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The American Crisis

The essay that strengthened the resolve of the Patriots during the darkest days of the American Revolution.

During the first few months of the American Revolution in 1776, hope for an American victory dimmed as the British won continuous victories over the Continentals. When the rebellion almost seemed lost, Thomas Paine , American soldier and author of "Common Sense," wrote a series of essays, "The American Crisis" to bolster morale among American soldiers and renew hope in the American cause. His first essay was read to Patriot troops, the power of his message echoing into the minds and hearts of every American soldier who heard his words. George Washington understood the power of Paine's words and ordered that "The American Crisis" be read to his men at Valley Forge before the Battle of Trenton to give them a reason to persevere. Likely inspired by Paine's encouraging message, Washington and his army, in turn, saw victories at both Trenton and Princeton , changing the course of the war and renewing American resolve. The following text, written in 1776, is the first of the 13 essays that Paine wrote as part of the "The American Crisis." 

"The American Crisis"

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER,” and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

Whether the independence of the continent was declared too soon, or delayed too long, I will not now enter into as an argument; my own simple opinion is, that had it been eight months earlier, it would have been much better. We did not make a proper use of last winter, neither could we, while we were in a dependent state. However, the fault, if it were one, was all our own; we have none to blame but ourselves. But no great deal is lost yet. All that Howe has been doing for this month past, is rather a ravage than a conquest, which the spirit of the Jerseys, a year ago, would have quickly repulsed, and which time and a little resolution will soon recover.

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils; and as I do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king of Britain can look up to heaven for help against us: a common murderer, a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence as he.

‘Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.

As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched with them to the edge of Pennsylvania, I am well acquainted with many circumstances, which those who live at a distance know but little or nothing of. Our situation there was exceedingly cramped, the place being a narrow neck of land between the North River and the Hackensack. Our force was inconsiderable, being not one-fourth so great as Howe could bring against us. We had no army at hand to have relieved the garrison, had we shut ourselves up and stood on our defence. Our ammunition, light artillery, and the best part of our stores, had been removed, on the apprehension that Howe would endeavor to penetrate the Jerseys, in which case Fort Lee could be of no use to us; for it must occur to every thinking man, whether in the army or not, that these kind of field forts are only for temporary purposes, and last in use no longer than the enemy directs his force against the particular object which such forts are raised to defend. Such was our situation and condition at Fort Lee on the morning of the 20th of November, when an officer arrived with information that the enemy with 200 boats had landed about seven miles above; Major General [Nathaniel] Green, who commanded the garrison, immediately ordered them under arms, and sent express to General Washington at the town of Hackensack, distant by the way of the ferry=six miles. Our first object was to secure the bridge over the Hackensack, which laid up the river between the enemy and us, about six miles from us, and three from them. General Washington arrived in about three-quarters of an hour, and marched at the head of the troops towards the bridge, which place I expected we should have a brush for; however, they did not choose to dispute it with us, and the greatest part of our troops went over the bridge, the rest over the ferry, except some which passed at a mill on a small creek, between the bridge and the ferry, and made their way through some marshy grounds up to the town of Hackensack, and there passed the river. We brought off as much baggage as the wagons could contain, the rest was lost. The simple object was to bring off the garrison, and march them on till they could be strengthened by the Jersey or Pennsylvania militia, so as to be enabled to make a stand. We staid four days at Newark, collected our out-posts with some of the Jersey militia, and marched out twice to meet the enemy, on being informed that they were advancing, though our numbers were greatly inferior to theirs. Howe, in my little opinion, committed a great error in generalship in not throwing a body of forces off from Staten Island through Amboy, by which means he might have seized all our stores at Brunswick, and intercepted our march into Pennsylvania; but if we believe the power of hell to be limited, we must likewise believe that their agents are under some providential control.

I shall not now attempt to give all the particulars of our retreat to the Delaware; suffice it for the present to say, that both officers and men, though greatly harassed and fatigued, frequently without rest, covering, or provision, the inevitable consequences of a long retreat, bore it with a manly and martial spirit. All their wishes centred in one, which was, that the country would turn out and help them to drive the enemy back. Voltaire has remarked that King William never appeared to full advantage but in difficulties and in action; the same remark may be made on General Washington, for the character fits him. There is a natural firmness in some minds which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it among those kind of public blessings, which we do not immediately see, that God hath blessed him with uninterrupted health, and given him a mind that can even flourish upon care. I shall conclude this paper with some miscellaneous remarks on the state of our affairs; and shall begin with asking the following question, Why is it that the enemy have left the New England provinces, and made these middle ones the seat of war? The answer is easy: New England is not infested with Tories, and we are. I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their baseness. The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And what is a Tory? Good God! what is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.

But, before the line of irrecoverable separation be drawn between us, let us reason the matter together: Your conduct is an invitation to the enemy, yet not one in a thousand of you has heart enough to join him. Howe is as much deceived by you as the American cause is injured by you. He expects you will all take up arms, and flock to his standard, with muskets on your shoulders. Your opinions are of no use to him, unless you support him personally, for ‘tis soldiers, and not Tories, that he wants.

I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, “Well! give me peace in my day.” Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;” and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty. Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. A man can distinguish himself between temper and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God governs the world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that period arrives, and the continent must in the end be conqueror; for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.

America did not, nor does not want force; but she wanted a proper application of that force. Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off. From an excess of tenderness, we were unwilling to raise an army, and trusted our cause to the temporary defence of a well-meaning militia. A summer’s experience has now taught us better; yet with those troops, while they were collected, we were able to set bounds to the progress of the enemy, and, thank God! they are again assembling. I always considered militia as the best troops in the world for a sudden exertion, but they will not do for a long campaign. Howe, it is probable, will make an attempt on this city [Philadelphia]; should he fail on this side the Delaware, he is ruined. If he succeeds, our cause is not ruined. He stakes all on his side against a part on ours; admitting he succeeds, the consequence will be, that armies from both ends of the continent will march to assist their suffering friends in the middle states; for he cannot go everywhere, it is impossible. I consider Howe as the greatest enemy the Tories have; he is bringing a war into their country, which, had it not been for him and partly for themselves, they had been clear of. Should he now be expelled, I wish with all the devotion of a Christian, that the names of Whig and Tory may never more be mentioned; but should the Tories give him encouragement to come, or assistance if he come, I as sincerely wish that our next year’s arms may expel them from the continent, and the Congress appropriate their possessions to the relief of those who have suffered in well-doing. A single successful battle next year will settle the whole. America could carry on a two years’ war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.

Quitting this class of men, I turn with the warm ardor of a friend to those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to stand the matter out: I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state: up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but “show your faith by your works,” that God may bless you. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to “bind me in all cases whatsoever” to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America.

There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both. Howe’s first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same plan to Gage, and this is what the tories call making their peace, “a peace which passeth all understanding” indeed! A peace which would be the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than any we have yet thought of. Ye men of Pennsylvania, do reason upon these things! Were the back counties to give up their arms, they would fall an easy prey to the Indians, who are all armed: this perhaps is what some Tories would not be sorry for. Were the home counties to deliver up their arms, they would be exposed to the resentment of the back counties who would then have it in their power to chastise their defection at pleasure. And were any one state to give up its arms, that state must be garrisoned by all Howe’s army of Britons and Hessians to preserve it from the anger of the rest. Mutual fear is the principal link in the chain of mutual love, and woe be to that state that breaks the compact. Howe is mercifully inviting you to barbarous destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that will not see it. I dwell not upon the vapors of imagination; I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up truth to your eyes.

I thank God, that I fear not. I see no real cause for fear. I know our situation well, and can see the way out of it. While our army was collected, Howe dared not risk a battle; and it is no credit to him that he decamped from the White Plains, and waited a mean opportunity to ravage the defenceless Jerseys; but it is great credit to us, that, with a handful of men, we sustained an orderly retreat for near an hundred miles, brought off our ammunition, all our field pieces, the greatest part of our stores, and had four rivers to pass. None can say that our retreat was precipitate, for we were near three weeks in performing it, that the country might have time to come in. Twice we marched back to meet the enemy, and remained out till dark. The sign of fear was not seen in our camp, and had not some of the cowardly and disaffected inhabitants spread false alarms through the country, the Jerseys had never been ravaged. Once more we are again collected and collecting; our new army at both ends of the continent is recruiting fast, and we shall be able to open the next campaign with sixty thousand men, well armed and clothed. This is our situation, and who will may know it. By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils – a ravaged country – a depopulated city – habitations without safety, and slavery without hope – our homes turned into barracks and bawdy-houses for Hessians, and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented.

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The American Crisis

• December 23, 1776

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Introduction

Although it was easy to celebrate independence, the British army made it difficult for Americans to secure it. By the end of 1776, Jefferson’s pen seemed mightier than Washington’s sword. The year’s military campaign began propitiously when in March artillery pieces dragged by Henry Knox’s men to Dorchester Heights caused the Redcoats to withdraw from Boston. Fortunes reversed, however, when the British attacked in New York. Washington met them on Long Island, withdrew to Manhattan, retreated to White Plains, and eventually allowed the enemy to push him south through New Jersey and across the Delaware River to Pennsylvania.

At a time when the Continental army—and the American people—needed a lesson in perseverance, Thomas Paine (1737–1809) could speak from experience. Prior to the stunning success of Common Sense , he had lived a life of obscurity and setbacks. Before moving to America from England in late 1774, he had failed at his father’s trade of corset-making. He had also failed as a teacher, tax collector, and shopkeeper. Now, however, his writing had earned him his status as a leading American revolutionary and motivator of his adopted countrymen.

The American Crisis appeared throughout the war in multiple installments, both in pamphlet form and on the pages of newspapers, mostly in 1776 and 1777. Signed with the penname “Common Sense,” Paine leveraged his earlier success to gain attention for this series, which aimed to reinforce the resolve of Patriots while chastening Loyalists. George Washington ordered that copies of this first installment of the series, which appeared shortly before the December 26 Battle of Trenton, be distributed to every brigade and read aloud to the soldiers of the Continental Army.

Source: Moncure Daniel Conway, ed., The Writings of Thomas Paine , 4 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894–96), 1:170–79. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/paine-the-writings-of-thomas-paine-4-vols

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now , deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem to lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right ( not only to TAX but) “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER,” [1] and if being bound in that manner , is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God….

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them, unsupported, to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils; and as I do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king of Britain can look up to heaven for help against us: a common murderer, a highwayman, [2] or a housebreaker, [3] has as good a pretense as he.

It is surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country…. Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered…. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head….

…Why is it that the enemy have left the New England provinces, and made these middle ones the seat of war? The answer is easy: New England is not infested with Tories, and we are. I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their baseness. The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And what is a Tory? Good God! What is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.

But, before the line of irrecoverable separation be drawn between us let us reason the matter together: Your conduct is an invitation to the enemy, yet not one in a thousand of you has heart enough to join him. Howe [4] is as much deceived by you as the American cause is injured by you. He expects you will all take up arms, and flock to his standard, with muskets on your shoulders. Your opinions are of no use to him, unless you support him personally, for it is soldiers, and not Tories, that he wants.

…I consider Howe as the greatest enemy the Tories have. He is bringing a war into their country, which, had it not been for him and partly for themselves, they had been clear of. Should he now be expelled, I wish with all the devotion of a Christian, that the names of Whig and Tory may never more be mentioned; but should the Tories give him encouragement to come, or assistance if he come, I as sincerely wish that our next year’s arms may expel them from the continent, and the Congress appropriate their possessions to the relief of those who have suffered in well-doing. A single successful battle next year will settle the whole. America could carry on a two-year war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.

Quitting this class of men, I turn with the warm ardor of a friend to those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to stand the matter out. I call not upon a few, but upon all; not on this state or that state, but on every state. Up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but “show your faith by your works,” [5] that God may bless you. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now, is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. It is the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles until death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to “bind me in all cases whatsoever” to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel… I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, [6] stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who, at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America.

There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both. Howe’s first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same plan to Gage, and this is what the Tories call making their peace, “a peace which passes all understanding” [7] indeed! A peace, which would be the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than any we have yet thought of…. And were any one state to give up its arms, that state must be garrisoned by all Howe’s army of Britons and Hessians to preserve it from the anger of the rest. Mutual fear is the principal link in the chain of mutual love, and woe be to that state that breaks the compact. Howe is mercifully inviting you to barbarous destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that will not see it. I dwell not upon the vapors of imagination: I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up truth to your eyes.

…By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils—a ravaged country—a depopulated city—habitations without safety, and slavery without hope—our homes turned into barracks and bawdyhouses for Hessians, [8] and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! And if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented.

• 1. The March 1766 Declaratory Act had insisted that Parliament possessed authority to impose its will on American colonists “in all cases whatsoever.”
• 2. A thief who steals from travelers.
• 3. A thief who breaks into and then steals items from a house.
• 4. General William Howe (1729–1814) was commander-in-chief of British forces in North America (1775–1778).
• 5. See James 2:18.
• 6. Drunken and/or foolish.
• 7. See Philippians 4:6.
• 8. Approximately 30,000 men from Hesse-Kassel and other German regions were ordered by their governments to reinforce the British army. Frequently mischaracterized as mercenaries, it was not the Hessians but instead their governments that profited from their service.

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The American Crisis

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Summary and Study Guide

Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis is a series of pamphlets published between 1776 to 1783 during the American Revolutionary War. Paine uses eloquent, emotional language to persuade the American people to support their states’ new union and contribute to the revolutionary cause. Paine idealizes Americans and their country’s origins to galvanize them to fight for independence, rather than submit themselves to the indignity of being British colonial subjects.

Paine uses his platform to attack the enemies of independence at home and abroad. He frequently criticizes “Tories,” colonists who are loyal to Britain, and either convinces them to join the revolutionary cause or calls for their punishment or exile. He addresses many of his pamphlets to specific people, including British leaders General Howe, Lord Howe, and the Earl of Shelburne . Paine attacks their specific proclamations and policies in order to question their morals and military strategies, undermine their reputations in Britain, and encourage Americans to continue to fight against them.

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While many of Paine’s essays are poetic and motivational, he also engages his readers in detailed analyses of military strategy and financial matters. He offers detailed descriptions of specific events in the war, always using his accounts to undermine British leaders and spur on the American people and military. Paine relies on careful military and financial reasoning in his attempts to persuade the British government and people that they are harming their own nation by prosecuting the war, and that they should negotiate peace with an independent America.

As the war continues, Paine pays special attention to the financial matters of both countries and begins introducing his own policies in regard to taxation and military conscription. He urges his fellow Americans to support higher taxes and a military draft so America can effectively defeat the British. At the end of the war, Paine reiterates the importance of the states’ union and warns his American readers that America’s success as a nation depends on the states’ continued cooperation. Paine celebrates America’s newfound independence and extols its potential as a world leader.

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What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis?

By Agnes Callard

Universities are cloistered gardens. The classroom is the innermost sanctum of that cloister, where worldly demands can be blocked out long enough for a group of people—some of whom had no prior interest—to share a poem by Horace, or an argument by Aristotle. In the past few weeks, as schools have sent students home, that sanctum has been breached. Moving classes online means replacing the shared, clean space of the classroom with a collection of private and cluttered rooms. Even when we cannot see the piles of dishes and laundry, or hear the children yelling, the cares that lurk in the background divide and distract us. Many universities are expanding their pass/fail options, an acknowledgment of how hard it is to keep the coronavirus out of the room—and to keep Horace or Aristotle in it.

To some, these problems will seem trivial. Don’t we have bigger concerns at the moment than ancient poets and philosophers, or the difference between a B-plus and an A-minus? Even in good times, the humanistic academy is mocked as a wheel turning nothing; in an emergency, when doctors, delivery personnel, and other essential workers are scrambling to keep society intact, no one has patience with the wheel’s demand to keep turning. What is the role of Aristotle, or the person who studies him, in a crisis?

