We didn’t ask to be born. But here we are—alive in this moment, facing the question that comes for us all: What will we do with this one life? Will we build something greater—or take what we can and leave the wreckage behind?
When James Madison helped craft the Constitution, he wasn’t just designing a government. He was issuing a warning. Madison understood the long, slow collapse of the Roman Republic—not just as history, but as prophecy. Rome didn’t fall overnight. It crumbled over generations, as civic virtue gave way to ambition, institutions rotted from within, and politics became a blood sport.
The Senate, once the voice of the people, became a vanity stage. Courts lost independence. Power merged with religion—not to inspire, but to intimidate. Loyalty to the Republic gave way to loyalty to emperors. And the people—divided, exhausted and afraid—accepted less and less until liberty was gone.
That’s the pattern. And it is repeating.
Madison and his peers looked to the Enlightenment for a different path. They drew from Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau—men who dared to imagine a government rooted not in inheritance or dogma, but reason. They had seen the damage done by kings and clerics who ruled without consent. So they built a framework grounded in liberty, accountability, and the revolutionary idea that government belongs to the governed.
It wasn’t perfect—but it was aspirational. It was designed not to enshrine power, but to restrain it. It expected leaders to study, citizens to engage, and all people to be treated with dignity.
Today, those expectations are in tatters.
Too many who hold power know the slogans but not the substance. They praise the Constitution in public while undermining it in private. They wear patriotism like a costume while silencing dissent, rewriting history, and branding anyone who thinks differently as dangerous. They don’t want informed citizens. They want obedient followers.
And they hide their ambitions behind hollow phrases like “Make America Great Again” or “Make Alabama Great Again”—nostalgic appeals to a past that never truly existed. These aren’t visions of the future. They’re marketing for a myth.
But we’ve faced moments like this before. And we’ve found ways to fight back.
In the 1960s, the far-right John Birch Society tried to turn the Republican Party into a breeding ground for conspiracy, paranoia and extremism. Conservative leaders like William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater rejected them—not because it was politically easy, but because it was morally necessary.
The Democratic Party, too, once harbored segregationists. But leaders like Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey—with relentless pressure from the Civil Rights Movement—chose to move forward. They paid a price at the ballot box, but they did what was right. And the country was better for it.
In both cases, people in power remembered that political survival means nothing if the nation’s soul is lost. They chose principle over party. They remind us that politics can still be noble—when it is grounded in service, not ambition.
Now, the test has come again.
We see it in the attacks on public education. On reproductive freedom. On voting rights. On LGBTQ+ people. We see it in the political use of religion—not to comfort the afflicted, but to afflict the different. Laws are being written not to expand liberty, but to control how people live, speak, read and believe.
And it is happening slowly enough that many do not notice.
That’s how democracies die—not all at once, but in quiet concessions. In the normalization of cruelty. In the erosion of truth. In the silence of those who know better.
But there is still time. And there is still hope.
Because history doesn’t just warn us—it calls to us. Build something better, it says. Learn from the wreckage. Don’t repeat it.
And I believe that hope lives on—not in the halls of power, but in the everyday defiance of people who still believe this country can live up to its promise.
Wherever someone stands up and says, “That’s enough,” even when their voice trembles—there is hope.
Wherever a teacher tells the truth, even when the school board tells them not to—there is hope.
Wherever a worker puts down their tools and says they deserve dignity—there is hope.
Wherever a mother refuses to be silent while her child’s future is stolen—there is hope.
Wherever a pastor preaches love over dogma and welcomes those the world casts out—there is hope.
Wherever a student walks out with a handmade sign and fierce belief—there is hope.
Wherever a lawmaker votes their conscience, not their party—there is hope.
Wherever someone lights a candle against the darkness, knowing the wind may blow it out—there is hope.
Because hope doesn’t live in slogans. It doesn’t sit on thrones. It lives in the hearts of those who serve instead of rule. Who build instead of break. Who carry the torch, even when no one is watching.
And if enough of us choose that path—if enough of us remember what this country is supposed to be—then maybe, just maybe, we can still carry that torch forward.
Not backward into myth—but forward into light.
Memento mori. Remember, you will die.
But until then—live like it matters. Build like it matters. Because it does.
So speak up. Show up. Push back against cruelty and complacency. Learn your history. Protect the truth. Demand more from those who seek to govern. The dream of a just and free republic is not self-sustaining. It requires hands, hearts and sacrifice.
This country has never been perfect—but it has always been possible.
And it still is.
