News

The USA is a Model for the World (of intolerance that is)

As a Latvian who was forced out of his country by the of the Nazis I am alarmed at the recurrence of intolerance here. But intolerance is part of America’s culture but few recognize its dangers.

By John Freivalds

Minneapolis Star Tribune

As much as we like to regard our country as a shining welcoming light on the hill beaming out “love between our brothers and our sisters” as Peter, Paul and Mary sang in If I Had a Hammer, truth is that the USA always has had a dark underside from its very beginning. And every so often that dark underside appears, dredged up by the recurring demagogue of the times, and overwhelms our better angels.

With pandemic still raging, ‘there’s no place like home’

By John Freivalds

Published 11/1/2021

Duluth News Tribune

At this time of year our friends and neighbors ask us where we are going for the winter to get away from the cold. “Florida, Arizona, somewhere in the Caribbean?” But I am an old grain trader and always evaluate the risks and rewards in taking a position. And these days the risk in going somewhere out of our safe demographic bubble is not worth the reward.

Local View: Let's please rename Columbus Day for Amerigo Vespucci

By John Freivalds

Duluth News Tribune

Published 10/1/2021

As Columbus Day approaches two Mondays from now, I wonder how many people know who Christopher Columbus really was. Growing up in Washington, D.C., and then being a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, I made no connection to Columbus the person. It was just a name. Yes, there is a Columbus, Minnesota, and Duluth has a Columbus Street, and throughout the United States there are Columbuses all over.

Roanoke Times Op-Ed

Death, taxes and whatever the US does in Afghanistan will fail

By John Freivalds

Roanoke Times, Roanoke Virginia

Published 9/22/2021

It was Founding Father Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) who first said” in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” If he were alive today, he certainly would have added the abject failure of everything the US tried in twenty years of war in Afghanistan would fail. Hey, that’s not just my opinion but the conclusion of Craig Whitlock in his new book The Afghanistan Papers. Whitlock, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post interviewed 1,000 people in a “lesson learned “project who were involved with the Afghan war. What an exhausting tale of woe and very expensive cultural blindness! Whitlock examined the military efforts, the geopolitical strategies, the nation building, the economic efforts to try to find something, anything, that the US could be proud of. Results: Nope. Nada. No way José. And now Congress will try to figure out what went wrong-and who to blame.

Can’t Make Dogs into Cats:

Democracy Can’t Be Franchised

By John Freivalds

Duluth News Tribune

August 31st, 2021

While the politicians and pundits in Washington keep fervently trying to find some ONE person to blame for what is happening in Afghanistan, the discourse should focus on who we are as a people. Americans are optimistic: we send people to the moon, invent electric cars and daily mail delivery, create Disneyworld, have school board elections, fly 747’s, find cures for disease, and invent the internet and soap operas. But with that comes the belief that we can transfer all that made America great and democratic (overnight!) to another country suffering from despotism, bad roads, and poverty for centuries.