Perhaps the most pessimistic answer to this question can be found in the essays of Jean Améry, an Austrian Jew, born Hanns Mayer, who wrote movingly of how his own humanistic learning failed him during the Second World War. Faced with the sheer physical brutality of the concentration camps, Améry came to see the intellectual life as a game, and intellectuals as “nothing more than homines ludentes ,” or people playing. He compared himself unfavorably to those prisoners who had a political or religious cause to cling to—Marxists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholics, and practicing Jews. Being part of a larger struggle made them “unshakable, calm, strong,” he wrote. Their cause served as a kind of substratum, which made life during the camps continuous with life before and after it, whereas people like himself—humanists, philosophers, skeptics—fell into despair, and, in the face of atrocity, “no longer believed in the reality of the world of the mind.”

Améry was ready to grant that intellectuals with a practical mission, who advocate for a moral cause, are capable of heroism. We might count Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.; Marx and Gandhi; Jesus and Muhammad; and Mary Wollstonecraft and Susan B. Anthony in this group. These intellectuals fought for equality, dignity, and the sanctity of human life. Jean Améry did not identify as one of them.

Améry was also tortured by the Gestapo, and confessed that he would readily have betrayed his comrades if he had had any information to reveal. He thus distinguishes himself from another sort of intellectual hero—those who have the fortitude to refuse to speak, when tortured, or to insist on speaking, when pressured to remain silent. Galileo is the classic example of such an intellectual martyr. One might also cite Socrates, Giordano Bruno, Thomas More, and Spinoza.

Nothing prevents these two categories from intersecting: some people are both silenced and have causes. But many humanistic intellectuals belong to neither category—no cause to fight for, no enemy to fight against. These causeless, unmartyred intellectuals are the people whom Améry found wanting. He described not only their physical weakness—they have trouble fending off pickpockets, enduring an uppercut, or even making their beds—but also how poorly they fare socially, their inability to communicate with non-intellectual comrades. Améry’s hope was for such people to prove heroic in every disaster, including those of great physical deprivation. If we ask, instead, whether they do so in any disaster, our outlook might change. In fact, if there is any crisis that ought to prove the worth of the humanistic intellectual, it is the peculiar one that we face today.

The coronavirus is, for the vast majority of us, a call to inaction. It puts life on pause, diminishes our place in the world, and forces us to turn inward. In response, we have settled on some shared tactics. Those who have no practical part in ameliorating the crisis might, if they are free to do so—no children to entertain, the ability to earn money from home—strive to bury themselves in work. Productivity can serve as a talisman, or a coping mechanism. One might also indulge in distraction: video games that simulate the work we cannot do, movies that substitute a fictional world for the one that might be collapsing around us, alcohol to blunt the pain and fear. Productivity numbs us in one way, distraction in another, and when both routes fail to yield the desired effect, we turn to anxiety—namely, by consuming the news.

Numbness or anxiety: are these our choices? Humanism points to another possibility. Aristotle distinguished between relaxation ( anapausis ), which is when we take a rest from activity with a view to resuming that activity, and true leisure ( scholē ), which is inaction meant for a higher purpose— theoria , or contemplation. The academy exists for the sake of contemplation. (Indeed, the English word “school” comes from scholē .) Contemplation is not readily classified as a belief that one fights for, and attempts to squeeze its value into the language of justice or dignity or basic human rights will fall flat. It is better characterized as an object of love and reverence, and a source of fulfillment. For humanists, contemplation is not a cause. It is a calling.

At the moment, if someone can dedicate empty hours to a higher calling, she is turning straw into gold. It follows that humanists should find ourselves well equipped to flourish, given the circumstances. Now is an apt time to ponder the fact that the human condition means living under the shadow of death. It is an apt time to situate the present in the broad sweep of history. Deprived of the reality of human connection, we are at least in a position to appreciate the idea of it. And, given that many of us are teachers, we should also be able to communicate this to others—to offer them a way out of numbness and anxiety. For perhaps the first time in history, a global catastrophe has forced a huge, literate, Internet-savvy population indoors. And yet, if this is the test we humanists have been waiting for, then it is a test I find myself unable to pass.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the same fantasy over and over again. In it, I fall asleep and wake up when the pandemic is over. To relieve my guilt over not helping others, my mind extends the sleep over the whole land, as in fairy tales. Everyone healthy and not caring for the sick just lies there, peacefully, for months, even years. Then they wake up happily, and things go back to the way they were.

In fact, I am not asleep. I am awake, following the news incessantly, annoyed by the tiniest inconveniences and obstacles. Jean Améry was tortured by the Gestapo; I am having a panic attack because I can no longer access my campus office. People outside are gasping for air, dying; meanwhile, the mess in my bedroom prevents me from working. What depresses me most is my laxity. Suddenly, it’s O.K. to let my kids play video games, to wear the same clothes as yesterday, to put minimum effort into dinner, night after night, to read and write and think less than usual. My forgiveness of myself strikes me as a form of despair—the very opposite of rising to meet a challenge, which involves holding oneself to a higher set of standards. I have never felt less heroic.

Allowing for the possibility that other humanists are faring better, I must nonetheless concede that my own humanistic learning has failed to prove itself in a crisis that seems almost to have been designed to showcase its strengths. It has not produced meaning or purpose or psychological fortitude, either for myself or for others.

Is this a strike against humanism? I say no. I say it is a strike against crises. Améry thought that the Holocaust exposed his true self: “nowhere else in the world did reality have as much effective power as in the camp, nowhere else was reality so real.” The brutality and horror Améry was subjected to was persuasive. It persuaded him that his previous life, when he was a student studying literature and philosophy in Vienna, when he wrote a well-received novel, when he believed in the life of the mind—all of that was illusion, pretense, word games. But it wasn’t. Brutality is not an argument, and it is tragic that having one’s sensibility brutalized by cruelty should seem, to the one undergoing it, like being awakened to the true nature of reality.

Being the beneficiary of a much gentler crisis, my vision is less distorted than Améry’s. I have never been surer of the value of scholē —the power of dedicating your time to a higher calling—than now, when I cannot and wish I could. Some of the best things are delicate. The fact that they can be crushed is not an argument against their value but one in favor of providing them with protective enclosures. Yes, it is possible to spin the straw of empty time into gold, but such a pursuit requires many supports. I can teach you to see something in the abstruse arguments against atomism in Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption—to become excited by them, engaged by ancient physics—but things need to be just right. I need a physical classroom, a blackboard, a set of students I have spent a quarter getting to know. I need the world outside to stay quiet. The fact that current circumstances impair that setting is not a refutation of philosophy. It is a proof of how much effort we should put into getting things back to normal, so that we can once again help each other see the world of the mind for the beautiful, wondrous place it is.

Perhaps the special danger of a crisis that leaves a lot of time for thinking is that one will try to learn too many lessons while inside it. Crises are, at least while they are happening, not educational opportunities. They are events that befall us, that harm us. They target everything about us, including our faculty for learning.

Should we believe in intellectual heroism—even of the causeless, unmartyred variety? Of course. But instead of looking for it in a time of crisis, we might turn our attention to the world inside the garden , and remember the last time it happened that a student whose head was full of unspoken brilliance finally, one day, raised her hand. We should contemplate what happened next: how the words poured forth, how she laid herself bare in the face of her terror and self-doubt, how the classroom listened, rapt, learning from her. Every teacher knows that intellectual heroics are real. We also know something about what they are like: communicative, pedagogical, and often invisible to the person engaging in them. And that lesson brings us back to the story of Jean Améry.

Améry wrote a book about suicide, and, a few years after writing it, he took his own life. He understood his wartime experiences as a test of everything he was—a thinker, an aesthete, a reader, a person—and he judged himself a failure. He wrote, of the experience of being tortured by the Gestapo, “It still is not over. Twenty-two years later I am still dangling over the ground by dislocated arms, panting, and accusing myself.” But what Améry could not foretell was the effect of his writing, which is deeply sensitized to pain, to indignity, to deprivation and loss. He speaks of suffering in the voice of someone who was able to protect himself from none of it, and he drives this vulnerability home to the reader by way of careful, dispassionately precise analysis. His tone is measured, literate, comprehensive. He is a man, and he is every man.

Améry’s essays tell the truth, but not the whole truth. They tell the story of how his humanistic learning failed him in the concentration camps, but they do not tell their own story—how it was possible for a man to convey an experience that borders on the incommunicable. The answer is: humanistic learning. Wracked with shame, Améry invites us to gaze upon his destroyed person, so that we may learn a truth we refuse to know: “whoever was tortured, stays tortured.” In his hands, a whole set of words— “concentration camps,” “brutal,” “exile”—are exposed as having been, in the mouths of others, placeholders for an understanding we had been hoping never to acquire. I say this as the granddaughter of four concentration-camp survivors. My grandparents never could—and perhaps never wished to—convey to me what Améry did. If ever I spoke of “torture” before reading Améry, I was homo ludens , playing a game with words.

He who wishes to speak of the destruction of the human spirit cannot expect a receptive audience. Améry understood his reader; he knew what he was up against. His words sail across the gulf of time and space and culture—and the deepest gulf of all, between the one who has been tortured and the one who has not—to address the reader in the native language of her own mind. In the end, she cannot help but let him in. This is an astonishing communicative triumph; one would not have thought that humanistic learning was up to such a test. But Jean Améry proved that it was. He was a hero. He was a teacher.

A Guide to the Coronavirus

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• Can survivors help cure the disease and rescue the economy ?
• What it means to contain and mitigate the coronavirus outbreak.
• The success of Hong Kong and Singapore in stemming the spread holds lessons for how to contain it in the United States .
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• With each new virus, we've scrambled for a new treatment. Can we prepare antivirals to combat the next global crisis ?
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By Peter Schjeldahl

By Adam Gopnik

By Nathan Heller

History of The Crisis

The Crisis magazine is the official publication of the NAACP and the nation's oldest African American publication. 

A record of the darker races

The Crisis magazine is the official publication of NAACP. It was created in 1910 by renowned historian, civil rights activist, sociologist and NAACP co-founder W. E. B. Du Bois .

Du Bois founded The Crisis in one room of the New York Evening Post building in New York City and edited the publication until 1934. A group of NAACP leaders, who included Du Bois, Mary White Ovington , and William English Walling, decided to adapt the name from James Russell Lowell's poem The Present Crisis , written at the height of the Civil War.

In the November 1910 premier issue of The Crisis , Du Bois wrote that the goal of the publication was to "set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people." DuBois noted that The Crisis would be a "a record of the darker races."

"It will first and foremost be a newspaper: it will record important happenings and movements in the world which bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations, and especially those which affect the Negro-American. Secondly, it will be a review of opinion and literature, recording briefly books, articles, and important expressions of opinion in the white and colored press on the race problem. Thirdly, it will publish a few short articles. Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals. The magazine will be the organ of no clique or party and will avoid personal rancor of all sorts. In the absence of proof to the contrary it will assume honesty of purpose on the part of all men, North and South, white and black."

At the time, Du Bois noted, "it was the rule of most white papers never to publish a picture of a colored person except as a criminal and the colored papers published mostly pictures of celebrities who sometimes paid for the honor. In general, the Negro race was just a little afraid to see itself in plain ink."

But The Crisis was different.

"In its pages was the first encouragement of Negro writers and artists," wrote former Crisis business manager George S. Schuyler in 1951. "Here [were] the first literary contests, the first section devoted to Negro children, the first presentation of Negro artwork, the first feature stories about successful Negroes, the first full-fledged drive for Pan-Africanism, the first special numbers devoted to Negro educational advancement, the first articles on consumers cooperation. Here were scathing denunciations and flaming defense."

The Crisis , Schuyler wrote, created an intellectual revolution.

"Here for the first time with brilliance, militancy, facts, photographs and persuasiveness, a well-edited magazine [that] challenged the whole concept of white supremacy then nationally accepted," Schuyler wrote. The Crisis "became the bible of the militant Negro of the day" and "… was the rallying point for the new interracial deal."

Former NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins , who edited The Crisis from 1934-1949, pointed out that The Crisis was "one of the first, if not the first, magazine in America to carry an article of protest on the internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry in concentration camps."

"Our content concerned itself with the problems of the day…" Wilkins wrote. He also noted that, "Its pages contain serious discussion of the problems of a group, enunciate a philosophy, and record progress in the struggle toward full citizenship."

For more than a century, The Crisis has chronicled the journey of Black America and is a sought-after resource for researchers, scholars, and others seeking information on the African-American experience. The Crisis /NAACP digital archive at the Library of Congress is the largest and most used collection, totaling over five million pieces.

Today The Crisis focuses on social justice issues, Black history, and African American art and culture. As DuBois intended, it remains committed to:

• Battling tirelessly for the rights of humanity and the highest ideals of democracy
• Telling the world the facts
• Exposing injustice and propose solutions
• Speaking for ourselves and to speak the truth to power
• Serving as a trustworthy record of the darker races and a reliable antidote to ignorance
• Shaping and strengthen our collective consciousness
• Serving humbly and forthrightly as memory and conscience, as spirit and heart.

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Analysis of Excerpt from “The Crisis,” an Essay by Thomas Paine: 2022

Written in 1776, at a time of extreme change in both Great Britain and America, “The Crisis” is a perspective on the morale in the United States during the time of the Revolutionary War, written by a man transposed from London to the United States, Thomas Paine.  Paine’s insightful, yet disarmingly and painfully honest, writings would garner him the attention of men as great as George Washington, but ultimately would cause him to lose all but his closest friends.  “The Crisis” is compellingly written with Paine’s attempt to improve morale in his country through brutal honesty.

Paine begins with the poetic truth – that “These are the times that try men’s souls.”  The war was among them, and every citizen was feeling the ravages that come with battle, through loss of loved ones or personal property, or both.  However, he reassures the reader, there is the consolation that “the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph,” a phrase still often used today to buffer spirits in times of despair.  Paine continues his attempt at assurance by reaffirming to a very religious population that God would not allow His people to be destroyed by military, or leave them to perish, because they had tried everything they could to avoid the war.  He even goes as far as to insult his old country by saying that the king of Britain has no grounds to ask for help from the heavens, as he was a murderer and pretender.

Using a personal memory to make a point, Paine reflects on an instance in London when he saw a man who owned a tavern standing with his young son, said to be about eight or nine years old. The man remarked on the circumstances occurring between Britain and America by declaring that he wished for peace while he was alive.  Paine notes that he originally felt angered by this comment, as any good parent would prefer that if there must be trouble, it would occur during their time so that their children would have peace in theirs.

However, he determined that “A man may easily distinguish himself between temper and principle,” and that temper would not help America be happy.  He reasserts that if America were simply free of foreign control, she would be a happy place, free from the affairs of other countries except for trade.  This, again, was his attempt to persuade American citizens to stay positive; there was hope to come if they simply kept their tempers in check and stood by their principles.

With the religious discipline of proving faith in something by action, not word, Paine implores the reader to think of what is right and what is wrong.  He wants them to realize that they have a duty for the future generations to fight for what is right.  His hope is to appeal to those readers who are considering seeking peace with Britain rather than continuing to fight for freedom and independence.  He says, “..lay your shoulders to the wheel; better to have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.”  This is his plea for the common ground, for people to work together in this crisis because something so important was the ultimate prize.  His next sentence, again poetic in nature, resonates as not only a plea but a dare to the people: “Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.”

To ease the minds of those who felt strongly against war on the grounds of the deaths it would cause, Paine discusses the difference between a war initiated through murder versus a war begun through principle.  He states that nothing, not even all the treasures in the world, could induce him to support a war begun through offensive means, but a war begun to protect his property and his people would have his full support.  There is no difference in whether this is a single common man threatening him, or a king; the end result is the same.  Giving allegiance to one without morals – the devil, as Paine declares – would be akin to selling your soul.

His feelings on this issue are intense and obvious, as his language turns here from academic and philosophic to vulgar and severe.  “…but should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one, whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.”  He goes on to imply that America will defeat the king and have him run, “fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow and the slain of America.”

