On schools and immigration

January prayer intentions of Pope Francis
From the Sunday, January 26, 2025 bulletin of the Cathedral of St. Paul, Worcester

 This past April, an early morning trip to Logan put me headed back home in time to stop by Lexington for the re-enactment of the Patriots Day battle on Lexington Green. I'd been as a child once, where my main memories (sorry, Mom!) were of it being cold and very early.

As an adult who now works in public policy, this time, the thing that struck me was that those who stood on Lexington Green were just the local small town local people. The names you know--both John Hancock and Samuel Adams had been in the town overnight, and of course Paul Revere had gone back and forth--were gone by the time the British regulars marched onto the town common, and most of us probably can't name anyone from those who stood there*.

And when the men in fancy uniforms, representing the might of the British Empire, marched onto the Green and ordered those there to disperse, the local people didn't do it. Just because someone in a uniform who had an official position told them to do something, they knew that wasn't enough to make it the right, or even legally required, thing to do.

I was thinking a lot about this over the week, in reading comments from many of my fellow citizens who appear to be under the impression that just because people in uniforms show up and start ordering people to do things, that we are required to do them.

Deferring to those in uniform simply because of their uniform or their position not only isn't legally required; it's fundamentally unAmerican. 

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*noted exception: the people of Lexington, who named an elementary school after one: Jonathan Harrington, Jr.