It is no longer enough to be good; it is time to be brave.

When asked what kind of government the founding fathers had created, Benjamin Franklin answered plainly: “A republic — if you can keep it.” That “if” has always been with us, but today it feels sharper, heavier, more immediate. We the people must reclaim what was entrusted to us — what our forefathers laid out in good faith. The current regime is not only taking these rights from us, but is betraying the sacrifices of those who came before us and stealing from the generations to come the rightful inheritance of democracy.

This is a call to action, not for rebellion, nor for chaos, but for patriotism in its purest form: the patriotism our founders practiced when they rose against tyranny and built a republic grounded in liberty, accountability and the consent of the governed. Today, those in power are steering us back toward the very tyranny from which we once struggled to free ourselves. To remain silent, or to stand by without action, is to betray that legacy.

We can no longer wait for political parties, more concerned with their own preservation than with saving the republic. It is in our hands now, as it was when the republic was born, carried forward not by the powerful, but by the courage of ordinary people. Our action must be peaceful, not because the founders feared conflict, but because their dream was not endless revolution; it was a government where the people could correct the nation’s course without bloodshed. That dream still lives. We must be unflinching — rooted in unity, in courage and in the enduring conviction that this nation belongs to its people, not to those who would seek to rule over them.

The foundations are already eroding. Legal immigrants are being illegally abducted in the streets without due process. U.S. citizens — mere children — are being deported. Judges are being threatened and arrested for opposing lawlessness. Court orders are being defied without shame or consequence. The safeguards once taken for granted are crumbling before our eyes, piece by piece.

If we do not act now, we shall surely witness the death of American democracy within our lifetime. The protections once secured by our Constitution are being dismantled in plain sight. This is no mere indolent decay — it is a deliberate and accelerating assault upon the rights of the people. The window for rightful resistance is narrow. Delay is not prudence, it is surrender. Hesitation is not caution; it is complicity. The hour is late, and history will not forgive those who shrink from their duty.

We are not powerless. History teaches us that another path remains open — the path walked by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They faced governments that cloaked themselves in the forms of legitimacy even as they betrayed the principles they were sworn to defend. They answered not with hatred, but with disciplined courage and unbreakable moral will. Their resistance was not passive — it was strategic, principled and fierce in its fidelity to justice. That is the path duty now calls us to walk.

We must organize, speak, and act together — not to destroy, but to restore what was entrusted to us. Not to incite fear, but to awaken the conscience of a nation grown complacent. This is no protest of the moment; it must become a solemn movement of the people, rooted in fidelity to justice and an unyielding refusal to surrender the future entrusted to our care.

It is natural to feel fear. No one steps into a moment of trial without it — fear of losing one’s livelihood, of being watched, of standing alone or of losing the very freedom we have long cherished. But fear, left unchallenged, hardens into silence and paralysis. And silence is not neutrality; it is the fertile ground in which injustice takes root and grows.

Throughout history, ordinary people — workers, students, parents — have felt the same fear and acted nonetheless. Not because they were fearless, but because they knew that something greater than themselves was at stake. Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the decision to stand firm and move through it, together.

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, they knew what lay before them — batons, tear gas and violence. And yet they walked. Arm in arm, heads lifted high. Not because they felt safe, but because they understood a harder truth: that true safety would never come through retreat. They knew that only by standing firm in the face of danger could they claim the freedom and dignity that safety was meant to protect.

We are at that bridge now. The choice is ours, as it has been for every generation that stood between tyranny and liberty. We can retreat into fear, or we can step forward with purpose. We the people must rise — not with weapons, but with presence; not with hatred, but with the quiet, unshakable strength of those who stand in the right. We must rise with voices joined in truth and with hands extended in unwavering solidarity.

In the months to come, you will be called upon to step forward — to be brave, to practice civil disobedience in the finest American tradition, to boycott, to withhold your labor and to demonstrate through peaceful, collective action that the power of this nation still resides with its people.

Let this be the moment we begin. Let this be the hour we remember who we are — the heirs of freedom, the stewards of a republic entrusted to our care. Let it be said that when our hour came, we did not shrink. We rose. We spoke. We stood firm together, and in standing firm, we prevailed.

O. Sami Saydjari is a cybersecurity expert and former senior executive of the Defense Department. He lives in Hartland.