Finally, Paine acknowledges, with his trademark style of honesty, that there are people who are going to keep their heads in the sand and just pray that, if the enemy wins, they will be merciful.  He addresses this by reminding them that one can’t expect mercy from an enemy who has proven that they aren’t even just and fair, and are willing to win through trickery and scheming.  “The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolfe; and we ought to guard equally against both.”  He again implores the citizens of America to use reason to make their decision, to remember the events of the past and the times that the king and Britain made threats and promises, terrified and seduced, and delivered only their version of peace.  Concluding his essay, Paine leaves with reminders of recent victories for America and the encouragement to have hope, not fear.  “By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils…”  With this, he leaves a picture of despair if the reader does not work together with the country to fight for freedom.

Paine’s essay delivered a poignant and impactful punch to the citizens of America at a time when morale was low and giving up was on the immediate horizon.  Because of his revolutionary writings, many people chose to stay and fight for freedom.  His honesty was sharp and painful, but exactly what America needed, and barely months later, America was signing her declaration of freedom from Britain.

About:  Thomas Paine  was an English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he inspired the rebels in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called “a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination.”

Born in Thetford, England, in the county of Norfolk, Paine migrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. Virtually every rebel read (or listened to a reading of) his powerful pamphlet Common Sense (1776), proportionally the all-time best-selling American title, which crystallized the rebellious demand for independence from Great Britain. His The American Crisis (1776–83) was a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said, “Without the pen of the author of Common Sense , the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”

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Sometimes the world needs a crisis: Turning challenges into opportunities

Subscribe to this week in foreign policy, maria langan-riekhof , maria langan-riekhof director, strategic futures group - national intelligence council, former federal executive fellow - center on 21st century security and intelligence, brookings institution arex b. avanni , and aba arex b. avanni federal executive fellow - center on 21st century security and intelligence, brookings institution adrienne janetti aj adrienne janetti federal executive fellow - center on 21st century security and intelligence, brookings institution.

April 10, 2017

• 19 min read

In a 1959 speech, John F. Kennedy famously said: “When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters —one represents danger and one represents opportunity.” Although today it is widely recognized that this is not the correct interpretation of the Chinese characters, President Kennedy’s wisdom about a crisis yielding unique opportunities may be more important than ever.

As national security professionals, we spend our days attempting to predict, prevent, and prepare for potential crises across all domains of national security: from political and economic arenas to military and terrorism ones. Crises are generally viewed as dangerous, expensive, and detracting from other agendas and priorities. However, a look back in history illustrates that crises and extreme threats can be useful for directing individuals, a country, and even the world to a solution. As President Kennedy suggested, out of crises can emerge new and incredible opportunities, particularly if traditional approaches and paradigms are questioned and challenged. During a crisis, incentives and motivations change, potentially leading to new cooperative behaviors and even to the creation of new systems or structures. Crises can get the collective adrenaline flowing, focusing minds to solve the problem at hand.

Benefits of Past Crises

A look back in history quickly reveals numerous ways that crises have offered unexpected benefits for societies, countries, and humanity.

Rapid problem solving and innovation: Plato is credited for coining the phrase “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and often a crisis acts as the forcing mechanism to compel expeditious innovation, leading to rapid advances in technology, policy, and/or procedures.

• Deep Water Horizon: In 2010, the Deep Water Horizon rig exploded and collapsed in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, unleashing the largest single oil spill in history. This 87-day uncontrolled release of crude oil from the sea floor (over a mile underwater) created an unprecedented problem and an environmental disaster. At the time of the incident, no technology or mechanism existed to contain it. The “ Capping Stack ” that ultimately brought the release under control—as well as the ability to install it at such great water depth—was developed “on the fly” over a few months. This technology is now incorporated as a contingency for deep water drilling operations across the globe.

Increased resiliency for the next event: The measures taken to survive and eventually end a crisis often make an organization or country stronger and more resilient for future events.

• Asian debt crisis 1997-1998 : The Asian financial crisis plunged the affected countries into deep recessions, rapidly increasing unemployment, poverty, and social dislocation. Although devastating for these countries and peoples, especially Indonesia and Thailand, the Asian debt crisis provided valuable financial lessons that would stand Asia in good stead for the global crisis a decade later. Today, many economists agree that the fundamentals of the Asian economies are better than they were in 1997. Among other reforms, Asian economies have built up their foreign exchange reserves as a buffer; most have current account surpluses; and many have allowed their exchange rates to float.

New levels of cooperation—even among rivals : Large scale crises that challenge multiple interests and equities have a way of pulling together diverse partners—allies and rivals alike—to solve the crisis. If nurtured, these relationships then can be parlayed into cooperation in other areas.

• Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein—heavily in debt from his war with Iran—invaded neighboring Kuwait in August 1990, claiming it as his 19th province. Recognizing this as a violation of sovereignty and a challenge to regional allies, the United States under U.N. auspices built and led an unprecedented, multi-national coalition of 32 partners —including the United Kingdom, Russia, Egypt, France, Saudi Arabia, and Syria—to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. By January 1991, the coalition had destroyed the Iraqi military, liberated Kuwait, and thwarted Saddam’s aims to bring Israel into the conflict and split the coalition. This hallmark of international cooperation, including between the United States and Russia shortly after the end of the Cold War, stands today as the model for successful coalition operations. Furthermore, the Madrid Peace Conference , following the invasion, laid the groundwork for all Middle East-related peace processes attempted since 1991.

Systemic change: Global crises that crush existing orders and overturn long-held norms, especially extended, large-scale wars, can pave the way for new systems, structures, and values to emerge and take hold. Without such devastation to existing systems and practices, leaders and populations are generally resistant to major changes and to giving up some of their sovereignty to new organizations or rules.

• Thirty Years War : In a Europe torn apart and exhausted by 30 years of religious strife, horrific atrocities, and war, participants negotiated the Peace of Westphalia over five years. Under the terms of the peace settlement , a number of countries received territories or were confirmed in their sovereignty over previously held territories. It also marked the first time complex geopolitical disputes had legal means rather than a default to warfare for conflict resolution. Similarly, the devastation of World War II paved the way for the birth of the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions, and the 2008 global financial crisis led the major economies to come together to form the G-20.

Dramatic policy shifts: Sometimes the fear generated from a crisis and corresponding public outcry enables and even forces leaders to make bold and often difficult policy moves, even in countries not involved in or affected by the crisis.

• Fukushima meltdown : A massive tsunami hit the northeast coast of Japan in March 2011, causing four of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant to release radiation into the atmosphere and ocean. Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, German Chancellor Merkel quickly reversed her position on nuclear energy and surprisingly announced that Germany would gradually shut down all nuclear power plants by 2022. Eight of Germany’s 17 plants were closed almost immediately, and Germany launched a long-term plan to make itself independent of both nuclear energy and coal. By 2016, renewables made up almost 30 percent of Germany’s gross energy production , and nuclear energy as a percentage of gross energy production dropped from about 23 percent in 2010 to 13.1 percent in 2016.

Emergence of talent: A crisis has a way of letting the cream rise to the top. In the midst of a crisis, those with the right skill sets and talent—even if they are not the identified leaders or top performers—have a way of rising to meet the challenge, creating a dynamic that enables the entire team or group to grow closer and work better together.

• The 1999 St. Louis Rams : Pro football player Kurt Warner was cut from the Green Bay Packers in 1994 and took the only job he could, bagging groceries for $5.50/hour at a local store in Iowa. He then spent the next three seasons as an undrafted football player in the B-rated Arena Football and NFL Europe leagues. In 1999, the St. Louis Rams returned from a last place (4-12) finish to start their season in crisis. Their starting quarterback, Trent Green, tore his ACL during a pre-season game, and they were looking down the barrel of another disastrous season. Newly-minted, second-string quarterback Kurt Warner answered the call that season, throwing for 4,353 yards, 41 touchdown passes, and winning 13 games. Then he won the Super Bowl by attempting 45 passes without an interception and throwing two touchdowns for a record 414 yards. Kurt Warner went from supermarket to Super Bowl MVP, and the Rams, a mediocre team at best, coalesced around their unexpected leader to rise to the challenge and beat the odds to transform into world champions.

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• The American Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant had an unremarkable childhood and mediocre start to his career, showing little promise while at West Point and then repeatedly failing in various business ventures and at farming. He lost significant money (and at one point his house), and had a reputation for bouts of drinking. When the Civil War broke out, he returned to the military, won the Union’s first major victory at Fort Donelson, and then captured the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, breaking the Confederacy’s stranglehold on the Mississippi River. After numerous generals failed to turn the tide of the war, President Lincoln appointed Grant to be commander of all U.S. armies, and Grant’s creative, diversionary tactics and aggressive, relentless strategy won the war . Reflecting on Grant’s career, President Eisenhower said : “He had so many disadvantages going into the 1864 campaign…but he rose to the occasion unlike I’ve ever seen in American history.” And “he (Grant) alone had the determination, foresight, and wisdom” to win.

Preparing for the Crisis

To be positioned to respond to a crisis and hopefully turn it into an opportunity for growth and positive change, large and often rigid bureaucracies—such as governments and international corporations—can take several steps ahead of time.

Study and analyze previous crises: Lessons-learned exercises help organizations see what has and has not worked during earlier periods of crisis. Some organizations call it an after-action report while the military calls it a “hot wash.” The actual name is less important than the intended effect: to identify what worked well in the crisis and learn for future use. Otherwise, as Winston Churchill famously said, “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” The U.S. intelligence community has utilized such exercises in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to revamp training, create and apply better methodologies, and increase analytic rigor.

Imagine and plan: Structured and unstructured scenario exercises help planners imagine and explore the types of crisis—both unexpected and expected—they could face in the near and long term. Examining the origin, trajectory, and consequences of potential crises during a period of calm gives planners a chance to identify bureaucratic weaknesses, establish protocols, acquire resources and capabilities, and develop various responses, while recognizing that “no plan of operations extends…beyond the first contact.” Even an outline of a plan helps with initial responses in a crisis situation.

Assemble a multi-faceted team or network: To facilitate a rapid response, key players need to know each other and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Getting to know people before a crisis erupts and building relationships help ease personality frictions that would exacerbate the stress of a crisis. It also helps answer the basic question of whom to call across organizations during the immediate crisis response.

Develop communication strategy: Leaders need to pay particular attention to communication strategies—both internally and externally—because words matter, especially during a crisis. Internally, the team or network of people need to have a common lexicon in which to communicate, so that when in crisis mode there is an implicit understanding and agreement that improves efficiency and tamps down stress. In a crisis, if a leader provides what he or she thinks is clear direction, but the team sees as ambiguous, the likelihood of failure becomes significantly higher. Externally, the strategy needs to be focused on managing expectations as well as developing and maintaining public trust. Even successful crisis response can appear to be a failure if the public has lost faith in the system or its leaders.

From Crisis to Opportunity

Once a crisis is in motion, turning it into an opportunity often requires new ways of seeing, thinking, and responding. Applying traditional responses could lessen the pain temporarily, but often is insufficient to solve the underlying problem. Here are a few approaches for getting to a win in a crisis.

Step 1: Define the crisis. The key first step in any crisis is to recognize there is one and not underestimate the severity. The term crisis should not be used casually, because if everything is a crisis, then nothing is a crisis, and such a mentality leads to burnout or delays or ruins resolution. Some crises can easily be defined in advance, while others are a series of events which gradually accrue and lack a clear “this is it” sort of moment. A response team can plan for the obvious crises (e.g. a major terrorist attack, a calamitous natural or man-made disaster, or an accident at a major energy plant), but a crisis that emerges more slowly over a period of time requires responders to stand back to see what is actually happening to know when to call it a crisis.

Step 2: Ask fundamental questions. As the crisis is unfolding, make sure you understand its nature and process. Is it a linear dynamic with a particular trajectory, or perhaps a reinforcing vicious cycle that needs to be broken? Is there a policy or action contributing to the crisis which could be stopped? Are the right people working on the problem, and do they have access to the right information?

Step 3: Reframe the problem. To turn an existing crisis into an opportunity often requires reframing the problem or looking at the issues through a different lens. Reframing could include widening the aperture to see more of the problem. Alternatively, reframing could include bringing in lessons or systems from other domains. For example, medical diagnoses could offer insight for fighting terrorism by using infection patterns of a disease as an analogy for terrorist ideology spreading among a population to identify patient zero or the chief radicalizer.

Step 4: Give permission to fail. Often the solution is not immediately obvious but requires many trials and errors. People are more willing to offer needed creative solutions and unique perspectives in an environment that does not penalize its people for taking risks, and sometimes only after everything else fails do the really creative solutions emerge. This is often seen in conjunction with the next recommendation.

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Step 5: Manage the narrative: Leaders need to be able to rise above the “management” of a crisis and lead the perception of the event both internally and externally. Getting sufficient buy-in to try new approaches requires trust and confidence in the capabilities and vision of the leadership. When distrust prevails, a crisis can emerge within a crisis. Better leadership of an event provides more latitude to explore opportunities and innovate. For example, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, local community respect for and trust in Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen’s leadership gave him the opportunity to re-vamp salvage operations, when other civilian leaders were unable to rally the communities behind similar approaches.

Applying to Current World Challenges

Several of our most daunting current crises across the globe could benefit from applying aspects of these five steps to help reverse negative forces and promote more positive conditions. There are no obvious, easy, or consensus solutions to these ongoing challenges; thus, the time has come to try to approach them in new ways. New approaches—even on the margins—require challenging deeply held assumptions about how the world works and what are acceptable outcomes. Just providing relief or triaging the situation will not change the underlying causes.

Changing climate could stimulate virtuous cycle. If the pace and degree of climate change increases dramatically, this global crisis has the potential to catalyze a range of new discoveries, structures, and behaviors—from astonishing technological breakthroughs to unseen levels of global cooperation. The key to begin to address this massive crisis and promote a virtuous cycle of behaviors requires leaders across the globe to apply these steps. First and foremost, all major players need to recognize, define, and take ownership of the problem. As the signs of climate change have increased in the past few years, international cooperation to slow the progression and manage the effects already have increased—albeit slowly. At the Paris climate conference (COP21) in December 2015, 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal, designed to put the world on track to limit global warming below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The weather fluctuations of the past year could be the driver to push the international community—allies and rivals alike—to finally implement these programs and even go beyond, but government commitment, both here and abroad, remains in question. To get widespread support for difficult policy changes in energy production, agriculture, and consumption, leaders in the public and private sectors have a responsibility to reframe this crisis as everyone’s problem and then develop partnerships to find innovative ways to limit and hopefully, reverse the impact. A modern-day Manhattan project—which concentrated funding, resources, and talent on nuclear weapon development to get ahead of the Germans—could bring the funding and brightest scientific minds together to jump-start creative solutions.

Middle East chaos could promote systemic changes. Multiple scholars have drawn parallels between the Thirty Years War in Europe and today’s long-standing wars and conflicts in the Middle East—a region equally riven by religious, ethnic, tribal, and linguistic differences. As the years of destruction in Europe paved the way for the Peace of Westphalia and the beginning of the modern state system, the last six years of upheaval in the Middle East may be the catalyst which finally enables real, systemic change in the region. However, convincing key decisionmakers inside and outside the region and then launching such a regional revolution may require formally recognizing that parts of the existing regional order have failed and cannot be put back together in their previous form. Moving from collapse to a positive new regional order will require deftly managing the narrative both internally and externally. If such buy-in is achieved, systemic change could take various forms: from major, regional transformation, such as creating more historically authentic state borders or resolving longstanding geopolitical rivalries, to slightly less massive efforts, such as launching a regional initiative for political and economic development.

