Letters to the Editor: July-August 2026

Disgusting Junk

I read with disgust Jason M. Morgan’s interview with Arthur Khachikian (“The Struggle for Power in the Middle East,” May). If Morgan loves Iran so much, why doesn’t he go and live there? Here’s another example of Trump Derangement Syndrome among the millions out there. Morgan is so smart, he has no common sense!

Shame on the NOR for printing such garbage. You will never receive another dime from me. This issue is going in the trash. Cancel my subscription!

Gerald Esker

Medina, Ohio

I have liked the NOR, but Jason M. Morgan’s interview with Arthur Khachikian is, well, junk. I only got as far as “Israel has invaded Lebanon, raising the specter of a repeat of the genocide in Gaza.” This is like calling our invasion of Europe to defeat the Germans a genocide. Israel attacked Hamas, the elected evil of Gaza, after they invaded and butchered women and children in Israel.

Perhaps Morgan has the wrongheaded idea that there is a nice way to wage war. The Hamas butchers asked for war, and, as Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman said, war is hell. I won’t cancel my subscription yet in the hope that future issues will be better.

James Bristol

Rockwell, North Carolina

As a longtime subscriber (and occasional letter-writer), let me first express my ongoing gratitude for the work this publication undertakes. The NOR has provided this Catholic with insights and education — and, best of all, challenges — not easily found elsewhere. And I love receiving a paper subscription. Many, many thanks for this all.

Likewise, I was grateful for Jason M. Morgan giving away the game in the first paragraph of his interview. Whenever I hear the word genocide used with Gaza, I am reminded of one of my favorite lines from The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Andreas Loeffler

Lake Oswego, Oregon

I note that Arthur Khachikian is an Armenian, and his emphasis on the Armenian-Azerbaijanian aspects of the situation in the Middle East is understandable. But he is biased against the United States and Israel. I am old enough to remember our differences with Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (r. 1951-1953), who wanted our oil. But our relationship with Tehran afterwards was friendly — until the revolution in 1979. Since then, the Iranians have been chanting, “Death to America.”

Iran is a sponsor of terrorism and a threat to the United States if equipped with a nuclear weapon. The reality is that Iran is determined to lie and stall its way to a weapon but is opposed by an American president who tosses threats around like peanuts and hasn’t got a plan. Jason M. Morgan’s and Dr. Khachikian’s comments aren’t helpful.

The United States has had the same position on Israel since 1947. We happen to have an experienced, principled secretary of state in Marco Rubio, whom I trust to achieve our proper goals.

Joseph Kerwin

Bryan, Texas

Congratulations to Jason M. Morgan for his superb and enlightening interview with Arthur Khachikian about the Trump administration’s betrayal of American ideals in supporting wars that should not be fought and cannot be won.

I was, however, perplexed by one point: Morgan’s reference to the hope of American and Israeli leaders to install “a pliant Zelenskyy-type regime” in Tehran. I have been to Ukraine many times, and there is nothing pliant about the country’s president or his regime. Zelenskyy is a tough guy who has demonstrated on many occasions — especially during his infamous February 2025 meeting with Trump and J.D. Vance at the White House — that he will not be pushed around. Unlike Trump, who has consistently shown that his desire for more power and more wealth always comes first, Zelenskyy has demonstrated again and again that he will always put his country’s interests first.

A. James McAdams

Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science

Notre Dame, Indiana

JASON M. MORGAN REPLIES:

I thank everyone who took the time to read my interview with Arthur Khachikian and respond to it. I encourage those who did not care for my presentation of Dr. Khachikian’s ideas to find his other interviews online. He is an eminently humane and reasonable man.

I am obliged to A. James McAdams for sharing his experience and wisdom. My view on Volodymyr Zelenskyy departs significantly from Prof. McAdams’s. In early 2014 a leaked recording of a conversation between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (wife of noted neocon Donald Kagan) and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt made international news. Nuland and Pyatt discussed the merits of “Klitsch” (former boxer, later politician Vitali Klitschko), “Yats” (economist Arseniy Yatseniuk), and Oleh Tyahnybok (member of the neo-fascist Svoboda Party who was wounded in Ukraine this June). It is obvious that Nuland and her State Department and Deep State cronies masterminded and funded the coup d’état that overthrew democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and installed Western puppet Petro Poroshenko after the 2014 “election.” The interim president, the same “Yats” Nuland and Pyatt discussed in their coup planning, duly signed an agreement bringing Ukraine more firmly into the orbit of the European Union, which is exactly what he was propped up to do.

