another. When matters get to such lengths, the natural inference is, that both sides have strained the Cords beyond their bearing—and that a middle course would be found the best, until experience shall have pointed out the right mode—or, which is not to be expected, because it is denied to mortals—there shall be some infallible rule by which we could fore judge events.

Allen writes:

Robust polarization is evidence, in [Washington’s] view, that neither side has found the right answer to the collective problem at hand. Consequently, they should forbear from pressing their case to a breaking point and settle for the middle course. This is the norm of forbearance named by Levitsky and Ziblatt. It is the idea that checking and balancing of power should be understood not just as something designed into the structure of institutions but also as a moral norm. Officeholders should check themselves as well as being checked by the rules of the game.”

I have not read the Levitsky and Ziblatt text, How Democracies Die, but from what Allen presents, it seems optimistic. Yes, for many of the routine matters of running a State, norms of forbearance and mutual tolerance make sense. But Washington’s letter does not suggest that these norms be the controlling framework for all policy debate, merely those where the “same general objects” are in view. For example, most can agree that some level of taxation is necessary for the maintenance of a State. The specific levels, policies, and structures may be prime candidates for forbearance and mutual toleration, where compromise may be a fair, if temporary, outcome.

Allen relies on the theory’s commitment to political equality and the five facets of such to protect people and encourage power-sharing. I am concerned that the gap between theory and practice here is titanic.

Consider the Overton window, the practical view of forbearance and mutual toleration. What is considered popular and sensible does not have a direct relationship with what is morally or ethically just. In a participatory democracy, the people determine these foundational liberties. Allen appropriately cites slavery and segregation as domination and violations of liberties. Yet, Washington’s middle course led to decades of indecision on this very issue, resulting in a series of compromises which maintained the system of slavery until the polity erupted. The middle course was immoral, unethical, and on top of that, a practical failure. Allen’s theory depends on a virtuous cycle that is founded upon human moral equality, but there has never existed a society in which this value was spoken and practiced simultaneously. How do we get there, from where we are today?

Modern rights-impacting questions, such as marriage, bodily autonomy (abortion, gender-affirming care), and even climate change, are also problems of domination, where the polity is fractured and unreliable. There is no middle course for the right of queer and trans people to exist, or for the mitigation of human-driven environmental collapse. These domains are, in theory, captured by a combination of Allen’s view of the unsacrificeability of rights and Washington’s slight limit of “same general idea,” but was this so 50 years ago? Would the average person have considered a trans person deserving of access to power? How does the application of diagnosis and the methods by which society others people affect this desire for political equality? Further, what, today, do we commonly believe that tomorrow will make us seem barbaric? We have experienced societal regression in ways that seemed unlikely while Allen was writing this book, through the destruction of Roe v. Wade, and in the insidious efforts to erase vulnerable people (particularly queer and trans folks) from Federal data. These events are prelude to kinds of domination and control that a decade ago we hoped were in the past.

Allen’s theory tries to address this in the very opening pages by laying out a virtuous cycle of political equality and five facets of such. But she trusts that a “middle course” will guarantee equality of expression, association, and participation. This has never proven true. I fear that the United States, as it currently exists, may be too far from the egalitarian participatory constitutional democracy that Allen envisions for these ideals to guarantee political equality. Half of the country does not believe certain people have the right to exist, let alone access levers of power. Populations are being swept into internment camps in Florida and elsewhere. We are not in the same reality as that in which Allen wrote her text.

Levitsky, the author Allen cites for the norm of forbearance, has summarized his book’s goals as defeating Trump in 2020 and supporting U.S. Democracy. Levitsky now says, “we are no longer living in a liberal democracy.” (NPR, 2025)

Despite my rather abrupt critiques, there is much to celebrate in Allen’s theory of justice by means of democracy. My complaints search for specificity where I believe the protections of the general do not adequately secure difference without domination, and where I feel Allen’s theory overweighs employment. These critiques are addressable with minor, but meaningful, adaptations.

I’ve used the phrase “systems with momentum” several times. These are those, often long-standing, systems, customs, and traditions that are well engrained and which actively resist change, even where change would benefit all involved. They resist change because of familiarity, comfort, and risk-avoidance. Segregation was a system with momentum, so much so that we still struggle with its consequences 60 years later. Momentum is one method by which systems protect themselves, and attempts to impart lasting societal change must understand and plan to manage it.

We see elements of our current unjust system’s momentum even in Allen’s attempts to address it. It is present in her conception of work and labor (and particularly its flattening into mere employment) as foundational to human flourishing, placed secondarily to the actual material needs of life. Our first adaptation is the refinement of this ideal, and it comes by shifting the three existing design principles of “Empowering Economies” down a rung, to make room for Mutual Aid for Basic Needs.

Allen’s third subsidiary ideal is polypolitanism, the idea that any one of us might have affiliations with multiple political communities. A similar idea has driven mutual aid networks since their inception, and has seeped into the basic social work practice when working with folks who do not have enough to meet the basic material needs of life. Allen is concerned about entangling safety nets, and we can address this concern here, too. Existing social supports could be redesigned. TANF, SNAP, and other forms of “cash” assistance that exercise control over what the recipient may spend the funding on should be simplified and streamlined, somewhat returned to their pre-PRWORA state of pure cash assistance. We must start from a place of recognizing the autonomy of even those “least well-off,” and trust them to make the best decisions to fulfill their basic needs, as research consistently proves they do.