Millions of refugees could focus attention on root causes. Worldwide refugee numbers—caused by genocide, war, famine, and natural disasters—are at their highest levels in recorded history. From Syria to Myanmar to Haiti to sub-Saharan Africa, millions have been displaced within and across borders. Local and international relief organizations have focused on providing short-term relief services or resettling the refugees in their new locations, but these relief organizations are overwhelmed, and efforts are insufficient to address the humanitarian crises. Moreover, the mounting challenges for host countries are having transformational effects on local economies, societies, and political systems. While addressing the unprecedented humanitarian crisis, international efforts from governments, NGOs, and the private sector need to focus more attention on the origins and ongoing drivers of the refugee flows. For example, in 2015 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) called for member-state parliamentarians to put Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya (minority Muslim) population as a permanent item on future ASEAN agendas, to build better community relations, and to put permanent external monitors in Myanmar to minimize the violence. All these steps are intended to prevent the deliberate persecution of the Rohingya and their flight to neighboring countries from destabilizing Southeast Asia. 1  Identifying the root causes of refugee flight in each region and country can enable NGOs and governments to focus on the “push” rather than the “pull” factors for refugees, and addressing causes can often be cheaper than managing the implications for years and decades. Many Palestinians have lived outside their ancestral homes for more than 50 years, supported by host countries and United Nations relief agencies. If current causes of population displacement are not addressed and addressed soon, recent and rapidly increasing refugee groups, likewise, could be surviving on what is likely to be dwindling international assistance for successive generations.

Leadership Remains the Key

Crises are not a prerequisite for innovation or positive change in the world, but major reforms and new paradigms often require the breakdown—generally publicly recognized—of old orders, institutions, and processes. Resolving such crises and charting a more positive trajectory depends in large part on leadership. Leaders are essential to take different and frequently unpopular measures before and during a crisis. Such leaders need courage and humility to first admit the gravity of the challenges at hand and then to develop the apparatus to meet those challenges. Sometimes such crises enable great leaders because the situation changes public mindsets and makes constituents more open and even demanding of change, but in other cases, crises need a leader to step forward and offer a vision and narrative to overcome the challenges. The leader has to take the risk of exploring new, unconventional solutions and dedicate the resources and time to make them happen. The crisis can offer the leader the circumstances and motivation to take great leaps forward, but the leader must grab it. Finding the solutions to our increasingly global and interconnected crises, from terrorism to climate change to refugees, requires this kind of bold and creative leadership.

The authors are paid employees of the U.S. Government (USG) and conducted this research under a USG-funded fellowship at an external institution. All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis are those of the authors and do not reflect the official positions or views of the USG. This does not constitute an official release of USG information. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying USG authentication of information or endorsement of the authors’ views. This material may reflect USG-required edits for classification and compliance with legal obligations.

• Azeem Ibrahim. The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide. 2016. C. Hurst & Co., London UK. P 124-125.

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The Climate Crisis – A Race We Can Win

Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and it is happening even more quickly than we feared. But we are far from powerless in the face of this global threat. As Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out in September, “the climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win”.

No corner of the globe is immune from the devastating consequences of climate change. Rising temperatures are fueling environmental degradation, natural disasters, weather extremes, food and water insecurity, economic disruption, conflict, and terrorism. Sea levels are rising, the Arctic is melting, coral reefs are dying, oceans are acidifying, and forests are burning. It is clear that business as usual is not good enough. As the infinite cost of climate change reaches irreversible highs, now is the time for bold collective action.

GLOBAL TEMPERATURES ARE RISING

Billions of tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every year as a result of coal, oil, and gas production. Human activity is producing greenhouse gas emissions at a record high , with no signs of slowing down. According to a ten-year summary of UNEP Emission Gap reports, we are on track to maintain a “business as usual” trajectory.

The last four years were the four hottest on record. According to a September 2019 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report, we are at least one degree Celsius above preindustrial levels and close to what scientists warn would be “an unacceptable risk”. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change calls for holding eventual warming “well below” two degrees Celsius, and for the pursuit of efforts to limit the increase even further, to 1.5 degrees. But if we don’t slow global emissions, temperatures could rise to above three degrees Celsius by 2100 , causing further irreversible damage to our ecosystems.

Glaciers and ice sheets in polar and mountain regions are already melting faster than ever, causing sea levels to rise. Almost two-thirds of the world’s cities   with populations of over five million are located in areas at risk of sea level rise and almost 40 per cent of the world’s population live within 100 km of a coast. If no action is taken, entire districts of New York, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, Osaka, Rio de Janeiro, and many other cities could find themselves underwater within our lifetimes , displacing millions of people.

FOOD AND WATER INSECURITY

Global warming impacts everyone’s food and water security. Climate change is a direct cause of soil degradation, which limits the amount of carbon the earth is able to contain. Some 500 million people today live in areas affected by erosion, while up to 30 per cent of food is lost or wasted as a result. Meanwhile, climate change limits the availability and quality of water for drinking and agriculture.

In many regions, crops that have thrived for centuries are struggling to survive, making food security more precarious. Such impacts tend to fall primarily on the poor and vulnerable. Global warming is likely to make economic output between the world’s richest and poorest countries grow wider .

NEW EXTREMES

Disasters linked to climate and weather extremes have always been part of our Earth’s system. But they are becoming more frequent and intense as the world warms. No continent is left untouched, with heatwaves, droughts, typhoons, and hurricanes causing mass destruction around the world. 90 per cent   of disasters are now classed as weather- and climate-related, costing the world economy 520 billion USD each year , while 26 million people are pushed into poverty as a result.

A CATALYST FOR CONFLICT

Climate change is a major threat to international peace and security. The effects of climate change heighten competition for resources such as land, food, and water, fueling socioeconomic tensions and, increasingly often, leading to mass displacement .

Climate is a risk multiplier   that makes worse already existing challenges. Droughts in Africa and Latin America directly feed into political unrest and violence. The World Bank estimates that, in the absence of action, more than 140 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia will be forced to migrate within their regions by 2050.

A PATH FORWARD

While science tells us that climate change is irrefutable, it also tells us that it is not too late to stem the tide. This will require fundamental transformations in all aspects of society — how we grow food, use land, transport goods, and power our economies.

While technology has contributed to climate change, new and efficient technologies can help us reduce net emissions and create a cleaner world. Readily-available technological solutions already exist for more than 70 per cent   of today’s emissions. In many places renewable energy is now the cheapest energy source and electric cars are poised to become mainstream.

In the meantime, nature-based solutions provide ‘breathing room’ while we tackle the decarbonization of our economy. These solutions allow us to mitigate a portion of our carbon footprint while also supporting vital ecosystem services, biodiversity, access to fresh water, improved livelihoods, healthy diets, and food security. Nature-based solutions include improved agricultural practices, land restoration, conservation, and the greening of food supply chains.

Scalable new technologies and nature-based solutions will enable us all to leapfrog to a cleaner, more resilient world. If governments, businesses, civil society, youth, and academia work together, we can create a green future where suffering is diminished, justice is upheld, and harmony is restored between people and planet.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

The Sustainable Development Goals

Climate Action Summit 2019

UNFCCC | The Paris Agreement

WMO |Global Climate in 2015-2019

UNDP | Global Outlook Report 2019

UNCC | Climate Action and Support Trends 2019

IPCC | Climate Change and Land 2019

UNEP | Global Environment Outlook 2019

UNEP | Emission Gap Report 2019

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Meaning of crisis in English

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• It may yet be possible to find a peaceful solution to the crisis.
• The country is in the midst of an economic crisis.
• Talks were held in Madrid about the fuel crisis.
• Falling house prices are illustrative of the crisis facing the construction industry .
• The two groups will meet next week to try to defuse the crisis.
• The media never tire of telling us that Europe is somehow "in crisis".
• Plastic surgery is fine for people with a strong self-image but bad for people "in crisis" - getting divorced , coping with a death , or who've just lost a job , for example .
• a hard/tough row to hoe idiom
• at your worst idiom
• bad hair day
• have a bumpy ride idiom
• have someone over a barrel idiom
• push factor
• rabbit hole
• the Augean Stables idiom
• the hard way idiom

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A mission for journalism in a time of crisis

In a turbulent era, the media must define its values and principles, writes Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner

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‘N o former period, in the history of our Country, has been marked by the agitation of questions of a more important character than those which are now claiming the attention of the public.” So began the announcement, nearly 200 years ago, of a brand-new newspaper to be published in Manchester, England, which proclaimed that “the spirited discussion of political questions” and “the accurate detail of facts” were “particularly important at this juncture”.

Now we are living through another extraordinary period in history: one defined by dazzling political shocks and the disruptive impact of new technologies in every part of our lives. The public sphere has changed more radically in the past two decades than in the previous two centuries – and news organisations, including this one, have worked hard to adjust.

But the turbulence of our time may demand that we do more than adapt. The circumstances in which we report, produce, distribute and obtain the news have changed so dramatically that this moment requires nothing less than a serious consideration of what we do and why we do it.

The Scott Trust , which owns the Guardian, stated a very clear purpose when it was established in 1936: “to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference.” As an editor, it’s hard to imagine a finer mission for a proprietor: our sole shareholder is committed only to our journalistic freedom and longterm survival.

But if the mission of the Scott Trust is to ensure that Guardian journalism will exist for ever, it is still left to us to define what the mission of that journalism will be. What is the meaning and purpose of our work? What role do we play in society?

After working at the Guardian for two decades, I feel I know instinctively why it exists. Most of our journalists and our readers do, too – it’s something to do with holding power to account, and upholding liberal values. We know what defines a Guardian story, what feels like a Guardian perspective, what makes something “very Guardian” (for better and for worse).

In my own work as editor of the Guardian in Australia, and then as the editor of the Guardian in the US, I tried to conceptualise the Guardian with a different accent – to identify the essential qualities of Guardian journalism and bring them to new audiences. Now, as the editor-in-chief of the Guardian and the Observer, I believe our time requires something deeper. It is more urgent than ever to ask: who are we, fundamentally?

The answer to this question is in our past, our present and our future. I want to lead a Guardian that relates to the world in a way that reflects our history, engages deeply with this disorientating global moment, and is sustainable for ever.

T he history of the Guardian begins on 16 August 1819, when John Edward Taylor, a 28-year-old English journalist, attended an enormous demonstration for parliamentary reform in Manchester. In St Peter’s Field, a popular radical speaker, Henry Hunt, addressed a crowd estimated to contain 60,000 people – more than half the population of the Manchester area at the time, dressed in their Sunday best and packed in so tightly that their hats were said to be touching.

At the time, the mood in the country was insurrectionary. The French revolution, three decades earlier, had spread throughout the world the seismic idea that ordinary people could face down the powerful and win – a revelation for the masses and a fright for those in power. After Britain’s victory at Waterloo and the end of the Napoleonic wars, the country was mired in economic depression and high unemployment, while the Corn Laws , which kept the price of grain artificially high, brought mass hunger. There were protests and riots throughout the country, from handloom weavers trashing newly invented factory machinery to anti-slavery campaigners boycotting sugar.

There was also a growing campaign for the vote: the big, densely populated city of Manchester had no member of parliament – while Old Sarum, a prosperous hamlet in southern England, with just one voter, had two MPs to represent him. The city’s businessmen were demanding an overhaul of this rotten system – and working men (and, for the first time, women) wanted their own chance to vote.

The combination of economic depression, political repression and the politicisation of workers with economic need was combustible. As the essayist William Hazlitt wrote one year earlier, “nothing that was established was to be tolerated … the world was to be turned topsy-turvy.”

As most of Manchester gathered in St Peter’s Field on 16 August, the city’s magistrates, intimidated by the size of the crowd and their demands, ordered armed cavalry to charge into the crowd – to break up the meeting and arrest Hunt and other speakers on the podium. The troops stormed through the people, hacking with their sabres and “cutting at everyone they could reach”. Eleven people were killed on the day, seven men and four women, and many hundreds were injured. It became known as the Peterloo massacre or the Battle of Peterloo, and its impact was huge: the historian AJP Taylor said that Peterloo “began the breakup of the old order in England”.

John Edward Taylor was in the crowd that day, reporting for a weekly paper, the Manchester Gazette. When a reporter for the daily Times of London was arrested, Taylor was concerned that the people of the capital might not get an accurate report of the massacre – he correctly feared that without the account of a journalist on the scene, Londoners would instead get only the official version of events, which would protect the magistrates who had caused the bloodshed.

So Taylor rushed a report on to the night coach to London, got it into the Times, and thus turned a Manchester demonstration into a national scandal. Taylor exposed the facts, without hysteria. By reporting what he had witnessed, he told the stories of the powerless, and held the powerful to account.

But Taylor did not stop there. After the massacre, he spent months reporting on the fate of the wounded, documenting the injuries of more than 400 survivors.

What was the Peterloo massacre?

What was the Peterloo Massacre and how many were killed?

On 16 August 1819, up to 60,000 working class people from the towns and villages of what is now Greater Manchester marched to St Peters Fields in central Manchester to demand political representation. Their peaceful protest turned bloody when Manchester magistrates ordered Yeoman – a private militia paid for by rich locals – to storm the crowd with sabres.

Most historians agree that 14 people were definitely killed in the massacre – 15 if you include the unborn child of Elizabeth Gaunt, killed in the womb after she was beaten by constables in custody. A further three named people are believed to have either been stabbed or trampled to death.

Why is it called Peterloo?

The name was first coined five days after the massacre by James Wroe, editor of the Manchester Observer, the city’s first radical newspaper (no relation to the Observer of today). According to historian Robert Poole, Peterloo was “a bitter pun, comparing the cowardly attacks by the Yeomanry and soldiers on unarmed civilians to the brutality suffered at Waterloo.”

What did the protesters want?

They wanted political reform. The years leading up to Peterloo had been tough for working class people and they wanted a voice in parliament to put their needs and wants on the political agenda, inspired by the French Revolution across the Channel. Machines had begun to take jobs in the lucrative cotton industry but periodic trade slumps closed factories at short notice, putting workers out on the street. The Napoleonic Wars, which ended in 1815 with the Battle of Waterloo, had taken a heavy toll on the nation’s finances, and 350,000 ex-servicemen returned home needing jobs and food. Yet those in power seemed more interested in lining their own pockets than helping the poor.

At that point, only the richest landowners could vote, and large swathes of the country were not represented in Westminster. Manchester and Salford, which then had a population of 150,000, had no MP, yet Oxford and Cambridge Universities had their own representation. At the time the extension of the vote to all men, let alone women, was actively opposed by many who thought the vote should be restricted to those of influence and means.

Why is Peterloo important?

It paved the way for parliamentary democracy and particularly the Great Reform Act of 1832 which created new parliamentary seats, particularly in the industrial towns of the north of England. It also led to the establishment two years later of the Manchester Guardian by John Edward Taylor, a 28-year-old English journalist who was present at the massacre and saw how the “establishment” media sought to discredit the protesters.

Helen Pidd , North of England editor

Taylor’s relentless effort to tell the full story of Peterloo strengthened his own reformist political views – and he became determined to agitate for fair representation in parliament. He decided to start his own newspaper, the Manchester Guardian, with the financial backing of other middle-class radicals (10 put up £100 each, and an 11th contributed £50). The first edition was published on 5 May 1821, devoted to enlightenment values, liberty, reform and justice. It was launched with great confidence and optimism, by a man who believed that, “in spite of Peterloo and police spies, reason was great and would prevail”.

The Manchester Guardian was founded in a mood of great hope, and faith in ordinary people. The manifesto that Taylor produced before the paper’s launch speaks powerfully of the “great diffusion of Education” that was taking place, and “the greatly increased interest which political subjects excite, and the immense extension of the circle within which they are discussed. It is of the utmost importance that this increased interest should be turned to beneficial account”.

It is a powerful document, and one whose ideals still shape the Guardian – a celebration of more people getting educated, of more people engaging in politics, from different walks of life, from poorer communities. And it is a document that articulates a sense of responsibility to the public – that the Manchester Guardian could engage with the people who were starting to become involved in politics, giving them the information they need to take action. It is a wholly uncynical and unsnobbish document. It is on people’s side.