Jacques Baud, a former member of Swiss strategic intelligence, writes that the Russian side had “proposed a tripartite [Ukraine, Russia, and the EU] working group, the aim of which was to reconcile Ukraine’s desire to join the European Union while preserving its ties with Russia. According to Mykola Azarov, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, studies showed that this proposal did not conflict with the European proposal and that it was therefore possible to have a solution that satisfied Ukrainian interests. However, José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, refused and asked Ukraine to choose” (The Postil, Feb. 1, 2023). The Europeans, themselves puppets of Washington, forced the crisis over Ukraine. Subsequent NATO expansion, designed to goad Russia into starting a war, only hastened the crisis-by-design. “Klitsch,” “Yats,” Tyahnybok, and later Zelenskyy are but bit players in Nuland’s and the Deep State’s game.

It is worth recalling that the so-called Maidan Revolution that provided cover for the 2014 coup was heavily neo-Nazi. Ukrainian ultranationalists and neo-Nazis (they are often indistinguishable) carried out a massacre of opposition protestors in Odessa in May of that year. Prior to this, Ukrainian fascists, whose hero is the thoroughly disagreeable Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, and their compatriots had been shelling Russian-speakers in the Donbas in pursuance of ethnic cleansing there. The Russians’ “denazification” campaign in Ukraine was real, as was Ukrainian Waffen-SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka, who was honored in the Canadian Parliament in 2023.

All the maneuvering and propaganda, including the 2004 Western-backed color revolution in Ukraine, in which Yanukovych was first yanked out of office so the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko could be installed, was preparation for the war the Deep State had long desired. The Russian side wanted to avoid war, for obvious reasons — namely, the Kremlin is not nearly as insane as Nuland and her neocon friends, who will not stop until a Pride flag flies over every capital in the world. And so, Zelenskyy, a comedian remodeled by his MI6 handlers to become the “president” of Ukraine, gave it to them. The Minsk II agreement, signed in February 2015, broke down on Zelenskyy’s watch. (Poroshenko, Zelenskyy’s predecessor who signed Minsk II, later admitted the deal had been a way to buy time to build up the Ukrainian military — in preparation for what, seems obvious given Nuland and Pyatt’s maneuvering.) In an interview with Der Spiegel (Feb. 2023), Zelenskyy said he had intentionally refused to implement Minsk II. This was his job, of course. These were the marching orders his handlers had given him.

Zelenskyy would not have walked headlong into war had he not had the assurances of the Deep State and its European vassals that Ukraine would prevail. But the first days of the Special Military Operation that Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022 sobered up Zelenskyy. The former comedian was no longer laughing. Columbia University professor and international political advisor Jeffrey Sachs, who has firsthand knowledge of events surrounding the run-up to and early days of the Ukraine war, cites then-U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson’s visit to Kyiv in April 2022, in the middle of peace talks hosted by Turkey aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine fighting, as having been intended to sabotage those peace talks and goad Ukraine into further killing and self-immolation. Those followed, in spades.

But Ukraine cannot back down, because Zelenskyy is not his own man. In February 2024 even Deep State mouthpiece The New York Times admitted the CIA had long been involved in Ukraine’s war with Russia. Washington provides weapons systems, targeting, intelligence, money (much of which flows into the pockets of Zelenskyy and his co-conspirators), and propaganda support, such as via the now-defunct USAID, which helped buy out some nine-tenths of the Ukrainian media landscape. (USAID, along with George Soros and the CIA front operation National Endowment for Democracy, also funded the 2004-2005 color revolution in Ukraine.) Now that the Washington-instigated Ukraine slaughter is reaching its denouement, it seems certain that Zelenskyy will bug out with his ill-gotten gains to some villa somewhere, or perhaps be installed as head of the United Nations or some other post where he may continue to serve those who created him.

