Restoring Our Democracy: A Reflection on Power and Responsibility

Power is a curious thing. It is fragile, yet relentless. It thrives in the hands of the few but crumbles when the many awaken. Today, I want to talk about power—not the kind that resides in marble halls or is enshrined in gilded laws, but the quiet, stubborn power that lives in each of us.

You see, democracy is not an eternal flame. It is a fire that we must tend, or it will flicker and die. And yet, throughout history, we have allowed others to stoke it for us. The loudest voices, the most certain, the most righteous—they claim the mantle of leadership. And far too often, they promise salvation at the cost of freedom.

We are told what to fear. Not just the external threats of war or economic collapse, but the people standing next to us—the neighbor who worships differently, the family who loves differently, the individual who simply exists differently. Fear becomes the leash, and we are taught to pull back from one another, to retreat into smaller and smaller circles of safety.

In America today, a new form of fear has taken hold. It wears the guise of faith, but it is not faith. Faith is a thing of hope and love, of quiet assurance. This is something else entirely. This is fear wielded as a weapon, crafted to shape us, to silence us, to make us complicit in the rise of a society that promises order at the expense of freedom.

There are those who would tell you that democracy is messy, that it is inefficient, that it cannot survive without a guiding hand—preferably theirs. They frame their control as benevolence, their restrictions as necessary corrections, their exclusion as divine will. They have forgotten—or perhaps they never learned—that democracy is not a machine to be operated. It is a garden to be tended.

And now we must ask ourselves: who tends that garden? Who waters its roots of justice, who pulls the weeds of corruption and fear? Is it the powerful few, or is it us?

You see, democracy has never belonged to those who shout the loudest. It belongs to those who show up. It belongs to the teacher who refuses to let their students be silenced. To the worker who casts their vote even when told it does not matter. To the neighbor who chooses connection over division. Democracy belongs to the hopeful, to the resilient, to the brave.

But I would be remiss if I did not remind you of the stakes. Because while we argue about policies and laws, theocratic ideologies creep ever closer. They seek to replace pluralism with dogma, freedom with obedience. This is not faith as it was meant to be. It is faith twisted into a tool for control.

So what do we do? We confront it. Not with hatred, not with fear, but with an unyielding belief in the dignity of every human being. We fight not to destroy, but to build—stronger communities, deeper connections, and a democracy that is worthy of us.

History will not remember us for the battles we avoided, but for the ones we chose to fight. And let me be clear: this is a fight worth having. Because democracy, at its heart, is an act of love. It is the belief that strangers deserve a voice, that neighbors deserve a chance, that every person deserves the power to shape their own future.

We are not here to passively inherit a broken system. We are here to create a better one. And the power to do so is not somewhere out there. It is here, in this room, in each of you.

So I leave you with a choice, a simple one: will you let fear shape your world, or will you shape it yourself?