In the decades following Taylor’s death in 1844, the Manchester Guardian began to drift from the political ideals that had inspired its founding. It was highly profitable, but in becoming so it got too close to the Manchester cotton merchants who paid for the advertising that supported the paper. It even sided with the slave-owning south in the American civil war: the paper demanded that the Manchester cotton workers who starved in the streets because they refused to touch cotton picked by American slaves should be forced back into work. (Abraham Lincoln wrote to the “working men of Manchester” in 1863 to thank them for their “sublime Christian heroism, which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country”.)

This period of complacency for the Guardian was dramatically ended by the appointment as editor of CP Scott, who transformed the paper and helped establish the political commitments that have been so important to its identity ever since.

Scott was made editor in 1872, at the age of 25. He was a radical Liberal and party activist who cared greatly about social justice and pacifism. Scott faced two big ideological challenges during the 57 years of his editorship; and his response to both helped form the Guardian as it is today.

The first was the question of Irish Home Rule: on the most contentious issue of the time, which split the Liberal party in the 1880s, Scott campaigned for self-government in Ireland – marking the moment, according to the historian David Ayerst, when the Guardian most clearly became “a paper of the Left”. At the end of the 19th century, Scott took the Guardian to an even more controversial anti-colonial position. During the second Boer war, from 1899 to 1902, Britain was rampantly jingoistic; anyone who opposed the war was cast as a traitor. The Guardian stood against it and ran a campaign for peace, while the brilliant Guardian reporter Emily Hobhouse exposed the concentration camps for the Boers run by the British.

The paper’s stance was so controversial that it lost advertisers and one-seventh of its sales. One rival paper, confident that the Guardian was on the verge of collapse, sent a brass band to stand outside our offices in Cross Street, Manchester to play Handel’s mournful Dead March from Saul.

Scott’s courageous position nearly did kill the Guardian. But in standing up to the prevailing political mood of the day, Scott turned the newspaper into “the dominant expression of radical thinking among educated men and women”, as Ayerst wrote. “Clearly this was a paper that could not be bought.”

As Scott orientated the paper towards a more radical position – away from laissez-faire liberalism to what was known as “New Liberalism”, concerned with social justice and welfare – he set the Guardian on the progressive path it has maintained, with a few missteps, ever since.

One of those missteps came in 1948. Surprising as it may seem today, the Manchester Guardian disparaged the foundation of Britain’s National Health Service. While supporting the changes as a “great step forward”, the Guardian feared that the state providing welfare “risks an increase in the proportion of the less gifted”. Three years later, the paper went further and backed the Conservatives at the 1951 general election. (Historians believe that these decisions came about because the editor at the time, AP Wadsworth, loathed Nye Bevan, the passionate Labour politician behind the welfare state.)

Making sense of a political moment when you’re in the midst of it is difficult – even if you avoid commercial and personal conflicts, it can still be hard to see it and understand it. A news organisation might often get things wrong – it needs some core values and principles to stick to in order to try to get it right.

A Guardian timeline

In April, a  prospectus  announces a new paper for Manchester. A month later, on 5 May 1821, John Edward Taylor publishes the first Manchester Guardian as a newspaper in the liberal interest. 

Charles Prestwich Scott , a liberal thinker with strong principles, becomes editor of the Guardian - a post he holds for 57 years.

CP Scott buys the Guardian, becoming both owner and editor.

CP Scott writes a leading article to mark the centenary of the paper that becomes recognised around the world as the blueprint for independent journalism and includes the line “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”

CP Scott retires as editor in favour of his son Ted.

CP Scott’s death in January is followed swiftly by that of his younger son; Ted Scott is killed in a tragic boating accident in April.  William Percival Crozier  is appointed as editor.

Ownership of the Manchester Guardian is transferred to the Scott Trust to protect the paper, its independence and the journalistic principles of CP Scott.

Following  WP Crozier’s death, Alfred Powell Wadsworth becomes editor.

Alastair Hetherington becomes editor following Wadsworth’s death.

On 24 August the newspaper  changes its title  from the Manchester Guardian to the Guardian, to reflect the growing importance of national and international affairs in the newspaper. 

The editor’s office and major editorial departments relocate from Manchester to London.

Peter Preston is appointed editor.​

The Guardian has a radical redesign, splitting the newspaper into two sections and introducing a new masthead. 

Alan Rusbridger becomes editor.

Guardian Unlimited (GU) network of websites is launched.

The mid-sized Berliner format newspaper launched. It is the UK's first full-colour national newspaper. 

A new digital operation, Guardian US, is launched in New York as a hub for Guardian readers in the US.

The Guardian launches Australian digital edition, Guardian Australia.

Katharine Viner is appointed Guardian editor-in-chief.

The Guardian and Observer newspapers launch in a new tabloid format and the website and apps are given a redesign.

Many of these core values were laid out by Scott on the 100th birthday of the Guardian, with his justly celebrated centenary essay of 1921. It was here that Scott introduced the famous phrase “comment is free, but facts are sacred”, and decreed that “the voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard”. It was here that he laid out the values of the Guardian: honesty, cleanness [integrity], courage, fairness, a sense of duty to the reader and a sense of duty to the community.

CP Scott’s essay, like John Edward Taylor’s foundational prospectus , is both powerful and hopeful; as Scott writes, “the newspaper has a moral as well as a material existence”.

Our moral conviction, as exemplified by Taylor and codified by Scott, rests on a faith that people long to understand the world they’re in, and to create a better one. We believe in the value of the public sphere; that there is such a thing as the public interest, and the common good; that we are all of equal worth; that the world should be free and fair.

These inspiring ideas have always been at the heart of the Guardian at its best – whether the paper is called the Manchester Guardian or the Guardian, the name it adopted in 1959 – and they are enshrined in our independent ownership structure, in which the Guardian is owned solely by the Scott Trust. Any money made must be spent on journalism. (The Observer, of course, has its own distinct and honourable history and perspective – and as part of the same company, we are close siblings, but not twins.)

This is the mission that has motivated so many of the great moments in Guardian history, from our independent reporting of the Spanish civil war to the dramatic Edward Snowden revelations ; from taking an anti-colonial position in the Suez crisis to standing up to Rupert Murdoch, the police and politicians in the phone-hacking scandal; from sending Jonathan Aitken to jail to the Panama and Paradise Papers .

These values, beliefs and ideas are well-established and enduring. They do not, by themselves, tell us how to meet the moral urgency of this new era. The world we knew has been pulled out of shape, and we must ask what it means to uphold these values now – as journalists and as citizens – and how they will inform our journalism and purpose.

A lmost 200 years have passed since the public meeting that sparked Peterloo. But the past three decades – since the invention of the world wide web in 1989 – have transformed our idea of the public in ways that John Edward Taylor and CP Scott could not have imagined.

This technological revolution was exciting and inspiring. After 600 years of the Gutenberg era, when mass communication was dominated by established and hierarchical sources of information, the web felt like a breath of fresh air: open, creative, egalitarian. As its creator, Tim Berners-Lee , put it, “this is for everyone”. At first, it felt like the beginning of a thrilling new era of hyper-connectivity, with all the world’s knowledge at our fingertips and every person empowered to participate – as if the internet was one big town square where all our problems could be solved and everyone helped each other.

While many news organisations saw the internet as a threat to the old hierarchies of authority, forward-looking editors like Alan Rusbridger , who led the Guardian from 1995 until 2015, embraced this hopeful new future for journalism, by investing in digital expansion – hiring engineers and product managers – and by understanding that journalists, in this new world, must be open to challenge and debate from their audience. From making the Guardian the first British news organisation to employ a readers’ editor to launching an opinion site that inverted the traditional model of top-down newspaper commentary, he put the Guardian at the forefront of digital innovation and the changed relationships of this new era. As I wrote four years ago in my essay The Rise of the Reader , the open web created genuinely new possibilities for journalism – and journalists who resisted the technological revolution would damage both their own interests and the interests of good journalism.

But it has become clear that the utopian mood of the early 2000s did not anticipate all that technology would enable. Our digital town squares have become mobbed with bullies, misogynists and racists, who have brought a new kind of hysteria to public debate. Our movements and feelings are constantly monitored, because surveillance is the business model of the digital age. Facebook has become the richest and most powerful publisher in history by replacing editors with algorithms – shattering the public square into millions of personalised news feeds, shifting entire societies away from the open terrain of genuine debate and argument, while they make billions from our valued attention.

This shift presents big challenges for liberal democracy. But it presents particular problems for journalism.

The transition from print to digital did not initially change the basic business model for many news organisations – that is, selling advertisements to fund the journalism delivered to readers. For a time, it seemed that the potentially vast scale of an online audience might compensate for the decline in print readers and advertisers. But this business model is currently collapsing, as Facebook and Google swallow digital advertising ; as a result, the digital journalism produced by many news organisations has become less and less meaningful.

Publishers that are funded by algorithmic ads are locked in a race to the bottom in pursuit of any audience they can find – desperately binge-publishing without checking facts, pushing out the most shrill and most extreme stories to boost clicks. But even this huge scale can no longer secure enough revenue.

On some sites, journalists who learned in training that “news is something that someone, somewhere doesn’t want published” churn out 10 commodified stories a day without making a phone call. “Where once we had propaganda, press releases, journalism, and advertising,” the academic Emily Bell has written , “we now have ‘content’.” Readers are overwhelmed: bewildered by the quantity of “news” they see every day, nagged by intrusive pop-up ads, confused by what is real and what is fake, and confronted with an experience that is neither useful nor enjoyable.

Many people get most of their news from Facebook, which means that information arrives in one big stream – which may contain fact-based independent journalism from transparent sources alongside invented stories from a click farm, or content funded by malevolent actors to influence an election. The Richmond Standard , a website in California’s Bay Area, describes itself as a “community-driven daily news source”. If you see one of its headlines in your news feed, you couldn’t possibly know that it is owned by the multinational oil giant Chevron – which, according to the Financial Times, also owns “the Richmond refinery that in August 2012 caught fire, spewing plumes of black smoke over the city and sending more than 15,000 residents to hospital for medical help”. Such arrangements are no longer remarkable: the Australian Football League employs about 30 journalists to write friendly stories. Many free local newspapers in the UK are funded by the very councils they should be holding to account. It is asking a lot of individuals to sift the real from the fake when they are bombarded by information – how do they know who to trust?

Trust in all kinds of established institutions – including the media – is at an historic low. This is not a blip, and it should not be a surprise, when so many institutions have failed the people who trusted them and responded to criticism with contempt. As a result, people feel outraged but powerless – nothing they do seems to stop these things happening, and nobody seems to be listening to their stories.

This has created a crisis for public life, and particularly for the press, which risks becoming wholly part of the same establishment that the public no longer trusts. At a moment when people are losing faith in their ability to participate in politics and make themselves heard, the media can play a critical role in reversing that sense of alienation.

“If mistrust in institutions is changing how people participate in civics, news organisations might need to change as well,” the MIT professor Ethan Zuckerman has argued . “We could rethink our role as journalists as helping people … find the places where they, individually and collectively, can be the most effective and powerful.”

To do this well, journalists must work to earn the trust of those they aim to serve. And we must make ourselves more representative of the societies we aim to represent. Members of the media are increasingly drawn from the same, privileged sector of society : this problem has actually worsened in recent decades. According to the government’s 2012 report on social mobility in the UK, while most professions are still “dominated by a social elite”, journalism lags behind medicine, politics and even law in opening its doors to people from less well-off backgrounds. “Indeed,” the report concludes, “journalism has had a greater shift towards social exclusivity than any other profession.”

This matters because people from exclusive, homogenous backgrounds are unlikely to know anyone adversely affected by the crises of our era, or to spend time in the places where they are happening. Media organisations staffed largely by people from narrow backgrounds are less likely to recognise the issues that people notice in their communities every day as “news”; the discussions inside such organisations will inevitably be shaped by the shared privilege of the participants.

After 71 people died in the devastating Grenfell Tower fire in west London – which residents had forewarned for years – the Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow said that the failure to attend to these warnings showed that the media was “comfortably with the elite, with little awareness, contact or connection with those not of the elite.” As Gary Younge, the Guardian editor-at-large, has put it : “‘They’ are not ‘us’ – ‘their’ views are not often heard in newsrooms, and they know it.”

If journalists become distant from other people’s lives, they miss the story, and people don’t trust them. The Guardian is not at all exempt from these challenges, and our staff is not diverse enough. Because of our history, values and purpose, we are committed to addressing these issues – but there is still a long way to go.

Meanwhile, those in power have exploited distrust of the media to actively undermine the role of journalism in the public interest in a democracy – from Donald Trump calling the “fake news” media “the enemy of the American people” to a British cabinet member suggesting that broadcasters should be “patriotic” in their Brexit reporting. All over the world – in Turkey, Russia, Poland, Egypt, China, Hungary, Malta and many other countries – powerful interests are on the march against free speech. Journalists are undermined, attacked, even murdered .

In these disorientating times, championing the public interest – which has always been at the heart of the Guardian’s mission – has become an urgent necessity. People are understandably anxious in the face of crises that are global, national, local and personal. At the global level, these crises are overwhelming: climate change, the refugee crisis, the rise of a powerful super-rich who bestride the global economy. It is easy to feel that humanity is facing a great shift, about which we were not consulted. Overwhelming technological, environmental, political and social change has precipitated what the philosopher Timothy Morton memorably describes as “a traumatic loss of co-ordinates” for all of us.

These global upheavals have plainly destabilised national politics, producing the shocks and surprises of the past two years: the unexpected result of the Brexit referendum , which leaves Britain facing a deeply uncertain future; the stunning election of Donald Trump ; the collapse of support for traditional parties across Europe, and the unexpected rise of Emmanuel Macron . These events confounded the experts and the insiders who confidently declared them impossible. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn appeared to have torn up the rulebook that had governed electoral politics for two decades – finding a surge of support in the June snap election, particularly with young people, by promoting socialist ideas that had long been dismissed. Bernie Sanders tapped into a similar mood in the US Democratic primary.

Skyrocketing inequality between the rich and poor has bred resentment at the political and economic establishment. In October it was revealed that the world’s super-rich now hold the greatest concentration of wealth for 120 years – many of them taking elaborate steps to avoid tax in the process, as the Paradise Papers showed.

What is becoming clear is that the way things have been run is unsustainable. We are at a turning point in which, in writer Naomi Klein’s words , “the spell of neoliberalism has been broken, crushed under the weight of lived experience and a mountain of evidence”. (Klein defines neoliberalism as “shorthand for an economic project that vilifies the public sphere”.) Perhaps the markets don’t have all the answers after all. The Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, who says that many had not understood how “radical the implications” of worsening inequality would be, suggests that the political backlash to globalisation could possibly produce a “fundamental transformation of the world – at least as significant as the one that brought about the first world war and the Russian revolution .”

In many local areas, in our neighbourhoods and our communities, we see the collapse of civic life, from public space sold off cheaply to developers to the closing of libraries to the underfunding of schools and hospitals . It is not hard to imagine what has produced the growing tide of resentment that has shaken our politics. It is painful to see the rich getting away with it in the big cities while you’re struggling in your small town. Older people lament the loss of community life; younger people are unlikely to be able to find a good job or afford somewhere decent to live.

All of these dislocations have led to another set of crises at a personal level. This year, the World Health Organisation announced that cases of depression had ballooned in the past decade, making it the leading cause of disability worldwide. Loneliness is now being recognised as an epidemic throughout the west.

Our lives are increasingly atomised, but you can see the pleasure that comes from communal or civic participation. People long to help each other, to be together, to share experiences, to be part of a community, to influence the powers that control their lives. But in everyday life, such togetherness is hard to achieve: workplaces in the era of the gig economy no longer offer a solid place to gather; religion has declined; technology means that we often communicate via screens rather than face-to-face.

This is a dangerous moment: these are fertile grounds for authoritarianism and fascistic movements, and it’s no surprise that people feel anxious and confused. The desire to belong can just as easily find a home in dark places; new ways of participating can just as easily be used to foster hate.

