Joseph Mussomeli is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. He served for almost thirty-five years as an American diplomat, including tours in Egypt, Afghanistan, Morocco, and the Philippines. He was the U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Slovenia and the Kingdom of Cambodia. Before entering the U.S. Foreign Service in 1980, he worked as a Deputy Attorney General in New Jersey.
President Trump has an uncanny knack for energizing his supporters and riling his adversaries, but to have a lasting positive impact on American society he will need to find a way to inspire a majority of the American people...
My concern was that once the shutdown began, it would be difficult to end it just as it is difficult to prevent a needless bloodbath once blood begins to spill. What most of the public—including most of my former colleagues in government service—don’t seem to understand is...
I keep reminding myself to look beneath and beyond labels and remain focused on the individual. Because ultimately it is the individual who matters most and who is most deserving of praise or condemnation, affection or disdain. It is a surprisingly hard lesson to learn and to...
President Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria, if it holds, is one of the few genuinely courageous acts of his presidency...
My first thought when I heard that President Trump was finally taking our troops...
It was still dark outside when the boy awakened and his thoughts immediately turned to the gifts that would be awaiting him under the tree downstairs. This year,...
Many years ago, as a young diplomat straining to learn French, I was amused to realize that the French word for bread is spelled pain. Of course, it is not pronounced as such, but being steadfastly immature well...
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Joseph Mussomeli, as he considers Christmas as a revolution of the heart against the demands of this world for balancing the scales...
December 1969 (New Jersey)
“Christmas,” the old priest snarled, “is an outrage!” He looked about the classroom, hoping to have awakened at least a few students. “Christmas violates the laws of nature and of man.” Some...
The 11th hour of the 11th day of this November marks the centennial of the end of World War I, the end of European ascendancy on the world stage, and the rise of American global power. For some...
Since I was a little boy, I have been taught that it is a sacred duty to vote. That if you don't vote, you have no right to complain—that true patriots care enough to vote, even if for a lesser evil. But how is it that the same system...
We have all seen the scene at least once, although some of us have savored it perhaps dozens of times. The handsome, dynamic, misunderstood, modernizing young king, with his slender physique, slender beard, and even more slender...
Despite all the unfounded fear on the left and all the equally unfounded euphoria on the right, there will be no wholesale revamping by the Supreme Court of the liberal social order that is now deeply rooted in our culture and among our people. The conservative justices' ethos of...
Two questions should always be asked over and over again before security measures are implemented: At what point do security measures impede security? And at one point is a free people no longer free?
It has been quiet recently here...
Like his predecessors, President Trump is now convinced that staying the course militarily throughout the Middle East is our only choice, worrying that a “hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists would instantly fill." If that is the standard, we will stay forever...
