To Chicago—Because the Truth Must Be Spoken

I am heading to Chicago tomorrow (Thursday) to give a talk at a luncheon hosted by the Catholic Citizens of Illinois. I will, to the best of my ability, take you with me on my travels. Watch this space for updates. I hope to share a video of the event afterward.

I think it's too easy to be dismissive of gatherings of the like-minded. We can roll our eyes and make quips about “preaching to the choir”, or perhaps just shrug and presume a lack of productivity, or even a futility. Yet, what makes a community? A community is a grouping that is centered around similar values. There are few who would argue that we do not need more of that, and even that it is part of the solution to what ails us. For broad communities to develop, groups must meet in the real world, for fellowship and strategy. They must, as a group with a shared aim, discuss the changes that might be made, to protect that which must be guarded, and to build toward a better future.

We became too comfortable with the virtual during the covid era. In favor of convenience and haste, we became flippant and dismissive about real human connection. This is not an admonition against working from home, but there are some things that are better done physically, in person—and they tend to be those things that are the most personal. Our worship, our friendships, and our community are all best lived in the physical world, in which they become most real to us.

Flying doesn’t make most people comfortable nowadays, in light of what appears to be more frequent accidents, and with the awareness that multiple aviation companies have been preferencing racial hiring over the past decade (which we would now call DEI). DEI and affirmative action hiring practices will be what ultimately push more people to favor automation (“AI”), including those who would have otherwise been resolutely opposed. In other words, how many BIPOC, pansexual, left-handed, hermaphrodite, two-spirited, myopic, agoraphobic pilots have to make dangerous mistakes before you begin to say, “I hope automated protocols can get us there safely?” The same attitude will be duplicated across industries over time. Yet automation can never fix the injustice of a better-qualified person being denied a job opportunity because he was the “wrong” race or sex.

Chicago is a colder place than I am used to, in many ways. Like so many places with a high crime rate, it has banned most effective methods of defense, following the false belief that you can somehow disarm the violent elements and then everyone can live together in the peaceful serenity… of a prison? The statistics do not assure one that this is a winning strategy, yet authorities remain undeterred even as they hire armed security to ensure their own safety. But really, this topic comes down to whether the innocent ought to have a chance at their own defense. You cannot legislate the actions of people who have ill intent. You can only incarcerate them. But when a thug confronts his would-be victim, our laws dictate only the options of the latter. Those who legislate like to imagine that it is the former—him who cares not for the law—that they can control with a pen. If only it were so.

In times like these, we must speak and act rightly, and in the company of others who see clearly. We gather not because it is safe, efficient, or even comfortable, but because it is right. Truth must be spoken aloud, courage must be modeled, and human dignity must be reaffirmed in the real world—not in pixels, but in presence. Chicago, here I come.