But it is the presence of all these crises that recalls AJP Taylor’s remark that Peterloo “began the breakup of the old order” – and I cannot help wondering if this is another such moment. After the fever of Peterloo, amid mass demands for the vote, the Manchester Guardian caught the mood of the people, and found a way to respond – not to deny what was happening or minimise it, but to acknowledge it, contextualise it, analyse it, try to understand it, to “turn it to beneficial account”.

The urgent question now, then, is how the Guardian should do that today.

O ne response to this crisis is despair and escapism: to bury our heads in our phones, or watch some dystopian TV. Another is to declare that the whole system is broken, and everything must be torn down – a view whose popularity may partly explain our recent political tremors.

But despair is just another form of denial. People long to feel hopeful again – and young people, especially, yearn to feel the hope that previous generations once had.

Hope does not mean naively denying reality, as Rebecca Solnit explains in her inspiring book Hope in the Dark . “Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists,” Solnit writes. It’s a belief that actions have meaning and that what we do matters. “Authentic hope,” she says, “requires clarity and imagination.”

Hope, above all, is a faith in our capacity to act together to make change. To do this, we need to be bold. “Not everything that is faced can be changed,” James Baldwin wrote in 1962. “But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” We need to accept the limits of the old kind of power, and work out what the new kinds will be. We need to be engaged with the world, uncynical, unsnobbish, on people’s side: just like the 1821 manifesto that established the Guardian.

Because people are not powerless to change things, and they are finding ways to act – new ways to get involved, to be citizens – it’s just that it might not be the kind of civic action that we’re used to. It might be American football players taking a knee to protest against police violence; it might be the people of Iceland , swarming around their parliament building banging pots and pans to bring down the government that bungled their country’s financial crash. It might be university students demanding divestment from fossil fuels , or the spread of small-scale renewable energy projects across the developing world. It might be digital activists building powerful new encryption tools in the wake of the Snowden revelations. This kind of action might not look like politics as we know it – but it’s politics all the same. These are new forms of engagement and participation, new ways to be an engaged citizen.

If people long to understand the world, then news organisations must provide them with clarity: facts they can trust, information that they need, reported and written and edited with care and precision.

If people long to create a better world, then we must use our platform to nurture imagination – hopeful ideas, fresh alternatives, belief that the way things are isn’t the way things need to be. We cannot merely criticise the status quo; we must also explore the new ideas that might displace it. We must build hope.

To do this, the Guardian will embrace as wide a range of progressive perspectives as possible. We will support policies and ideas, but we will not give uncritical backing to parties or individuals. We will also engage with and publish voices from the right. In an age of tumultuous change, nobody has a monopoly on good ideas.

But our guiding focus, especially in countries such as Britain, the US and Australia, will be to challenge the economic assumptions of the past three decades, which have extended market values such as competition and self-interest far beyond their natural sphere and seized the public realm. We will explore other principles and avenues through which to organise society for the common good.

In doing this, we want nuance and knowledge, surprises and context and history, because power and influence might not reside where they used to; as identities change, the political assumptions of the recent past should not dictate our perspective on the present. We should be guided by curiosity, not certainty. We like experts, but that’s not enough; we must also ask why more people don’t .

This kind of journalism, which champions the public interest, requires a deep understanding of the changes taking place, so we will continually find the best ways to listen to people, even – perhaps especially – those who don’t read us. This is why it is essential that we have a staff that is representative of the society to which we all belong. We need to ensure our journalists will find and hear different stories, have different instincts, gain different insights, make different connections, give voice to the silenced, cover areas and topics that are neglected – in other words, make our journalism better.

We do this by taking people seriously and treating our subjects, sources and readers with respect. Our relationship with our readers is not transactional: it is about sharing a sense of purpose and a commitment to understand and illuminate our times.

Supporting the Guardian – via subscriptions, contributions or membership – is only one way to participate in our mission. We are inviting our readers to be part of a community, whether that means reading and listening to and watching and sharing our work, or responding to it, or by sending us anonymous information or participating in a reporting project. We will also collaborate with news organisations – and others – who are doing work in the public interest.

We must embrace the new ways that people are engaging in the world, not long for a lost past when the ballot box and a handful of powerful media was the end of the story. As Ethan Zuckerman says, “if news organisations can help make citizens feel powerful, like they can make effective civic change, they’ll develop a strength and loyalty they’ve not felt in years”.

The Guardian is now funded more by our readers than by our advertisers. This is not only a new business model. It is an opportunity to focus on what readers value in Guardian journalism: serious reporting that takes time and effort, carefully uncovers the facts, holds the powerful to account, and interrogates ideas and arguments – work that speaks to the urgency of the moment, but lasts for more than a day. Being funded by our readers means we must focus on the stories that are most meaningful. It also means that we must spend money carefully, trying to produce – as one writer described CP Scott’s ambition for the Guardian a century ago – “a great paper without any of the airs of a great paper”.

Of course, in a serious age, the appetite for thoughtful, clever features beyond the news is possibly greater than ever. Our readers want to be nourished – by meaningful journalism about technology, economics, science, the arts – not fattened up with junk. They want useful, enjoyable reporting on how we live now, spotting trends, catching the mood, understanding what people are talking about – life-affirming, inspiring, challenging. We can be fun, and we must be funny, but it must always have a point, laughing with our audience, never at them. Their attention is not a commodity to be exploited and sold.

We will give people the facts, because they want and need information they can trust, and we will stick to the facts. We will find things out, reveal new information and challenge the powerful. This is the foundation of what we do. As trust in the media declines in a combustible political moment, people around the world come to the Guardian in greater numbers than ever before, because they know us to be rigorous and fair. If we once emphasised the revolutionary idea that “comment is free”, today our priority is to ensure that “facts are sacred”. Our ownership structure means we are entirely independent and free from political and commercial influence. Only our values will determine the stories we choose to cover – relentlessly and courageously.

We will ask the questions that people are asking, and the questions that no one is asking. Honest reporters approach every situation with humility: they find the people who don’t get listened to and really listen to them. They get to know a place. We will get out of the big cities and the big institutions, and stay with stories for the long-term. Our commentary must also be based in facts, but we will keep a clear distinction between news and opinion.

We will provide a worthwhile space in which to read, watch, listen to and debate the issues of the day. We will be at the forefront of emerging new technologies, and will embrace those that truly benefit Guardian journalism and our readers’ experience of it. We must be proud of everything with the Guardian’s logo on it. Rather than overwhelming readers with stuff we demand they consume, we will edit for a meaningful experience. In print and in digital, we will be explanatory, visual, keepable. In recent years, the trend has been to prioritise the platforms on which journalism appears. We must now prioritise the reason for that journalism.

M ore than 800,000 people now help fund the Guardian, because they think what we do is important – and there are millions more who read us every day. This is inspiring, and it shows us a path towards a secure future for our journalism. We want to make sure that generations to come can read the Guardian, and that requires making our finances sustainable.

For now, we cannot predict where this political moment will lead, or what changes await. There is much about the future that we do not know.

But we do know that there are serious questions that must be answered today, and that the Guardian is well placed to do this: because of our unique independent ownership; because of our high-quality journalism, rooted in the facts; because of our progressive perspective; and because our readers believe, as we do, that Guardian journalism should have the biggest possible impact and try to change the world for the better.

To steal Rainer Maria Rilke’s phrase, we must “live the questions now”: constantly examining our assumptions, our biases, how the world is changing, what it means. To do this, we will follow five principles: we will develop ideas that help improve the world, not just critique it; we will collaborate with readers, and others, to have greater impact; we will diversify, to have richer reporting from a representative newsroom; we will be meaningful in all of our work; and, underpinning it all, we will report fairly on people as well as power and find things out.

This is a challenge: a challenge for us at the Guardian to grab these principles, develop them and use them in all we do; a challenge to Guardian readers, to engage with us, support us if you believe in us, participate, advocate; and a challenge to all media organisations, to find ways to face this moment.

In the two-and-a-half years since I became editor-in-chief, we have experienced a huge number of political and social shocks, a dramatic undermining of the business model for serious journalism, and what many believe is an unprecedented level of disruption to our planet, our nation states, our communities, ourselves. It is a searching time to be an editor, a journalist and a citizen – but also a privilege to be grappling with these questions, with a possibility of helping to turn this era into something better, to turn this moment to “beneficial account”, as our founding manifesto proclaimed. And to do what has been the mission of the Guardian since 1821: to use clarity and imagination to build hope.

More than 800,000 readers now help fund the Guardian. Join them .

Main illustration by Michelle Thompson

This article was amended on 18 November 2017. Taylor put his report of the Peterloo massacre on the night coach, not a train, to London.

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Vervaeke Foundation

Wisdom is not optional

What is the Meaning Crisis?

We are in the midst of a mental health crisis. There are increases in anxiety disorders, depression, despair, and suicide rates are going up in North America, parts of Europe, and other parts of the world. This mental health crisis is itself due to, and engaged with, crises in the environment and the political system, those in turn are enmeshed within a deeper cultural historical crisis that John Vervaeke calls “The Meaning Crisis”. It’s more and more pervasive throughout our lives. And there’s a sense of drowning in this old ocean of bullshit. And we have to understand, why is this the case? And what can we do about it?

Today, there is an increase of people feeling very disconnected from themselves, from each other, from the world, and from a viable and foreseeable future. Let’s discuss this, let’s work on it together, let’s rationally reflect on it. Getting out of this problem is going to be tremendously difficult. It’s going to require significant transformations in our cognition, our culture, our communities. And in order to move forward in such a difficult manner, we have to reach more deeply into our past to salvage the resources we can for such an amazing challenge.

Learn more about awakening from the meaning crisis .

The Crisis of Meaning

Heeding viktor frankl's call..

Posted July 12, 2017

• What Is Depression?
• Find a therapist to overcome depression

Some 60 years ago, the world-renowned psychiatrist and Nazi concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl, MD, PhD, called attention to three major societal ills: aggression , addiction , and depression . He termed these problems the “mass neurotic triad,” a kind of psychological axis of evil in today’s parlance. 1 Significantly, this triad comprised more than targets for psychiatric /therapeutic intervention. The mass neurotic triad was symptomatic of a contemporary world that was missing something; indeed, something vitally important to the nature of human existence itself.

To Dr. Frankl, the problems of aggression, addiction, and depression could be traced, in large part, to an “existential vacuum” or perception that one’s life, including one’s work life, appeared to be meaningless . He observed that the existential vacuum was a widespread phenomenon of the 20 th Century and underscored that these conditions were not truly understandable, let alone “treatable,” unless the existential vacuum underlying them was recognized.

If Viktor Frankl were alive today (he passed on in September 1997), I’m sure that he would still be concerned about this mass neurotic triad. In fact, he would probably argue that the problems of aggression, addiction, and depression are worse now than when he first wrote about them after World War II!

For example, when it comes to aggression , we see it manifest itself in ways that Dr. Frankl may not even recognize. Besides overt aggressive behaviors, like road rage, air rage, parking lot rage, and “desk” rage 2 (e.g., work stress that leads people to engage in counterproductive workplace behaviors that cost employers billions of dollars in lost productivity , insurance payments, and increased security), postmodern society also must confront increasing levels of relationally aggressive behaviors like bullying (e.g., research evidence, believe it or not, suggests that aggressive children in school are perceived as being more “popular” than meeker students 3 ). And these illustrations of aggression say nothing about the “shock and awe ” mentality that plagues societies in the 21 st Century on an international scale with acts of terrorism, wars, and rumors of wars.

Insofar as addiction and addictive behaviors are concerned, the situation, I would argue, is very similar. And we’re not just talking about the alarming increases in substance abuse , both the “legal” and illegal kinds, which concern our modern age. The new millennium has brought us new kinds of addictive behaviors, such as those associated with shopping, telecommunications (e.g., email and “texting”), and the internet, along with new forms of work (“ workaholic ”), gambling (“day-trading”), exercise, and sexual addictions.

And to close the loop on the mass neurotic triad, it is a simple fact that depression is occurring more often and at earlier ages than in decades past; that is, when Dr. Frankl first called our attention to this phenomenon. Indeed, statistics related to depression available from such organizations as the American Psychiatric Association, National Institute of Health, and World Health Organization, among other reputable sources, are staggering:

• 20 percent of adults will experience depression at some point in their life.
• One of every four adolescents will have an episode of major depression during high school with the average age of onset being 14 years.
• 97 percent of those reporting depression also reported that their work, home life, and relationships suffered as a result.
• Women are twice as likely to experience depression as men.
• Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide.
• One in seven men will develop depression within 6 months of becoming unemployed; and so on. 4,5,6

Once again, these statistics point primarily to the manifestations and effects of depression on individuals ; they don’t even begin to describe the fall-out that comes “naturally” with depression at the family, community, and nation-state levels. The implications of depression on such a macro-level can be, and usually are, profound. The fall-out or “collateral damage” (to borrow yet another familiar word from the modern-day lexicon of aggression) associated with the current and highly-polarized geopolitical climate, we can rest assured, will only exacerbate the incidence of depression along with its personal and societal implications.

The persistence of the mass neurotic triad in the 21 st Century suggests, as mentioned earlier, that we are facing a “crisis of meaning” that will not go away on its own, nor will it disappear solely through the pursuit of power (i.e., a correlate of aggression) or the pursuit of pleasure (i.e., a correlate of addiction). But where there is a crisis, there is also opportunity. Hence, a crisis of meaning is also a call for meaning —in our personal lives, in our work, and even in our public policies. In the midst of the personal and collective suffering that surrounds us, and as we confront this critical and pivotal time in world history, there is still hope for a better, more meaning -full future for all.

And, ultimately, as Viktor Frankl would say, it is meaning that sustains us throughout our lives no matter how little or how much power and pleasure come our way. It is meaning that can help us address the problems of aggression, addiction, and depression. It is meaning that will sustain us as we face the challenges of everyday life in our relationships, at work, and with society as a whole no matter how desperate they may appear or actually be. However, it is up to each and every one of us to find this meaning in order to reach the levels of human evolution and enlightenment, as well as quality of life, which still await us. In future posts, we’ll discuss ways to find this meaning in our everyday lives and work, as well as explore how the search for meaning —individually and collectively—is intimately related to and positively influences health and well-being at all levels. Now is the time to address this crisis of meaning.

1. Frankl, Viktor E. (1978). The Unheard Cry for Meaning , New York: Washington Square Press/Simon & Schuster, p. 28. See also: Pattakos, A., & Dundon, E. (2017). Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl’s Principles for Discovering Meaning in Life and Work , 3rd edition. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, pp. 53-54.

2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201008/look-out-here…

3. Rose, A.J., Swenson, L.P., & Waller, E.M. (2004). “Overt and relational aggression and perceived popularity: Developmental differences in concurrent and prospective relations,” Developmental Psychology, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 378-387.

4. For example: https://psychcentral.com/lib/depression-in-teens-and-children/

5. For example: http://www.dbsalliance.org/site/PageServer?pagename=education_statistics_depression

6. For example: https://www.healthyplace.com/depression/men/depression-in-men-understanding-male-depression/male-depression-and-unemployment-and-retirement/

Alex Pattakos, Ph.D. , is the coauthor of two books on the human quest for meaning, Prisoners of Our Thoughts and The OPA! Way .

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The Meaning of Crisis

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Crisis of meaning.

In psychology and psychotherapy, existential crises are inner conflicts characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning or by confusion about one's personal identity. Existential crises are accompanied by anxiety and stress, often to such a degree that they disturb one's normal functioning in everyday life and lead to depression. This negative attitude towards life and meaning reflects various positions characteristic of the philosophical movement known as existentialism. Synonyms and closely related terms include existential dread, existential vacuum, existential neurosis, and alienation. The various aspects associated with existential crises are sometimes divided into emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. Emotional components refer to the feelings they provoke, such as emotional pain, despair, helplessness, guilt, anxiety, or loneliness. Cognitive components encompass the problem of meaninglessness, the loss of personal values or spiritual faith, and reflections about one's own mortality. Outwardly, existential crises often express themselves in addictions, anti-social and compulsive behavior.