All this is to say that when I referred to the Zelenskyy regime as “pliant,” I was being charitable.

As to my suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), I don’t know; I’ll leave it to Gerald Esker to figure that one out. I supported Trump since his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, when I realized he was serious about running for president. I cheered when a house named Trump landed on Hillary Clinton’s head in the election that November. I supported him through his long fight against the Deep State; his heroic day in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024; and his historic election to a third term (the second one having been usurped — the Democrats, as ever, cheated). He lost me, though, with the Epstein Files, the attack on Iran, the sick “presidential messiah” meme, the obscene corruption and self-enrichment, and his support for the Gaza genocide. Trump is dead to me now, so maybe I really do have TDS. But, like I said, I’ll let Mr. Esker decide.

About that genocide: The 75,000 murdered souls in Gaza speak much more eloquently about it than I ever could. I would appeal especially to the spirits of the doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, journalists, and children killed by the Israel Defense Forces or starved by the same through economic sanctions, another one of the Deep State’s favorite modes of ethnic cleansing. As for Hamas, Israel funded it, yet on October 7, 2023, somehow lost control of a key section of the most sophisticated and highly defended border wall in the world — the same section through which, coincidentally, Hamas poured through in a murderous rampage. Israel also failed, despite a thick blanket of HUMINT in the region and worldwide, to note preparations for an attack by a terror group operating within one of the most heavily surveilled areas on the planet. It’s almost as though Israel was looking for a reason to liquidate the Palestinians. For those still not convinced, Israeli Agricultural Minister Avi Dichter’s prediction of “Gaza’s Nakba,” Israeli Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu’s (and Sen. Lindsey Graham’s) entertaining the idea of using nuclear weapons in Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s vision for the creation of “sterile” zones in Gaza, or Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s calls to starve Gaza and insistence that “all of Lebanon must burn” might give pause. Or maybe it’s my dang TDS acting up again.

Joseph Kerwin writes that Mohammad Mosaddegh wanted “our oil,” but relations with Iran were friendly until 1979. About the first point, perhaps that’s a Freudian slip? About the second, you don’t say! Installing a puppet tends to have that effect. As for Iran’s nuclear program, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was president of Iran, Israel said it was necessary to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment program lest Mad Mahmoud develop a bomb and wipe out the Jewish state. I bought into that line of thinking fully. But then came mid-2026, when lo, the same Israel wanted to install the same Ahmadinejad as Iranian leader once the hardliners had been assassinated. Maybe the dog is being wagged by the tail a little here. Maybe Benjamin Netanyahu, who stood in the Situation Room in the White House and told the American president what to do about Iran — surely knowing that Epstein and AIPAC had ensured the American president could not refuse — is playing us Americans in a nasty way.

Regarding the charge that I should go live in Iran: This is not wagging the dog so much as putting the cart before the horse. I make no claims in defense of Iran’s government. What I say is that we should not be killing people in Iran, especially not because the Epstein Files discomfit the president, and the Israelis want us to do their dirty work. If Esker, on the contrary, supports the Iran War, then it seems incumbent upon him to sign up for the military and go a-killing in Persia, which is what support for the war entails. Ditto for those who support Marco Rubio, the warmongering diplomat who’s salivating over Cuba. Let those who champion these wars fight in them. I have seen enough mangled American men and women, heard enough about veteran suicides, and met more than enough homeless veterans. No more sending working-class Americans to die and be spiritually and mentally devastated for the Deep State. The least the armchair warmongers can do is get in the game they claim to love.

James Bristol is much more honest. He acknowledges that war is no fun. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman said so, after all. I would invite Mr. Bristol — who, I was astonished to learn, lives in the South — to read up on Sherman’s actions and the real reasons for undertaking them. Bristol might be surprised to learn that Washington propaganda is hardly a recent vintage. Before that trip to the backroom stacks of the library, however, I hope he will read my broadside against the notion that there is a nice way to wage war, which appears in this very issue [see p. 36 — Ed.].

