Can The World Afford This $4 Trillion Expense?

 

The combined military spending of all of the
world's nations is a staggering $4 trillion a year. 

"The regenerated do not go to war, or engage in strife. They are the children of peace, who have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they know no war. Since we are conformed to the image of Christ, how then can we kill our enemies with the sword? Spears and swords made of iron we leave to those, alas, who consider human blood and swine’s blood as having well nigh equal value."    

- sixteenth-century reformer Menno Simons

I find it disheartening that even some of my Anabaptist-minded friends support war making by certain nations as a kind of necessary evil, believing they are the more innocent parties involved in acts of destruction and human butchery. "Lesser evilism" becomes a justification for actions that are morally unjustifiable no matter who engages in them or for whatever reason.

Too often perceived desirable ends are seen as justifying whatever regrettable means necessary to achieve them. Killing and maiming are seen as a form of needed self defense or for eliminating an evil enemy. Sadly, citizens on both sides firmly believe their cause is just, and that whatever they are doing in response is therefore justifiable, right and approved by their God.

But if the vision and teaching of Jesus and the prophets are to be taken seriously, we will urge everyone in the world to beat their military swords into plowshares, and to study war no more. If humanity is to survive we must all stop rationalizing all irrational and genocidal behavior. 

Unsurprisingly, no application of so called "just war" principles has ever been known to actually prevent a war. Not a single one. Not ever . And when it comes to "war crimes," it's high time that we rule out war itself as the most heinous crime imaginable.

Jesus consistently demonstrated what it means to defeat evil by doing good rather than inflicting harm. When his disciples asked him to call down fire from heaven to destroy their Samaritan enemies, Jesus rebuked them in no uncertain terms. And when one of them once drew his sword in Jesus's defense his response was swift and clear, Put your sword away. Those who wield the sword will perish by it.

Even if we set religious reasons aside, a total rejection of war as evil is not some utopian fantasy, but absolutely necessary for human survival.

https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2023/03/will-more-war-help-bring-about-more.html

https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-sword-in-romans-13-is-for.html

Seven Retirement Blessings I'm Grateful For

I hope to keep on growing in the remaining chapter of my
life here in Park Village at the Virginia Mennonite
Retirement Community.

The following are just a few of the many blessings I enjoy these days:

1. The pleasure of leisure time for working the soil, nurturing plants, pulling weeds and harvesting produce from our smallish 10' x 60' vegetable garden.

2. Having more time to read books, take a leisurely nap, write a blog, and/or engage in community work on criminal justice and other issues I care about.

3. Enjoying more quality time with Alma Jean, my spouse and soulmate of 61 years.

4. Occasional morning coffee and conversation with friends at the Main Street Cafe on our VMRC campus.

5. Sharing kitchen times for baking bread and for making vegetable stews, oatmeal pancakes and caramel puddings.

6. Doing crossword puzzles and other fun things with my wife and with some of our beloved grandchildren.

7. Still being able to meet some clients as needed one day a week at the Hometown Pastoral Counseling Group in Dayton.

God is good. All the time.

In 1492, Columbus Landed On Ayita (now Haiti)

I found this book by Pulitzer prize
winning author especially revealing 
regarding US policy toward Haiti.

I was intrigued by a reference in Garry Wills book about Thomas Jefferson's refusal, as a citizen of a southern slaveholding state, to recognize the revolutionary new black government of Haiti during his presidency. This added to my curiosity about how that long standing policy, unchanged until 1862, may have affected Haiti's ill-fated history. 

As background, the island on which Haiti is located is where Christopher Columbus planted the first European flag and lay claim to land long inhabited by a native Taino and Arawakan people.The French later built a large settlement there in the 18th century and established huge plantations employing slave labor. As a result the French profited from enormous amounts of indigo, cotton and raw sugar exports, according to Wikipedia, and by the end of the century were involved in a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade.

Then in 1791, not long after the US colonies successfully gained independence from the English crown, slaves staged the successful Haitian Revolution. In its aftermath as many as 5000 French occupiers, men, women and children, were brutally massacred.

Meanwhile, Jefferson endorsed the formal recognition of the new French Republic after the 1792 revolution that overthrew the monarchy of Louis XVI. This resulted in the massacres of well over three times as many French as died in the aftermath of the Haitian uprising.

