An Essay About the State of the Republic Entitled “TODAY”

TODAY

We are a nation without reason.
We are a nation without morals.
We are a nation without purpose.

We have failed our inheritance.
We have failed our promise.
We have failed our future.

Once, we were a people who sought wisdom in the governance of reason, who fashioned our republic in the crucible of Enlightenment thought. We held that truth could be discerned, that knowledge was the safeguard against tyranny, that free inquiry was the antidote to superstition. Yet, we have cast aside the intellect of our forebears, bartering reason for the cheap currency of factional dogma, of ignorance parading as virtue.

Once, we understood that a republic, to endure, must be anchored in moral responsibility. The city upon a hill was not merely a boast—it was a charge, a demand, an expectation. Yet, we have allowed that moral vision to fragment, perverted into empty postures of righteousness, where sectarian division supplants shared virtue, and the sacred call to justice is drowned in the clamor of self-interest.

Once, we were a people of purpose, our liberties not mere indulgences but the instruments of human dignity and national strength. We were called to the defense of freedom, not merely for ourselves but for those who would follow. Yet, today, our purpose dissolves in the tide of complacency, our freedoms bartered for fleeting comforts, our equality abandoned to the rising chorus of cynicism and despair.

All factions—left, right, and center—have forsaken the principles that once defined us. Each has wrapped itself in the illusion of virtue while kneeling at the altar of Mammon. We claim fidelity to truth, but we scorn reason when it contradicts our desires. We speak of morality, yet we wield it as a weapon rather than a compass. We invoke purpose, but only as rhetoric to mask our pursuit of power and comfort.

And so we arrive at Today.

If we are honest—if we strip away our illusions and stand before the bar of judgment without recourse to excuse, evasion, or self-justification—we must confess: we are all complicit. No single faction bears this burden alone, nor can any claim the mantle of righteousness. We, the people, have chosen indulgence over discipline, grievance over responsibility, spectacle over substance. And in that choosing, we have undone the Republic.

But we are not bound to our ruin.

We must restore reason.
We must restore morality.
We must restore purpose.

To do so, we must abandon the golden idols who are unworthy to serve us, the oligarchs who plunder us, the ideologies that subvert reason. We must cast aside the anger, the bitterness, the division that have led us to forsake one another, that have severed us from our future and our purpose. If we are to be a people again—if we are to reclaim the inheritance we have squandered—we must choose anew. Not comfort, not grievance, not self-interest. We must choose to be worthy of the Republic, or else surrender to its final dissolution.

If we continue on our present course, where do we go?

If we have abandoned reason, morality, and purpose, what remains?

It is no longer a question of mere decline but of transformation. A Republic that ceases to be a Republic does not simply fade into irrelevance; it becomes something else, something unrecognizable to those who once believed in its founding principles. Have we already crossed that threshold? Have we slipped, not merely toward decay, but into authoritarianism?

The signs are unmistakable. A government that no longer serves its people but instead entrenches power. A citizenry that, weary of self-governance, willingly submits to rule by force or deception. A society that exalts spectacle over substance, division over unity, and vengeance over justice. These are the hallmarks of a nation no longer free in spirit, even if it still pretends to be free in form.

Authoritarianism does not always come with the fanfare of a coup or the boot of the oppressor; more often, it arrives in whispers, in the slow erosion of rights once taken for granted, in the willing abdication of responsibility by a people who have lost the will to govern themselves. It arrives when power, unchecked, ceases to be accountable. When the institutions meant to preserve liberty instead secure their own perpetuity. When law becomes a weapon, wielded not for justice but for control.

If we have not yet fallen fully into authoritarianism, then we are on its precipice. A people who no longer hold their leaders accountable, who no longer value reason, morality, or purpose, will find themselves ruled—not by wisdom, not by justice, but by those who know only how to command and demand obedience.

And so, we face a choice.

Do we accept this slow descent into tyranny, consoling ourselves with the illusion that we are still free, so long as we are comfortable? Do we resign ourselves to the idea that the Republic was always doomed, that we are powerless to reclaim it?

Or do we resist?

To resist is not merely to oppose a party or a faction. It is not to trade one demagogue for another. True resistance is the restoration of the very things we have abandoned: reason, morality, and purpose. It is the rejection of fear and cynicism, the refusal to accept the inevitability of our own undoing.

It is to say, as those before us have said in darker times: not yet, not now, not here.

Today is the reckoning.

What shall we make of tomorrow?