In the summer of 1970 our church built a “Christian'' high school. My girlfriend’s parents decided to send her to this new, all White, private, “Christian'' high school. I, on the other hand, decided to stay with the public school program in spite of the fact that I would have to go to another public school because the politicians, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to rezone the entire county. They did this in order to get a disproportionate number of Whites in one district and a disproportionate number of Blacks in another district. The state of Virginia was in the throes of integration that year. I don’t know why but I naively thought going to a previously all Black high school would be fine. Exciting. Maybe. My girlfriend and I discovered we were on two different paths in life. Our budding romance ended. Poof! Just like that.
In my new school I represented a 12% minority. The first time a Black student came to my home, my Dad met him with his pistol in hand. I managed to position myself between them so that my school chum could make a quick getaway. Word of that sort of drama gets around fast in high school. No other students, White or Black, ever came to visit me after that. My social life dried up after that. Poof! Just like that.

Calvin, a Black, fellow 10th grader, invited me to look at a book in our homeroom soon after my Dad’s “discouragement” of visitors. Disparate for any hint of friendship, I readily agreed. After he had flipped through a few pages I said in a shocked voice, “I didn’t have anything to do with any of this'' and backed away. What terrified me the most about Calvin’s book were all the photos of White people grinning for the camera, evidently confident that any evidence of them at the scene of an ongoing first-degree murder — a lynching — would never be used against them in a court of law. I learned later that of the 4,467 documented lynchings in the U.S. between 1883 and 1941, only an infinitesimally few people were charged and most of these were acquitted or given light sentences from an all White jury, which was the standard composition of a jury back then. That’s when I realized that I had been taught a carefully redacted version of U.S. history. The people responsible for my education had purposefully left out or glossed over the uncomfortable — for them, at least — parts. Poof! Just like that.

While watching the January 6th, 2021 riot and seeing that hangman’s scaffold and noose in front of our nation’s Capitol building, I vividly remembered Calvin’s book. It occurred to me that if that mob had found their targets, then we would have seen something similar to the photos of Calvin’s book on the news that night, except this time our nation’s Capitol would have been the background and some of our duly elected officials would be hanging above a grinning lynch mob. And America’s experiment with democracy might have ended right there and then. Poof! Just like that.

The J6 riot also reminded me of the time I was deployed to the former Republic of Yugoslavia in 1995. Over 7,000 Muslims were slaughtered by Serbs in Srebrenica during my deployment. It unnerved me how ironic my title was at the time: peacekeeper. There was no peace to keep since the Serbian leader continually encouraged his all-too-eager followers to annihilate their perceived enemies. Eventually he was brought to justice but it took several years to hold him accountable for his advocacy of “ethnic cleansing” — a cold-blooded and clinically sounding phrase for mass murder. He destroyed his country, which ultimately resulted in his own demise. Poof! Just like that!

The oath required to join the U.S. military centers on an ideal: “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” This ideal is distinct from and in opposition to absolute obedience to a person. Kings demand absolute obedience, which is exactly what the designers of our government wanted to avoid. They knew that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all American citizens would be lost under an authoritarian ruler. Poof! Just like that!

Looking back over the decades, the best educational moment that ever happened to me was that day when Calvin showed me his book and then left me alone to draw my own conclusions. I bought a copy of Calvin’s book the other day and gave it to my daughter. As a university professor, she uses it in her lectures about urban planning. I firmly believe, based on all of my life's experiences, that if we don’t teach our children about our nation’s history and all its best and worst moments and how the rule of law must be applied evenly and justly for all American citizens, then we will lose something more precious than ourselves and our constitutional republic. Poof! Just like that!