The specific symptoms vary from case to case. Theorists try to address this by distinguishing between different types of existential crises. Categorizations are usually based on the idea that the issues at the core of existential crises differ with the individual's stage in life and personal development. Types commonly found in the academic literature include the teenage crisis, the quarter-life crisis, the mid-life crisis, and the later-life crisis. They all have in common a conflict about the meaning and purpose of one's life. The earlier crises tend to be more forward-looking: the individual is anxious and confused about which path in life to follow, especially concerning education and career as well as one's identity and independence in social relationships. Crises later in life are more backward-looking. They are often triggered by the impression that one is past one's peak in life, and are often characterized by guilt, regrets, and a fear of death. The individual's age does generally correspond to the type of crisis they experience, but not always since there is a lot of variation on the level of personal development. Some people may only experience some of these types or none at all. If an earlier existential crisis was properly resolved, it makes it usually easier for the individual to resolve or avoid later crises.

The problem of meaninglessness plays a central role in all of these types. It can arise in the form of cosmic meaning, which is concerned with the meaning of life at large or why we are here. Another form concerns personal secular meaning, in which the individual tries to discover purpose and value mainly for their own life. The issue of meaninglessness becomes a problem because of the discrepancy between the desire of humans to live a meaningful life and the apparent meaninglessness and indifference of the world, sometimes termed the absurd. Various sources of meaning have been suggested through which the individual may find meaning. They include altruism, or trying to benefit others; dedicating oneself to a cause, such as a religious or political movement; creativity, for example by creating art; hedonism, or the pursuit of pleasure; self-actualization, which refers to the development of one's inborn potentials; and finding the right attitude towards one's hardships.

Existential crises have various negative consequences, both on the personal level, such as anxiety and the formation of bad relationships, and the social level, such as a high divorce rate and decreased productivity. They may also have positive effects by pushing the affected to address the underlying issue and thereby develop as a person. Some questionnaires, such as the Purpose in Life Test, can be used to measure whether someone is currently undergoing an existential crisis. Because of the primarily negative consequences, it is important that existential crises are resolved. The most common approach is to help the affected find meaning in their life. This can happen through a leap of faith, in which the individual places their trust into a new system of meaning, or through a reasoned approach focusing on a careful and evidence-based evaluation of the sources of meaning. Some theorists believe in a nihilistic approach, in which the individual accepts that life is meaningless and tries to find the best way to cope with this belief. Other approaches include cognitive behavior therapy and the practice of social perspective-taking.

Outside psychology and psychotherapy, the term "existential crisis" is sometimes used to indicate that the existence of something is threatened.

Source: Wikipedia

About the Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential is a unique, experimental research work of the Union of International Associations . It is currently published as a searchable online platform with profiles of world problems, action strategies, and human values that are interlinked in novel and innovative ways. These connections are based on a range of relationships such as broader and narrower scope, aggravation, relatedness and more. By concentrating on these links and relationships, the Encyclopedia is uniquely positioned to bring focus to the complex and expansive sphere of global issues and their interconnected nature.

The initial content for the Encyclopedia was seeded from UIA’s Yearbook of International Organizations . UIA’s decades of collected data on the enormous variety of association life provided a broad initial perspective on the myriad problems of humanity. Recognizing that international associations are generally confronting world problems and developing action strategies based on particular values , the initial content was based on the descriptions, aims, titles and profiles of international associations.

The Union of International Associations (UIA) is a research institute and documentation centre, based in Brussels. It was  established  in 1907, by  Henri la Fontaine  (Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 1913), and  Paul Otlet , a founding father of what is now called information science.  

Non-profit, apolitical, independent, and non-governmental in nature, the UIA has been a pioneer in the research, monitoring and provision of information on international organizations, international associations and their global challenges since 1907.

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The (AI) sky isn’t falling

Students using generative AI to write their essays is a problem, but it isn’t a crisis, writes Christopher Hallenbrook. We have the tools to tackle the issue of artificial intelligence

Christopher R. Hallenbrook

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In January, the literary world was rocked by the news that novelist Rie Qudan had used ChatGPT to write 5 per cent of her novel that won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The consternation over this revelation mirrored the conversations that have been taking place in academia since ChatGPT was launched in late 2022. Discussions and academic essays since that time have consistently spoken of a new wave of cheating on campus, one we are powerless to prevent. 

While this reaction is understandable, I disagree with it. Students using AI to write their essays is a problem, but it isn’t a crisis. We have the tools to tackle the issue.

AI is easy to spot

In most cases AI writing can be easily recognised. If you ask multipart questions, as I do, ChatGPT defaults to using section headings for each component. When I grade a paper that has six section headings in a three- to five-page paper (something I have experienced), I see a red flag. ChatGPT’s vocabulary reinforces this impression. Its word choice does not align with how most undergraduates write. I’ve never seen a student call Publius a “collective pseudonym” in a paper about The Federalist Papers , but ChatGPT frequently does. AI is quick to discuss the “ethical foundations of governance”, “intrinsic equilibrium” and other terms that are rare in undergraduate writing if you haven’t used the terms in class. Certainly, some students do use such vocabulary. 

One must be careful and know one’s students. In-class discussions and short response papers can help you get a feel for how your students talk and write. Worst-case scenario, a one-to-one discussion of the paper with the student goes a long way. I’ve asked students to explain what they meant by a certain term. The answer “I don’t know” tells you what you need to know about whether or not they used AI. 

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Even when you can’t identify AI writing so readily, you will likely fail the paper on its merits anyway. I’ve found ChatGPT will frequently engage with the topic but will write around the question. The answer is related to what I asked about but doesn’t answer my question. By missing the question, making its points in brief and not using the textual evidence that I instruct students to include (but I don’t put that instruction in the question itself), ChatGPT produces an essay that omits the most essential elements that I grade on. So even if I miss that the essay was AI generated, I’m still going to give it a poor grade.

The summary is ‘dead and buried’

Careful consideration and structuring of essay prompts also reduce the risk of students getting AI-written work past you. A simple summary of concepts is easy for ChatGPT. Even deep questions of political theory have enough written on them for ChatGPT to rapidly produce a quality summary. Summaries were never the most pedagogically sound take-home essay assignment; now they are dead and buried. 

Creativity in how we ask students to analyse and apply concepts makes it much harder for ChatGPT to answer our questions. When I was an undergraduate student, my mentor framed all his questions as “in what manner and to what extent” can something be said to be true. That framework invites nuance, forces students to define their terms and can be used to create less-written-about topics. 

Similarly, when responding to prompts asking about theories of democratic representation, ChatGPT can effectively summarise the beliefs of Publius, the anti-federalist Brutus or Malcolm X on the nature of representation, but it struggles to answer: “Can Professor Hallenbrook properly represent Carson? Why or why not? Draw on the ideas of thinkers we have read in class to justify your answer.” In fact, it doesn’t always recognise that by “Carson”, I am referring to the city where I teach, not a person. By not specifying which thinkers, ChatGPT has to pick its own and in my practice runs with this prompt, it used almost exclusively thinkers I had not taught in my American political thought class.

Ask ChatGPT first, then set the essay topic

I select my phrasing after putting different versions of the question through ChatGPT. Running your prompt through ChatGPT before you assign it will both let you know if you’ve successfully created a question that the generative AI will struggle with and give you a feel for the tells in its approach that will let you know if a student tries to use it. I’d recommend running the prompt multiple times to see different versions of an AI answer and make note of the tells. It is a touch more prep time but totally worth it. After all, we should be continually re-examining our prompts anyway.

So, yes, ChatGPT is a potential problem. But it is not insurmountable. As with plagiarism, some uses may escape our detection. But through attention to detail and careful design of our assignments, we can make it harder for students to use ChatGPT to write their papers effectively and easier to spot it when they do.

Christopher R. Hallenbrook is assistant professor of political science and chair of the general education committee at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter .

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What is a constitutional crisis? Is the US currently in one?

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What is a constitutional crisis? With Trump waiting in the wings, could we be heading toward one?

“This is one of those essentially contested concepts without a fixed definition,” says Dan Urman, director of the law and public policy minor at Northeastern, who teaches courses on the Supreme Court.

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From the dispute at the southern border between Texas officials and the Biden administration, to the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency, the phrase constitutional crisis has found its way into many headlines lately.

While modern crises pose dangers that are clearly defined, others are subject to interpretation, such as what is meant when reporters casually invoke the failure of the institutions of government to keep the wheels of democracy greased. Rolling Stone did so earlier this year, declaring with ominous certainty, in anticipation of Trump’s clash with state and federal prosecutors: “America is facing its greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War.”

“This is one of those essentially contested concepts without a fixed definition,” says Dan Urman , director of the law and public policy minor at Northeastern, who teaches courses on the Supreme Court.

Political officials and commentators frequently warned of a constitutional crisis during the Trump years — first, in response to some of his policies ; then throughout congressional impeachments hearings ; and, finally, when the former president allegedly mounted a campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The term has re-entered public discourse as Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president , faces a slew of state and federal charges .

Northeastern legal experts say that, though real-world examples are often contested, the concept of a constitutional crisis generally describes a situation in which a political dispute cannot be resolved within the system of rules, norms and procedures that govern society. 

“In general, it relates to an inability of our governmental institutions to resolve problems in a legal or democratic way within the constitutional system,” Urman says.

Types of crises

The U.S. Constitution is supposed to provide a framework for resolving disputes through doctrines such as the separation of powers. A constitutional crisis occurs when the system of “checks and balances” breaks down without clear recourse, and the issue at hand then “spills over,” rendering the institutions incapable of resolving the dispute, Urman says. Scholars, pointing to events throughout history, have delineated several categories of constitutional crises.

When President William Henry Harrison died just one month into his tenure in 1841, a constitutional crisis ensued over the exact procedure for installing his successor. It wasn’t until 1967, with the ratification of the 25th Amendment, that a process was put in place to clarify what had previously been constitutionally ambiguous. 

Constitutional vagueness can lead to one kind of crisis. Another is when the Constitution offers solutions to a problem, but they can’t be implemented because they are politically infeasible. This was the case during the 2000 presidential election, when a dispute over vote tallies in Florida was kicked up to the Supreme Court despite constitutional remedies. (While the authority to determine a winning candidate rests with the House of Representatives in the case of a dispute, scholars note that constitutional rules governing presidential elections still must be “interpreted and supplemented.”)

The high court ultimately handed the presidency to George W. Bush , ending a possible crisis ( scholars have debated whether Bush v. Gore constituted an actual constitutional crisis) that left a stain on the democratic process.

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Near-crises

The beginnings of crises seemed to rear their head during the tumult of the 2010s, Urman says. Take U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s refusal to hold a hearing for Merrick Garland, who then-President Barack Obama nominated to the Supreme Court in 2016 at the tail end of his presidency following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.  

While many scholars protested the move, saying that Garland was owed a hearing, Republican senators still effectively stonewalled the nomination, clearing the way for the appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch when Trump took office. 

The dispute, however, was not a crisis, according to Urman. 

“McConnell was playing constitutional hardball,” he says. “He was allowed to do this even though norms and past practices suggested Garland deserved, at the very least, a Senate hearing.” 

Jeremy R. Paul , a professor of law and former dean of the Northeastern University School of Law, agrees.

“What made it not a crisis is precisely that Obama backed down,” Paul says. “McConnell said he wasn’t going to hold a hearing, and Obama went and jaw-boned about it, which is to say, he complained about it; he talked to the public about it; but he didn’t say, ‘Well, we’re just going to seat him anyway.’”

A constitutional crisis usually refers to a defined moment, Urman says. The Civil War — itself perhaps the founding constitutional crisis — is a notable example . President Andrew Jackson refusing to follow the Supreme Court ruling in Worcester v. Georgia in 1832, which recognized Cherokee sovereignty above Georgia state law, is another. “The president didn’t abide by a Supreme Court ruling,” Urman says, “a clear crisis.”  

When President Richard Nixon refused to hand over audio recordings of some of his phone conversations to the special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal, a constitutional crisis loomed. But after the Supreme Court ordered that Nixon do so, he complied. Crisis averted, Urman says. 

“A president refusing to abide by court orders to comply with a subpoena would, in my view, be a constitutional crisis,” Urman says. “Nixon complying is what kept it from becoming a crisis. All of the other branches will have weighed in.”

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Crises and crises in the making.

On Jan. 6, 2021, an incensed mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building at the outgoing president’s urging, many chanting “ stop the steal ” in reference to Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election outcome. Trump’s fake elector scheme — deemed illegal by his own White House Counsel’s Office — set the stage for a potentially unprecedented constitutional crisis.     

“The paradigmatic example of a crisis would have been if Trump had succeeded in getting the Secret Service to take him into the Capitol, and he’d marched into the Capitol and said: ‘I hereby declare you can’t count the electoral votes.’” Paul says. 

But the plan required that former Vice President Mike Pence acquiesce to Trump, and Pence’s refusal to go along with the plan, using the false slates to derail the certification process, put an end to the near-crisis. “Ultimately, Vice President Pence’s decision to certify the electoral college count averted a true crisis,” Urman says. 

As the Supreme Court now weighs whether Trump should enjoy presidential immunity from prosecution — including for acts alleged in pending criminal indictments — the specter of crisis looms large. If the Supreme Court were to remain mute on the matter of immunity or rule against the former president, and Trump were to be convicted on state or federal charges of election interference, then elected president in 2024, the country may be facing a crisis, the experts say.  

It’s that exact possibility that has many observers animated with concern.

“I don’t think we are currently in a crisis, but we could be if Trump recaptures the presidency and refuses to abide by court rulings,” Urman says. 

Crises between federal and state government

Another crisis moment is Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s legal standoff with the Biden administration at the southern border. 

After a Supreme Court granted a request by the Biden administration to let federal border agents take down a concertina wire barrier, Abbott appeared to defy the order. The day after the Supreme Court lifted the lower court order barring Border Patrol from taking down Texas’ makeshift fence, Texas National Guard and state troopers continued erecting the razor wire. 

Abbott justified the move , saying that the state has a constitutional right to defend itself from what he characterized as “invaders” south of the border. 

“President Biden has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws enacted by Congress,” Abbott said this year, according to the Texas Tribune. “Instead of prosecuting immigrants for the federal crime of illegal entry, President Biden has sent his lawyers into federal courts to sue Texas for taking action to secure the border.”

The episode appears to contain the hallmarks of a constitutional crisis.

“The moment you hit a crisis is when you have two of the branches of government that have conflicting views about what should happen, and neither one of them is willing to back down,” Paul says, adding that the federal government’s impasse with a state government qualifies as well. 

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Stay up to date:, co2 capture, utilization, and storage.

• Climate change is predicted to cut average incomes by almost 20%, new research suggests.
• The incomes of people in poorer countries will be worst affected, limiting their ability to grow the economy - despite the fact they have the smallest carbon footprints.

The World Economic Forum outlines a framework for economic equity in its recent whitepaper on achieving a just global transition to net zero.

How would you feel if your salary was about to be cut by 20%?

You may be about to find out, since climate change will cost us almost a fifth of our earnings over the next 26 years, according to research on the economics of the climate crisis.

More frequent and extreme weather events will cause $38 trillion of destruction every year by the middle of the 21st century, a study published in the journal Nature predicts. As a result, average income per capita will decline by 19% over the next 25 years, say the researchers from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

As the chart above shows, the cost of mitigating future carbon emissions is six times lower ($6 trillion) than the total ($38 trillion) damage caused by continuing to burn fossil fuels, adding to the climate burden.

Corporate leaders from the mining, metals and manufacturing industries are changing their approach to integrating climate considerations into complex supply chains.

