There is a comforting lie we tell ourselves in polite society, especially when it comes to violence: someone else will handle it. The police. Security. A good guy who knows what he’s doing. Someone other than us. Anyone but us.

But that’s a lie. It’s a lie that gets people killed.

When violence erupts, it doesn’t wait for uniforms, radios, or sire...

By Cristóbal S. Berry-Cabán

For seventeen years I lived a ten-minute walk from the site of the historic Fayetteville Arsenal, destroyed more than 160 years ago on Monday, March 13, 1865. Nearly every week I would walk among what remains of its ruins.

My interest in the Civil War goes back to my youth. In February 1964, my father packed up my mothe...

I had never heard anything about self-care until after my wife and I became full-time caregivers for our grandson, Asher. It initially felt like an alien concept to me, and it seemed a bit self-centered. It sounded like encouragement to take care of Number One above all things, and I had trouble with that. After all, Karin and I had to focus on Asher, who was just a tiny baby...

Europe has spent years pretending that dependency is a sophisticated moral posture. It isn’t. It’s dependency. Put a silk scarf on it, seat it on a panel in Brussels, hand it a briefing paper about shared values and resilient democracies, and it is still a rich continent waiting for the Americans to come downstairs with a gun when the windows start rattling.

That’s ...

Saying goodbye,

Tears in our eyes,

It was hard listening to everyone’s collective cries.

Hoping I don’t die,

And that the deployment would quickly pass by, we loaded onto buses to head to the armory one last time.

I got issued a 9mm pistol.

Fortified with weapons &am...