According to Wills, Timothy Pickering, a former Secretary of War and later a senator from Massachusetts, decried the double standard Jefferson applied to the two nations, one led by white Europeans and the other by black former slaves, as follows:

Dessalines is pronounced by some to be a ferocious tyrant; but whatever atrocities may have been committed under his authority have been surpassed, have they equalled in their nature (for in their extent they are comparatively nothing), those of the French Revolution, when "infuriated men were seeking," as you once said,. through blood and slaughter" their long lost liberty? ...If Frenchmen, who were more free than the subjects of any monarchs in Europe, the English excepted, could find in you the apologist for cruel excesses of of which the world has furnished no example, are the hapless, the wretched Haitians ("guilty indeed of skin not colored like our own), emancipated by a great national act and declared free--are they, after enjoying freedom for many years, having maintained it in arms, resolved to live free or die; are these men not merely to be abandoned to their own efforts but to be deprived of those necessary supplies which for a series of years, they have been accustomed to receive from the United States and without which they cannot subsist? (Wills, p.44)

To be clear, as a follower of Jesus I do not support armed violence of any kind by any individual or any nation, but this does raise the question of how a more just US foreign policy may have led to a different Haiti than the unimaginably dysfunctional and impoverished one we see today. 

And to what extent might ethnicity or skin color still affect our relationships with other nations?

DN-R Justice Matters Column: 'Restorative Justice Benefits Both Victims and Offenders'

Paulson Kurtz, who lives near Broadway,
is a retired teacher and former director of
a VORP program in Keyser, WV.

Three boys lazily passing through a graveled lot in their West Virginia town found that by throwing stones high into the air they would make a fun “clink” when landing on a nearby car. 

The boys moved on but police tracked them down, filled out juvenile petitions for the damage done and sent a report to the prosecuting attorney (PA).

This PA, allied with a victim-offender reconciliation program (VORP), had granted the program’s director full access to view incoming petitions. Upon reading these, the director recommended VORP’s restorative justice approach.

To begin, VORP contacted the offenders’ parents and explained that the boys would meet with the car owner to work out an acceptable way to “make things as right as possible.” If mediation was successful and the resulting agreement kept, their cases would be dismissed. 

All parties agreed. The car owner was invited to meet with the boys, and the mediation process was explained. He appreciated that he would have a hand in deciding suitable restitution and that he would not be kept in the dark concerning the case, as is typical when a case is tried in court.

The owner lived 70 miles away, and his daughter had been using the car to attend the local college. On the designated day, he drove the distance to meet with the boys and their parents. No police, attorney, or judge were involved.

A trained VORP volunteer conducted the meeting, during which the boys told what happened and the man related how the vandalism affected him and his daughter. The boys had the opportunity to apologize, and both sides agreed restitution would involve each family contributing $150 in three monthly payments to cover the amount not paid by insurance. In addition, the boys would write weekly notes to the car owner, telling how they were doing in school and what was happening in their lives. The written agreement, signed by all participants, was later presented to the prosecutor for validation.

Over the next few months, VORP collected the payments and notes and forwarded them to the car owner. After all obligations had been met, the owner of the car, in an expression of support and concern for the boys, drove back to the town and treated them to lunch at a restaurant.

Over a period of about a year, this West Virginia program mediated many such cases. In one example some students  driving home from their high school chose to circumvent a long line of cars by driving across the side lawn of a restaurant. After police sent petitions to the PA office, VORP mediated a meeting between the students, their parents, and the restaurant owner. For restitution, the students regraded and reseeded the area and built a rail fence to prevent others from driving through the lawn.

Another time, juveniles vandalized a USPS deposit box on a street corner. The postmaster met with the offenders and for restitution the boys scrubbed graffiti off several deposit boxes around town.

In yet another case, three adults stole an air conditioner from the apartment one of them was vacating—a felony due to the value of the appliance. At a mediated meeting, apologies were made and the offenders repaid the landlord.

Was justice served?

In a restorative justice process, offenders see the material and emotional effects of their actions and assume responsibility for them. Victims learn backstories and participate in deciding restitution. This constitutes justice.

During its year of operation, VORP successfully monitored every restitution agreement to completion. The PA never hindered the process and never refused a case selected for mediation. Patience, good communication, and persistence were vital to the program’s success.

Sadly, with the director, mediators, and board members all being volunteers, the program ended for lack of sufficient support.

A similar local program of this kind, the Fairfield Center, is already in place, and can reduce caseloads for prosecutors, judges, and probation officers while providing just outcomes for offenders and victims alike.

Interestingly, the “grandfather of restorative justice,” Howard Zehr, resides in Rockingham County, and his groundbreaking book, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (Herald Press, 1995) has impacted criminal justice around the world. 

Let's support the Fairfield Center as it carries on Zehr's legacy in our community.

- Paulson Kratz is a retired teacher and an advocate for restorative justice.