The Forum’s Mining and Metals Blockchain Initiative , created to accelerate an industry solution for supply chain visibility and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) requirements, has released a unique proof of concept to trace emissions across the value chain using distributed ledger technology.

Developed in collaboration with industry experts, it not only tests the technological feasibility of the solution, but also explores the complexities of the supply chain dynamics and sets requirements for future data utilization.

In doing so, the proof of concept responds to demands from stakeholders to create “mine-to-market” visibility and accountability.

The World Economic Forum’s Mining and Metals community is a high-level group of peers dedicated to ensuring the long-term sustainability of their industry and society. Read more about their work, and how to join, via our Impact Story .

Inequality of climate impact on earnings

The Potsdam Institute’s assessment dwarfs previous analysis on the cost of the climate crisis. A report in UK newspaper the Guardian quotes Leonie Wenz, a member of the research team: “It’s devastating. I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The inequality dimension was really shocking .”

The inequality Wenz is referring to reflects her team’s findings that the biggest hit to earnings will be felt in developing nations that have contributed the least to climate change. The study indicates that in the United States and Europe, the average hit to earnings will be 11%. Developing nations suffer much greater losses of earnings, including: Brazil (-21%), Botswana (-25%), Mali (-25%), Pakistan (-26%), Iraq (-30%), and Qatar (-31%).

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The climate crisis disproportionately hits the poor. how can we protect them, this is what the climate crisis is costing economies around the world, these 3 climate disasters will have the biggest impact on human health by 2050, climate change will limit economic development.

The disproportionate impact of climate change on developing countries will place additional limits on their ability to grow their economies for the benefit of the people. In an essay for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, UNICEF’s Principal Adviser for Economics, Laurance Chandy, argues that climate change makes it more difficult for countries to break out of the cycle of economic inequality .

“If climate change augurs a world of more frequent and intense shocks,” says Chandy, “sustained episodes of fast economic growth – so-called growth miracles – will become harder to pull off. The result will be fewer poor countries succeeding in converging on rich-country income levels, compared to a world without climate change.”

This is especially true for developing countries that rely on the export of fossil fuels as a mainstay of their economies.

Chandy argues that developing countries in this group of fossil fuel economies can expect to see economic contraction in the range of 10%-50% as international demand falls during the transition to net zero.

Would you pay to help limit climate change?

Despite the unequal economic impact of climate change on developing nations, people living in these countries would be more likely to voluntarily give a small portion of their income to help mitigate the impact.

When asked if they would give up 1% of their annual income to fund climate mitigation , 82.6% of people in flood-prone Bangladesh answered yes, according to Our World in Data. In the United States, however, 48.1% of people said they would be happy to contribute.

Most people in Myanmar (92.8%) appeared willing to give up 1% of their earnings, while in Israel 37.3% said they were prepared to make such a contribution.

Carbon emissions by income group

While people in wealthier nations appear less willing to contribute to mitigating climate change, research by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) illustrates the disparity in income between those responsible for the highest and lowest levels of carbon emissions globally .

This illustration of the SEI’s data by Visual Capitalist shows that the top 10% of earners globally are responsible for 49% of total worldwide carbon emissions.

At the other end of the scale, the bottom 50% of earners are the cause of just 8% of all emissions. In absolute terms, this means 80 million of the world’s wealthiest people are equalling the carbon emissions of 3.9 billion people who have the lowest incomes.

“By focusing on economic equity, we aim to surface the distributive impacts of climate mitigation on people and mobilize businesses and governments to maximize opportunities and minimize risks,” the authors explain.

“Retooling economic and business strategies to place equity at the centre of the green transition can have far-reaching impacts in a world of integrated supply chains and increasing public-private investment and collaboration.”

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World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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There’s a New Covid Variant. What Will That Mean for Spring and Summer?

Experts are closely watching KP.2, now the leading variant.

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By Dani Blum

For most of this year, the JN.1 variant of the coronavirus accounted for an overwhelming majority of Covid cases . But now, an offshoot variant called KP.2 is taking off. The variant, which made up just one percent of cases in the United States in mid-March, now makes up over a quarter.

KP.2 belongs to a subset of Covid variants that scientists have cheekily nicknamed “FLiRT,” drawn from the letters in the names of their mutations. They are descendants of JN.1, and KP.2 is “very, very close” to JN.1, said Dr. David Ho, a virologist at Columbia University. But Dr. Ho has conducted early lab tests in cells that suggest that slight differences in KP.2’s spike protein might make it better at evading our immune defenses and slightly more infectious than JN.1.

While cases currently don’t appear to be on the rise, researchers and physicians are closely watching whether the variant will drive a summer surge.

“I don’t think anybody’s expecting things to change abruptly, necessarily,” said Dr. Marc Sala, co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Covid-19 Center in Chicago. But KP.2 will most likely “be our new norm,’” he said. Here’s what to know.

The current spread of Covid

Experts said it would take several weeks to see whether KP.2 might lead to a rise in Covid cases, and noted that we have only a limited understanding of how the virus is spreading. Since the public health emergency ended , there is less robust data available on cases, and doctors said fewer people were using Covid tests.

But what we do know is reassuring: Despite the shift in variants, data from the C.D.C. suggests there are only “minimal ” levels of the virus circulating in wastewater nationally, and emergency department visits and hospitalizations fell between early March and late April.

“I don’t want to say that we already know everything about KP.2,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Healthcare System. “But at this time, I’m not seeing any major indications of anything ominous.”

Protection from vaccines and past infections

Experts said that even if you had JN.1, you may still get reinfected with KP.2 — particularly if it’s been several months or longer since your last bout of Covid.

KP.2 could infect even people who got the most updated vaccine, Dr. Ho said, since that shot targets XBB.1.5, a variant that is notably different from JN.1 and its descendants. An early version of a paper released in April by researchers in Japan suggested that KP.2 might be more adept than JN.1 at infecting people who received the most recent Covid vaccine. (The research has not yet been peer-reviewed or published.) A spokesperson for the C.D.C. said the agency was continuing to monitor how vaccines perform against KP.2.

Still, the shot does provide some protection, especially against severe disease, doctors said, as do previous infections. At this point, there isn’t reason to believe that KP.2 would cause more severe illness than other strains, the C.D.C. spokesperson said. But people who are 65 and older, pregnant or immunocompromised remain at higher risk of serious complications from Covid.

Those groups, in particular, may want to get the updated vaccine if they haven’t yet, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. The C.D.C. has recommended t hat people 65 and older who already received one dose of the updated vaccine get an additional shot at least four months later.

“Even though it’s the lowest level of deaths and hospitalizations we’ve seen, I’m still taking care of sick people with Covid,” he said. “And they all have one unifying theme, which is that they’re older and they didn’t get the latest shot.”

The latest on symptoms and long Covid

Doctors said that the symptoms of both KP.2 and JN.1 — which now makes up around 16 percent of cases — are most likely similar to those seen with other variants . These include sore throat, runny nose, coughing, head and body aches, fever, congestion, fatigue and in severe cases, shortness of breath. Fewer people lose their sense of taste and smell now than did at the start of the pandemic, but some people will still experience those symptoms.

Dr. Chin-Hong said that patients were often surprised that diarrhea, nausea and vomiting could be Covid symptoms as well, and that they sometimes confused those issues as signs that they had norovirus .

For many people who’ve already had Covid, a reinfection is often as mild or milder than their first case. While new cases of long Covid are less common now than they were at the start of the pandemic, repeat infections do raise the risk of developing long Covid, said Fikadu Tafesse, a virologist at Oregon Health & Science University. But researchers are still trying to determine by how much — one of many issues scientists are trying to untangle as the pandemic continues to evolve.

“That’s the nature of the virus,” Dr. Tafesse said. “It keeps mutating.”

Dani Blum is a health reporter for The Times. More about Dani Blum

U.S. removes Cuba from list of countries not cooperating fully against terrorism

WASHINGTON — The U.S. removed Cuba from a short list of countries the United States alleges are “not cooperating fully” in its fight against terrorism, a State Department official said on Wednesday.

The official cited the resumption of law enforcement cooperation between Cuba and the U.S. as one the reasons why the previous designation was deemed “no longer appropriate.”

“The department determined that the circumstances for Cuba’s certification as a ‘not fully cooperating country’ have changed from 2022 to 2023,” the official said.

The decision marks a tepid if symbolically important move on behalf of the Biden administration, which until now has largely maintained Trump-era restrictions on the Communist-run island.

The cooperation against terrorism list, which the State Department is required by law to provide the U.S. Congress, is not the same as the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, according to the department official.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump separately designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism just prior to leaving office, a jab that Cuba maintains has contributed to a severe economic crisis on the island, and to shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

“This move by the Biden Administration could well be a prelude to the State Department reviewing Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism,” William LeoGrande, a professor at Washington’s American University, told Reuters.

The State Department official said the state sponsor designation is determined by separate statutory criteria.

“Any future review of Cuba’s status would be based on the law and criteria established by Congress,” the official said.

Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez applauded Wednesday’s decision by the Biden administration but said it did not go far enough.

“The US has just admitted what is known to everyone: that #Cuba collaborates fully with efforts against terrorism,” Rodriguez posted on X.

“All political manipulation of the issue should cease and our arbitrary and unjust inclusion on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism should end,” he added.

North Korea, Iran, Syria and Venezuela remain listed as not cooperating fully with U.S. counterterrorism efforts, the official said.

Trump has promised an immigration crackdown if reelected. That could backfire on the economy

I f voters return former President Donald Trump to the White House, he’s promised to launch an unprecedented crackdown on immigration and even conduct mass deportations.

Trump recently told Time that he would aim to deport 15 million to 20 million people , perhaps by using the National Guard.

Some economists worry that Trump’s proposed immigration crackdown — if it survived legal challenges — would backfire on the US economy by worsening worker shortages, reigniting inflation and forcing the Federal Reserve to keep borrowing costs high for even longer.

“If he follows through in deporting a significant amount of immigrants, that’s going to be very difficult for businesses,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, told CNN. “It’s going to cause them to raise wages and prices.”

Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, said the problem is that the supply of native-born workers simply cannot meet demand.

“We need to import workers,” Brusuelas said. “If either party oversteps in reducing the flow of workers, it’s likely we would face a serious shortage of workers and a renewed bout of inflation. You would drive the unemployment rate down to 3% and wages would pop. You’d get classic inflation.”

And that would have serious implications for the Fed, which has already warned that interest rates will need to stay high for longer than anticipated to fight stubborn inflation.

“In that case, higher for longer has a much different meaning,” said Brusuelas.

In a statement to CNN, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt argued, without evidence, that President Joe Biden “allowed” undocumented immigrants to “invade our border” and that if he’s reelected they will be allowed to stay.

“Medicare, Social Security, the healthcare system, public safety and American democracy itself will buckle and collapse,” Leavitt said. “When President Trump is back in the White House, he will deport the millions of illegal immigrants Joe Biden let in and reimplement his America First, pro-growth, pro-job agenda to uplift all Americans.”

‘It’s a rip-off’

Inflation remains a major concern for Americans.

Even though consumer prices are no longer skyrocketing, the cumulative impact of three years of high inflation is painful. Americans are paying much more for housing, food and car insurance than they were before Covid-19.

Frustrations with the high cost of living helped drive down consumer sentiment to a six-month low , the University of Michigan survey of consumers found on Friday.

“Most Americans view high inflation and high prices as unfair. It’s a rip-off. How is it possible I’m paying more for something – a lot more for something – today than three years ago?” said Zandi.

Anger over inflation could help return Trump to the White House. And yet, ironically, economists warn that his immigration plan – and his vow to impose massive tariffs on China and other nations – could worsen that same inflation problem.

“My sense is President Trump’s policies are inflationary,” said Zandi. “It’s higher tariffs, it’s more deportations. … I think these things are going to lead to higher prices for American consumers.”

Some businesses continue to face a shortage of workers. Although the number of job openings has tumbled in recent months, it remains well above pre-pandemic levels, according to the Labor Department.

Migrant crisis

Of course, it’s hard to know whether Trump would carry through on his immigration proposals. After all, he promised mass deportations in 2016, too. And Trump’s immigration plans would surely face serious legal challenges.

But immigration remains a major concern for voters in the 2024 election and Trump has made it a centerpiece of his campaign.

The spike in immigration over the last several years has caused a severe strain on resources in some cities and states as officials scramble to house, educate and feed asylum seekers.

And the flow of migrants, along with a series of high-profile criminal cases involving migrants, have contributed to concerns about crime — though criminologists are skeptical about the connection.

Even the Biden administration has tried to take a tougher position on immigration. Last week, US officials proposed a rule that would let immigration authorities rapidly reject migrants who are ineligible for asylum.

A positive supply shock

Yet economists say the immigration spike has also played a major role in one of the big positive surprises of the past few years: America’s ability to defy recession forecasts.

To the shock of many forecasters, the post-Covid labor market has not run out of workers. Jobs growth continues at a pace few thought possible. And the unemployment rate has stayed under 4% for 27 months in a row, matching the record streak from 1967 to 1970.

Economists say the recent spike in immigration helped make these surprises possible, by preventing the jobs market from totally overheating and the Fed from overdoing rate hikes.

“It helped to ease the very tight labor market, bring in some of those wage pressures and reduce inflation,” said Zandi. “It also allowed the economy to grow more quickly.”

Prior to Covid-19, population and labor force projections from the federal government suggested the US economy would only be able to sustainably add (without worsening inflation) between 60,000 and 140,000 jobs per month and then between 60,000 and 100,000 per month by 2024, according to research from The Hamilton Project.

In reality, the US economy added an average of 255,000 jobs per month in 2023 — two to four times the pace considered sustainable, research notes.

“Just in the last year, a big part of the story of the labor market coming back into better balance is immigration returning to levels that were more typical of the pre-pandemic era,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told “60 Minutes” in February.

Net immigration of 2.3 million in 2023

The Hamilton Project paper estimates sustainable employment growth will be between 160,000 and 200,000 per month in 2024 — about double what would have been possible before the immigration surge.

Without that influx of workers, the US economy could have faced a different fate.

“The Fed would have likely overdone it with rates and tipped the economy into recession,” said Brusuelas, the RSM economist.

Immigration collapsed when the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020, contributing to the historic shortage of workers that drove up wages.

But then immigration rebounded massively in 2022 and 2023, in part because of a surge of migrants.

US authorities had more than 2.5 million encounters with migrants crossing the US-Mexico border last year alone, according to Homeland Security estimates.

In 2023, the United States experienced net immigration of about 3.3 million , according to the Congressional Budget Office. That well exceeds the average of just 900,000 that was typical between 2010 and 2019.

The immigration spike has been so significant that the CBO estimates the United States is on track to have 1.7 million more people in its pool of workers this year compared with what was expected last year.

Goldman Sachs economists estimate that the immigration surge eased wage growth by 0.3 percentage points at the national level and by at least twice as much in the low-paying leisure and hospitality sector.

Although the “textbook answer” is that immigration should not matter much for wages and inflation, Goldman Sachs economists recently told clients: “We think this time was a bit different.”

“The main reasons are that the immigration turnaround was very large and that it occurred at a time when the labor market was historically overheated,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote.

What happens next

Looking ahead, Goldman Sachs said “moderate fluctuations” in immigration will probably have “little impact” on wage growth and inflation. The exception, the bank said, would be in the event of “dramatic policy changes.”

Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project and senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told CNN she is “confident” an immigration crackdown like the one Trump proposes would have “negative” effects on the economy.

However, Edelberg is less concerned about the inflationary impact and more worried about a crash in demand — especially in communities that have experienced a large influx of immigrants.

She noted that some businesses have enjoyed a sharp increase in demand in recent years in large part because of immigrants.

“That’s the kind of thing that could spark a recession,” Edelberg said. “I don’t mean to suggest this would be a cataclysmic recession, but this would be a very abrupt reduction in aggregate demand. Generally, that’s not the kind of thing that our economy likes.”

CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald contributed to this report.

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