Dan Schaefer for Missouri

The moral test of our time is not whether we can avoid conflict, but whether we can face it with courage. Each time we fail that test, the moral line retreats a little farther into the darkness, dragging democracy with it.

Are we willing to let our government decide who belongs in America based on how they look, how they sound, or what they believe? Today, the victims are immigrants. Tomorrow, it could be any one of us.

The conflict between the wealthy elite and the working class isn’t a polite debate. It’s a street fight for the American dream we once cherished. It’s time we started acting like it.

One has to stand in awe at the mental distance traveled over the decades; a voyage that began with Reagan calling the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire,” and ended with American conservatives crawling on their knees in Red Square.

Josh Hawley’s theology of governance isn’t just wrong. It’s dangerous. It replaces pluralism with dogma, justice with hierarchy, and democracy with dominion. His vision may not wear jackboots, but it marches in the same direction: toward a society where dissent is sin, where rights are contingent on obedience, and where government is no longer of the people—but of the chosen.

When some lawmakers stop winning public support, they stop trying to earn it. Instead, they use their power to force their views on the rest of us.

There's a growing movement that's quietly transforming America, dismantling the wall between church and state.