Summer Issue of HARDTIME VIRGINIA

HARDTIME VIRGINIA Summer 2025 Vol 10 No 2

an occasional newsletter for incarcerated persons

Good Man Denied Parole

    “Let me tell you about my friend David Sowers, a 68-year-old man who exudes calm. He is well educated and well connected. He speaks of fairness, equality and acts in a manner that is becoming of those ideals. He exhibits a level of patience that I envy, a compassion I share. He is a good man. Knowing this, you might be surprised that he has now served 44 years in the Virginia DOC. He was arrested in 1981. There are no crimes I am able to name that justify more than four decades in prison. Every other civilized country in the world agrees with that sentiment.  Many of the 50 states have come to that same conclusion. On June 2, 2025 David was denied parole for the 30th time. I am not only saddened for my friend David, who is the exact example of who should be granted parole, but I am totally offended by so blind a decision. David simply takes it in stride.

    “As the Virginia Parole Board knows, they violated David’s due process, as per Virginia Code section 53-1-136. There was no public hearing and he never met with any member of the board itself. I am going to write numerous articles and essays about the VA parole board, and my friend David will write a well thought out essay about justice and probably several haikus which he really enjoys and is quite good at. I am going to exhibit fighter levels of ire and openly accuse the parole board of a number of provable legal and human rights violations. David will continue to be, in every way, a perfect candidate for parole as he prepares for his next review, patiently doing everything expected of him regardless of the fact that the board cannot see anything beyond a single event in 1981, 44 years ago.

    “I have no idea what David’s crime was. I don’t ask. It was 44 years ago. He was in his early 20’s and I was six years old, and I am certain I did some stupid things, too. Knowing what he did would not change my opinion of who he is, a good man who helps me navigate the nightmare that is Virginia’s prisons. and who has become a very human being spite of more than four decades of inhumane captivity. He finished paying his debt 20 years ago, and every civilized country would agree. Continuing to hold this man in prison only proves that Virginia is an inhumane failed state.”

 - David Annarelli, Lawrenceville Correctional Center

Good Work But Poorly Paid

    “I am now on the paint crew. We mostly work in the evenings or weekends but sometimes during the day Monday through Thursday. I like it because the time seems to pass more quickly, It is also a 45¢ an hour job for 30 hours a week, and we are encouraged to work extra hours. It helps me make ends meet and my TV Guide is up for renewal at $49.99 a year or two years for $89.00.  My boss told me that DOC’s budget was cut, so now I cannot be issued new boots. Mine are medical boots and I am denied new ones.With my heel separating on my right boot this makes no sense to me. Food portions are also getting smaller.”

• - John Livesay, Baskerville CorrectionalCenter

Note: No one was granted parole in June, and prison ‘wages’ in Virginia haven’t been raised in decades. 

Families Bear The Burden Of Excessive Charges And Fees

We are led to believe that public funds cover all the costs of incarceration and the operation of our jails and prisons. However, many of these costs are passed on to inmates and their families through excessive fees and through inflated private contracts with private vendors for food, communications, hygiene products, clothing, etc. This creates a hardship on families trying to assist loved ones with basic material and other needs while incarcerated.

     Examples of other proliferating fees, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, are “charges for police transport, case filing, felony surcharges, electronic monitoring, drug testing, and sex offender registration.”

     Among the more egregious of these are jail keep fees, the daily rent charged inmates across the country while incarcerated. In Virginia, these run from $1 per day at our local jail to $3 at Middle River Regional Jail, the maximum allowed in the Commonwealth. Such fees disproportionately harm low-income families as the median annual income of a person incarcerated hovers around $19,000. Thus, the multiple jail fees charged could be seen as a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s constitutional protection against excessive fines.

     In a 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that excessive fines were used after the Civil War to re-enslave freed men. In 2019, the New York Times published an article titled “Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment- Both still define our criminal-justice system,” in which the author notes that we cannot understand the excessive punishment that permeates the U.S. mass incarceration system without understanding its roots in the legacy of slavery. The article further states, “Laws governing slavery were replaced with Black Codes governing free black people, making the criminal-justice system central to new strategies of racial control.”

     It was in the early 1990s that a Chicago law clerk wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune suggesting that inmates with financial assets should earn their room and board through prison labor and pay rent to cover the increased costs of operating jail and prison facilities due to overcrowding.

     One of the results of this fee system is that when someone is released from jail or prison, they are often deeply in debt and have very few financial resources. This only perpetuates the cycle of incarceration by burdening former inmates and their families and by creating hurdles that prevent them from successfully reintegrating into society.

     Brittany Friedman, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, has done extensive research that shows that jail debt increases the cost of incarceration and that the devastating effects of jail debt can be far-reaching. Dr. Friedman states, “If pay-to-stay is really meant to offset the costs of incarcerating people, then why are we sticking them with a bill that then further tethers them to the system?”

