The United States as we once knew it, or thought we did, is finished.

But that’s not the end of the story. Freedom is not dead if it lives in you. What we learned from this 200-year-plus experiment is that liberty cannot survive in a nation conceived to be of, by and for the people if the people do not honor their own sovereignty by accepting the responsibility they have to maintain it, nurture it and defend it.

You don’t have to be violent to defend your rights. You only need to use your head, your heart and have courage, compassion and love for others. But no matter what, none of us can do it alone. We need one another. We need to understand what we’re about and what the truth is about the environment in which we live. If we stand together with common understanding and goals, we can regain our freedom and dignity.

So the first job is to become educated and then to share what we discover with others until there’s a critical mass of human beings aligned with a common purpose.

For that to happen each of us first needs to be a participant in our own intellectual and spiritual growth. That means facing the possibility that we’re not as smart as we once thought we were.

None of us is actually. We all have more to learn. We all need to be in the space of being willing to learn and to share with others what we think is important. And then listen to what others think is important and have the integrity to sort out what’s really true from what we once thought was true.

The more honorable we are, the more we seek the truth, the more truth is revealed to us. That’s the process and the task ahead. If we can be humble enough to follow that path, the path will lead to freedom. What is the path?  Truth, honor, dignity, compassion, courage and love.

— Mark Goldman