Finally, to Andreas Loeffler: Thank you for bringing up The Princess Bride. I must have seen that movie a dozen times in my misspent youth. Perhaps Mr. Loeffler will remember another famous line from that classic film: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” Or, more to the point, how about Inigo Montoya’s quest for revenge, one of the movie’s motifs, which resembles the Iranian mindset rather neatly: “You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Denials, Omissions & Contradictions

Regarding the infancy narratives: Jim Rice (letter, May) notes that the Gospel of Luke says nothing about “a raging Herod or a flight into Egypt.” I don’t understand why Mr. Rice apparently construes this as a denial, rather than as a simple omission. To Preston R. Simpson (reply, May), I’d point out that Matthew’s account states only that Jesus was born in Bethlehem; it says nothing about the city from which Joseph and Mary came. I don’t see any contradiction.

To make a broader point: Many claim the canonical writers gave us accounts that were simply intended to teach us something they wanted us to learn, rather than give us accurate history. I ask those who make such a claim: Why not dismiss the historical Incarnation entirely and say the whole point of these narratives is only to teach us that, in some (undefined) sense, “God is with us”?

As an Evangelical, I’m surprised to see these views in a Roman Catholic periodical.

John Harutunian

Newtonville, Massachusetts

THE EDITOR REPLIES:

Evangelicals don’t have a monopoly on Scripture. Catholics, too, and others are allowed to discuss and debate its finer points!

Bitcoin: Failing the Fungibility & Morality Tests

Frederick Woodward’s review of Moral Money: The Case for Bitcoin by Eric Sammons (May) is admirably fair minded, and the problems it identifies with fiat currency deserve to be taken seriously. Inflation functions as a covert tax, falling hardest on those least able to hedge against it. The Cantillon Effect — by which newly created money benefits those closest to its source before dispersing through the broader economy — is a genuine moral hazard, not merely a technical inefficiency. These are not paranoid objections; they are accurate descriptions of real problems.

The question is whether Bitcoin solves them. Setting aside the prior question of whether moral predicates properly attach to monetary instruments at all — St. Thomas Aquinas reserved such language for human acts and intentions — Sammons’s arguments fail on his own stated criteria.

Among the properties Moral Money identifies as necessary for sound money is fungibility: each unit must be interchangeable with every other. Yet Bitcoin’s public ledger systematically undermines fungibility in practice. Coins previously associated with criminal transactions — or simply sent to a sanctioned address — are routinely blacklisted by exchanges and analytics services. A “clean” Bitcoin is not operationally equivalent to a “tainted” one. Sammons identifies the requirement and then proceeds as though it has been satisfied. It has not, and the omission is a self-refutation of his book’s own terms.

The second difficulty is more fundamental. Bitcoin has no independent unit of account. Every price denominated in Bitcoin is, in practice, a fiat price converted at the point of sale. Gains and losses are reported to tax authorities in dollars. Volatility itself is measured against fiat baskets. When someone says Bitcoin is “worth” a given amount, they mean worth that amount in the currency Sammons condemns.

Woodward notes, with characteristic restraint, that Sammons’s defense of Bitcoin’s incarnational character “fails to fully address” the experiential losses involved — and that point leads directly to the deeper difficulty. A monetary system that cannot state a price without reference to the thing it claims to supersede has not established the moral independence the argument requires. That it also fails its own fungibility test compounds the problem.

The case for Bitcoin remains to be made.

Brian J. Gross

Austin, Texas

Regarding Frederick Woodward’s review of Moral Money: The Case for Bitcoin: Let the wealthy play with the highly speculative Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is a gamble that is not for the average person who can’t afford to lose money.

There are those, like author Eric Sammons, who want us to accept Bitcoin as the sixth asset class. Gold is physical and has value within itself. Treasury bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government. Real estate is just that — real and physical. Commodities, like oil and corn, are physical. Stocks are based on the success or failure of actual companies. Bitcoin, however, is a concept, backed by nothing more than faith, with no federal government to back it up. That, in itself, is immoral — a scam for those who are foolhardy enough to invest in it. It is the ultimate pyramid scheme, dependent on others who must invest so the original investors can take some of their money. Bitcoin has become a religion to some, and in this respect, too, it is immoral.

