Notebook: Freedom and Kindness

by Ann Kjellberg, editor

The Odessa Fine Arts Museum, now encircled with razor wire. The director Kirill Lipatov told The Washington Post that “the 123-year-old Fine Arts Museum is so delicate that it would surely burn to the ground if it were hit with a shell.”

As a thoughtful American, one is always aware that one’s country is doing harm somewhere. Even if one actively resists and protests that particular harm, one is to some degree implicated, as a democratic citizen and probable beneficiary, if only at some remove.  Shared responsibility is one of the jobs of democratic citizenship.