Such assistance can be indexed to local conditions and needs in a similar way to how Allen suggests a minimum wage be determined by local economic conditions. Further, there is no reason for such assistance to be limited to times of dire consequence. It is tremendously expensive for the State to intervene only in times of disaster. The earlier the intervention, the less cost to the State. While cost should not be the primary consideration for whether or not the State should support its polity, it is responsible to be considerate. Worker protections, such as the WARN Act of 1988, could be expanded, such that any move from an employer to terminate an employee in all but emergent circumstances be forewarned, both to the employee and to the local assistance bureau, which could initiate assistive funds immediately, to swell and then shrink for the duration of the lapse in employment.

Of course, this still centers employment, and flattens work and labor. Work, creative, artistic work, as Arendt conceives it, is important to a functioning society. It should not take rich parents to fulfill artistic needs, and the State arguably should not have a role in evaluating the merit of art. Rather, similar local bureaus could fund art and artists and other creative or generally non-labor work. There are models for this already, among small art-based philanthropies, charities, and local governments. Funding these is an investment in what Allen would call a connected society, and also helps to decenter labor-based employment, while encouraging methods for meeting basic material needs outside of situations of disempowering dependency. Art, through the expression of human joy and suffering, is also one of our species’ key expressions of self, and we form cultures and connections around the doing and sharing of it.

Similar ideas of local leadership for assistance programs already exist within even Federal funding. Consider the Continuum of Care Program. More than a pot of federal money for permanent housing, HUD’s program encourages local coordination, involvement of people with lived experience in leadership roles, and strategic planning. There are over 300 Continuums across the country, and their forms, while similar, vary. Yet, they have been an effective method for engagement of people with lived experience in real decision-making positions, providing real access to power, and promoting real bridging ties. Also consider a related program, the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, which requires communities that receive funding to work with Youth Advisory Boards, promoting youth into similar positions with access to the levers of power. These occur to me because they are within my practice area, but I am sure there are other structures that exemplify public-private partnership, connected societies, and inclusion.

Such programs also seek to ameliorate the confusion of abandonment and empowerment. Where assistance programs empower people “just enough” to not qualify for services, and then cut ties, they waste funds, traumatize those they seek to assist, and prolong disaster. Where such aid systems engage the recipients directly in their own leadership and determinations, they encourage autonomy, inclusion, power sharing, and bridging ties. Successes here lead to the proliferation of these networks, building momentum.

But how do we address Allen’s fascination with the middle course? I wish I knew, and I wish it were easy. Early in the book, Allen makes it clear that political equality goes much further than access to the ballot box. Yet, we must start there. Allen herself misunderstands what leads to the “least well-off” struggling to engage with their civic responsibilities, as we discussed earlier. There are practical, effective, and low-cost interventions that can respond. First, with the increased local control contemplated by Allen, it makes sense for local, State, and federal elections to be non-working holidays, where paid time off is guaranteed. Only a few states currently guarantee this, and to my knowledge, States are the smallest unit of government that have begun to explore paid time off for voting.

There is a middle course here, too. Consider other civic responsibilities – local planning councils, parent-teacher associations, unions (a critically undervalued civic responsibility), and the like. We can agree that it isn’t practical that a holiday should happen anytime a vote is needed at these. Yet, in our decentering of employment (which, in my mind, involves portable sick leave and paid time off), perhaps we can create a requirement amongst employers to provide a certain amount of annual paid time off specifically for engagement with civic responsibility. Paired with mail-in voting and ballot drop-off boxes, this greatly expands the accessibility of civic responsibilities.

These are but a few adaptations that I think recalibrate Allen’s Theory of Justice towards a more truly equitable and accessible ideal. They are not perfect, and there are likely better ideas out there. We should explore these together.

Allen closes the book with Martin Luther King Jr. on her mind, quoting his 1962 speech, “The Ethical Demands for Integration.” Within, King observes, “the universe is so structured that things do not quite work out rightly if men are not diligent in their concern for others. … I cannot reach fulfillment without thou.” Allen discusses King’s approach to “thouness” and elevates it in her closing pages in quite a beautiful way.

The goal should not be to pretend that people do not have interests or that they can shed them when they enter the deliberative assembly… Instead, we should start from the recognition that the point of civic and political engagement simply is the pursuit of one’s purpose… The question is how to connect our purposes with those of others. This is the creative work with others that lies at the heart of meeting the relational challenge of rich integration.

There is a reality that we must accept if we are to strive towards a theory of justice by means of democracy. It is that the same people who sought to dominate Dr. King, and the same people who sought to dominate the world, still exist. They exist, and they are in power in the United States at this moment. They exist, and they have used fear, uncertainty, and doubt to sow distrust, isolation, and animosity.

Striving to realize a theory of justice by means of democracy will mean being warm to many of the people captured by this fear. It will mean teaching and listening. It will mean recognizing and addressing real grievances among those that have been captured by interests hostile to Justice. It will not mean ceding to fear. I grew up in rural Illinois, and I can tell you that empty factories, decrepit main streets, and the only option for groceries being the local Dollar General do not a warm neighbor make. I have to remind myself that while there are monsters in our world, sowing discord and hatred, they are a powerful few. A powerful few that are well organized and, unfortunately, strategic. Yet, when small social fears and inexperience are not being enflamed into rage and terror, most of us want the same basic things. This must be our strategy and our hope.

We want to be loved, and to love in turn.

We want our families and friends to be safe, to succeed, and to be happy.

We want to be able to take care of our minds, bodies, and spirits.

We want to feel that we have purpose, and that we may fulfill that purpose.

We want to feel safe, and that if something happens, our lives will not end because of it.

We want to feel that we belong.

Thomas B