In Bitcoin exchanges, Woodward notes, “the parties don’t use their real names” in the transaction. How can something this shady and paranoid be taken seriously or be considered “moral”? Bitcoin has been used by criminals, for example, to hire hitmen and deal drugs, and arrests have been made. In what way is that moral?

But Sammons, who is obviously anti-government, is more interested in accusing “powerful governments and institutions of systemically committing crimes.” He complains about “the manipulation of currency value by elites and rulers.” But the value of Bitcoin is radically manipulated by the whimsy of speculators, whether they’re feeling greedy or fearful. And, in that regard, saying Bitcoin is independent is crazy, for Bitcoin can be hacked at any time. The North Koreans are pros at this.

Woodward wraps up his review by praising Sammons for his “invigorating words.” But that’s all Sammons has — words — with no physical, real, natural backing. Just like Bitcoin.

Rosalyn Becker

Fort Myers, Florida

Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?

Pieter Vree in “Suicidal Empathy: European Style” (New Oxford Notebook, April) takes Pope Leo XIV to task for writing in his apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te that “in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.” If this is “sanctimonious claptrap,” as Vree says, then Christ Himself is guilty of the same claptrap. Is this not what He was saying in Matthew 25:43-45? When the king says, “I was…a stranger and you gave me no welcome,” the condemned reply in astonishment that they did no such thing. Then the king says, “What you did not do for the least ones, you did not do for me.” This is clearly the passage Pope Leo was thinking of, as it appears to fit the case.

Brian Schellenberger

Federal Correctional Institution Petersburg

Hopewell, Virginia

PIETER VREE REPLIES:

Matthew 25 needn’t be read as a prescription from on high for unfettered immigration. The magisterium of the Catholic Church certainly doesn’t see it that way.

A biblical counterpoint might be Christ’s lament over Jerusalem. He wept as He envisioned the approaching time when her “enemies” would hem her in “on every side” and dash her people “to the ground” (Lk. 19:43). As Our Lord knew, a city and its people have enemies who mean them harm.

Christ’s vicars know this, too. Even Pope Francis, generally a massive supporter of immigrants, knew immigration has to have limits. “Each country has a right to control its borders, who enters and who leaves, and countries that are in danger — of terrorism or the like — have more right to control them,” he said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País (Jan. 22, 2017). Such is the case in much of Western Europe today, where Islamic immigrant-terrorists have placed several countries in danger.

Pope Benedict XVI before him reminded us that even though the Christian imperative is to love our neighbors, including immigrants “from whatever nation they come,” we must “allow the authorities responsible for public life to enforce the relevant laws held to be appropriate for a healthy co-existence” (Address to the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, May 15, 2006). Benedict later asserted that “every state has the right to regulate migration and to enact policies dictated by the general requirements of the common good” (Message for the 2013 World Day of Migrants and Refugees).

Pope St. John Paul II before him said essentially the same thing. Immigration “is to be regulated, because practicing it indiscriminately may do harm and be detrimental to the common good of the community that receives the migrant” (Message for the 2001 World Day of Migration).

All the above is summed up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 2241), as explained in my column.

It is, frankly, absurd and irresponsible for Leo to claim that “in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.” As his predecessors explained, nations have the right — nay, the duty — to reject immigrants who would commit heinous crimes against the people of their host countries. Unfortunately, many such immigrants are radicalized Muslims, who “knock at the door” with the intent to terrorize the community on the other side. That’s not very Christ-like, is it?

Yes, there are vulnerable, destitute, and desperate immigrants to Europe (Muslims included) whose lives are genuinely at risk in their home countries and along treacherous migration routes. These should be received with Christian compassion. But there are others who migrate only to subvert Western culture, exploiting its magnanimity to prey upon people they hate. Like the “enemies” of Jerusalem, these should be turned back. It is the responsibility of governing authorities to discern one from the other and make appropriate decisions for the sake of the common good. Failure to do so is a dereliction of duty and, ultimately, a cultural death wish, a misplaced empathy, which is what we’re witnessing in much of Western Europe today. If not corrected, we, too, will weep over its devastation.

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