    Keep fees may also contribute to inmates on meager jail fares going hungry while incarcerated since any attempt by friends or family to add money to their commissary account to supplement their diet is partially seized by the jail to offset the keep fee debt. This exacerbates hunger and mental distress and is clearly wrong.

     - Kevin Drexel is the founder of Stand 4 Count, working to support the needs of individuals, families, and marginalized groups impacted by incarceration, and is a part of the local Valley Justice Coalition, a local citizen voice for criminal justice reform since 2014.

*****************************************

Harvey Yoder, editor, Valley Justice Coalition, P.O. Box 434, Harrisonburg, VA 22803

The Amish Both Reflect and Reject 'Worldliness'

I've just reviewed this helpful book by a clinical
psychologist who has worked with members of
 an Amish communityfor over 30 years.

The Amish, like the rest of us, have seen unimaginable cultural and technological changes in the world in the past century. The means of communication and modes of transportation available when my parents were born (in 1904 and 1905) were more like that of Abraham and Sarah in the Bible than that of our own children and grandchildren.

I love the way “plain” communities like the Amish and Old Order Mennonites represent a kind of monastic alternative to our fast-paced and individualistic society. They remind us that not everything new is better, and that some innovations often come at the cost of untold negative consequences.

But are so-called plain people totally unlike their worldly neighbors? As someone who grew up Amish and has many Amish and Old Order Mennonite friends, I see both similarities and differences. 

In other words, to paraphrase Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the line separating worldliness from a truly Christ-based non-conformity “passes through the heart of each of us,” and through the heart of each of our congregations. In other words, not all of the challenges either we or the Amish are dealing with are the result of external influences alone.

For example, in the everyday world of economics, plain people are subject to the same temptations to “lay up treasure on earth,” “fare sumptuously every day” and to engage in the unmitigated pursuit of convenience, comfort and wealth as their neighbors. While I have no studies to cite, it is likely that the capital worth and consumer wealth of plain people in the U.S. well exceeds that of most Americans, and places them within the top 1-2% of the wealthiest households in the world. So apart from external markers such as personal appearance, modes of transportation, worship practices, etc., how “plain” (as in radically “non-conformed”) are these people of Anabaptist descent?

In the area of sexual and gender identity, I find it disturbing but understandable that most plain people have conformed to long held and deeply rooted patriarchal beliefs and practices in the larger culture, and have failed to fully recognize and affirm the Spirit-given gifts of half their members. And like all human communities, they are no less likely to have children with the same kinds of sexual variations that occur in all populations, including a similar percentage of offspring born with sex attraction.

And it should come as no surprise that within any human community, plain or otherwise, there will be some members who on some issues will strongly advocate for preserving an existing “old order” while on other issues they may advocate for change. Some will lean toward becoming MAGA supporters, for example, as some Amish have done, and others will hold opposite views, as is the case with the rest of Americans.

We can all learn from the way Amish communities exercise great caution in dealing with change, and reflect on how all of us can be as salt and light to the larger society without losing our identity as members of the worldwide and heaven-governed reign of of a loving and just Creator.

For Quality Relationships--Practice The 4:1 Rule

Alma Jean and I celebrating our 50th anniversary, now over ten
years ago. 

A text  I used for my parenting classes some years ago recommended a simple rule of thumb: For every negative interaction or statement with a child we should make sure we are offering four positive ones.

Too often we parents, mostly by habit, are guilty of creating the opposite ratio, with a majority of words like, "Stop that!" "No!" "You know better than that!" "You should be ashamed!" or with put down questions the child knows there are no acceptable answers to, like "Why do you always have to...?" or "Why can't you ever...?"

Since children are pretty much like the rest of us, only shorter and less experienced, I see the 4:1 rule being equally important in all of our relationships.

Positive expressions and actions have the effect of adding valued deposits to our relationship savings accounts, whereas negative ones are like withdrawals. With a disproportionate number of the latter our relationships accounts become overdrawn and we begin operating in the red. 

Examples of positive expressions are anything informative, interesting, fun, gratifying, praiseworthy, encouraging and/or affirming.

Some acceptable negative ones are expressing our honest feelings about our pain, discouragement, stress, worry or otherwise undesirable experiences.

Unacceptable negative expressions include blaming, shaming, attacking, judging, berating or accusing.

Some negative expressions are necessary and OK if offered in the form of information rather than accusation, and always in the interest of making things better, and never for the sake of causing hurt or harm.

The 4:1 rule, like the Golden Rule, means making sure the majority of our relationship interactions are as we would like them, in some really positive territory.