Principles and the Power of "No"

This post was originally published on May 4, 2025.

For most of our marriage, Penelope read about the latest world events and, during our nightly conversations, did her best to keep me up to date. I never paid much attention to the news. That is, until January 6, 2021.

That afternoon, out of boredom I checked NPR and saw a photo of an enraged mob surging through the Capitol doors, police barely holding it back. I saw footage of a guy in a horned helmet on the Senate floor. I read reports of Congress hiding in the basement. I heard statements that the President sat at the White House taking no action. And I felt a surge of shame and anger when he finally did speak, apparently unwilling to admit the gravity of what happened, by asking the attackers to just go home. 

Fast forward four years and with every scroll I feel like I'm watching the slow disintegration of certain European democracies in the 1930s. I’m beginning to understand how one might forgive the everyday person back then for not recognizing the imminent trainwreck. How every day unfolds with some new shock, how you think it can’t possibly get worse, and then it does. How you hope it stops at some point, then it doesn’t. 

Only it’s not 1930’s Europe. It's the country that, for 25 years, I said I would die for. So four, five, or more times per day I scroll, stress, and rage. I want answers.

Principles

My search for answers brought me to the local public library, where I borrowed How to Stand Up to a Dictator. On page 261, Maria Ressa writes, “So how do you stand up to a dictator? By embracing values...: honesty, vulnerability, empathy, moving away from emotions, embracing your fear, believing in the good. You can't do it alone. You have to create a team, strengthen your area of influence. Then connect the bright spots and weave a mesh together. 

I thought about this for a while and settled on three principles: Truth. Dignity. Unity.

·      Truth: Don’t lie to us. Don’t gaslight us. And don’t try persuade us with faulty logic (see this list of common fallacies). Anger toward people pushing this trash is misdirected. You can't logic mobs or megalomaniacs out of their delusion, so don’t waste your effort. Instead, when the lies come, see them, call them out, and keep telling the truth. 

·      Dignity: Everyone deserves basic human dignity. We all deserve civil rights, equal protection under the law, due process, and guardrails to protect our most basic human needs for food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.  

·      Unity: A single sparrow will always lose a fight against a raptor – but a hundred sparrows will always win. The small things, including us “little people,” have incredible power when we unite. We can’t do it alone; we can do it together. As Maria Ressa said, “Connect the bright spots and weave a mesh together.”

Embrace values. Got it. What does that mean, practically?

Back when I was a ship’s captain, I had a concise command philosophy: Ready to Go, Trained to Fight, Proud to Serve. I told the crew that if they look at their to-do lists and had a hundred things, they should run those hundred things through the filter of our command philosophy. For every item on the list, ask: Is this thing going to make us more ready to go? Better train us to fight? Make us proud to serve? If they answered “no,” I said, just cross it off your list. Then you would find there might be ten things on your list, not a hundred, and you could focus your time on those ten things with the biggest impact. 

There are too many “issues” to track, and they come too fast. However, it’s easy to remember three principles.

The power of “NO”

Principles can help us determine what to do. They can also help us determine what not to do.

What powerful people hate more than anything is to be told “no.” If they accept “no” for an answer they would be admitting they had gone too far. So, rather than accept “no,” they insult the person who said it, or make excuses for their behavior. This singles out the one who stood up, leaving them alone on the windy corner. The one who resists loses. The one with power wins (again).

But a collective “no” is formidable. We can call their bluff.

I wonder what would happen if all the little people said “no” with one voice. If they stood up and said simply, “I will not do this because I know it is wrong. I will not propagate that lie. I will not violate this person’s dignity. I will not act with intent to divide.”

There may be a lot of assholes and fuckers out there, but there are an awful lot more who just want to live their lives in peace. Those of us who want truth and dignity must resist, even if resistance is a simple “no.” 

Back in the Navy I said a captain without a crew is just a person in a fancy uniform talking. Same for anyone in power. Without ordinary people to carry out the orders, they’re just angry people typing in all caps on their socials. They get their power from us. I say we should stop giving it to them, and maybe even take it back.

Do not become the very thing you fight

Back in 1999, on my first cross-country trip to a new duty station, I attended mass at a small church in Terre Haute, Indiana. During the homily, the priest said, “Good and evil coexist in this world, and bad cannot be rooted out. If we attempt to root out evil, this is not justice, but vengeance. The best we can do is mature our spirit to help it grow through compassion and love.” 

It is easy to let our anger drive us down the path of vengeance. I struggle to remember those principles of truth, dignity, and unity, and it’s harder still to follow through. Because it means I also need to tell the truth, and I also need to treat my perceived enemies with dignity. Unity does not just mean “my side.” 

The good guys become the bad guys when they forget this.