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Today I have watched an astonishing number of war movies on television in honor of Memorial Day. Men shooting at each other, at buildings, at airplanes, at bunkers, at gas tanks. It seems that people shouldn’t shoot at each other any more in modern life. But they don’t listen to me and they do it anyway. Even though I wish people did not shoot each other any more I surrender to the parts of the movies about heroes, where John Wayne orders the bodies of the paratroopers cut down, where young men belay each other up hills, where someone runs across a field or through water or down a ravine, to save someone else. I see value in training and learning and following orders. Politics are one kind of thing. People being brave and following difficult orders are something other.

Anne Frank said it better.

Despite everything, I believe that people are good at heart.