Looking back over the last twelve years, this quote from author Michael Hopf is said to have its origins with Plato and Voltaire. It captures the huge shift happening right now in America, the land of the free and home of the brave. We might find, for instance, that the commitment to freedom and bravery is at the core of strong men. Likewise, the commitment to tyranny and lack of courage and use of fear is at the core of the weak men.
I look at these four stanzas and see Trump 2016-2020 in the first two lines and Biden 2020-2024 in lines three and four. Over the next four years we’ll see in this short twelve-year period of how two Presidents deliver vastly different human and societal experiences of the good and bad times played out through the leadership of strong and weak men.
Underneath all of this is the human and societal experience that impacts each of us individually and within our communities. With Trump’s re-election, you can feel the lightness coming back as you connect with people in grocery stores, at the gas pump, or with social relationships, specifically with like-minded people expressing the relief they are feeling after the Biden administration.
Many citizens are waking up to the destructiveness and suffering Biden’s four years caused us through woke ideology, politicization and lawfare of our Federal Government, and polarization of society through the many “isms” promoted by the media, corporations, and in our schools. Yet, there are still far too many (Harris lost by less than 1.5 % of the popular vote) who think the weak man (Biden) created good things, and the strong man (Trump) created bad, destructive things.  Even my own grandkids (ages 8, 11) seem to think this despite their youthful knowledge of good guys like Spider Man and bad guys like Wolverine.
I am learning myself that I need to do more to share my voice, use my vote and act on my commitment to the values of our Founding Fathers and the courage required to save our freedom. We see the power when we unite our voices with organizations like Heritage Action (www.heritageaction.com) that deliver thousands of petitions from engaged citizens (called Sentinels) on a bill, an issue or an opportunity directly to congressional representatives on Capital Hill.
As capitalists, we see every day that we vote with our pocketbooks. We can see our consumer votes cast for purchases and investments that impact the decisions of companies like Tractor Supply and Target who closed their DEI offices and large foreign importers like China losing to Vietnam (who are not harvesting the organs of spiritual people). Even the largest financial firm in the world, Black Rock Investments is being threatened by corporate pension plans (latest one American Airlines) to divest of their ESG efforts that have had huge negative impacts on profit, and, further, undermine the fiduciary responsibility of these pension plan administrators.
Finally, consider how we commit to our American values in sharing our perspectives with our children and grandchildren. There is an abundance of great educational resources that help us understand why the American experiment nearly 250 years in the making is still thriving despite the strong tactics of weak national and international leadership. Some of the best resources here is Hillsdale College (a private institution that takes no Federal funds at www.heritage.edu) providing free courses on-line delivered by their own college professors. I would also add Prager U (PragerU) and their five-minute videos on the U.S. Presidents and the Constitution available on Prager U TV and Prager U mobile app.
Conservatives have been able to arrest power from the far left, fascist-driven, woke ideologues, but I believe this will be short-lived if we think our voice, our vote and our commitment to the land of the free and home of the brave is not exercised. I truly believe that now is the time to be grateful for the many that stepped up to the front lines to save America but desperately need our continued engagement to save the American experiment. Numbers matter as we saw in the 2024 election.
Find your own way to do it but make a year-long resolution to do more!! Let’s make America’s 250th birthday an occasion we can celebrate knowing that the power belongs to the American people through our voice, our vote and our commitment to America’s ideals.