Do you want to know what radicalizes a man? Give him knowledge of a government that fails, time and time again, to defend the sacred and undeniable rights of its fellow citizens. Place that man inside a government where those who govern seek only fame and fortune, ruling solely out of self-interest and for personal gain. Maybe it’s because I come from New England, where John Adams was the voice of independence and Samuel Adams was its strongman, where John Stark cried “live free or die; death is not the worst of evils.” Make a man so steeped in the lessons of history, so fiercely committed to human liberty, so charged with duty toward his fellow citizen, sit and watch as the nation — founded on the principle that no man is above the law — becomes one where the law is weaponized against those who dare to dissent. What becomes of such a man? He speaks. He writes. He organizes. He does not yield to apathy or surrender to cynicism. He takes that fire — fueled by frustration, by justice denied, by promises broken — and he turns it into action. Silence in the face of corruption is complicity. Because a government that forgets its duty to the people is one that must be reminded — peacefully, lawfully and persistently — that sovereignty does not rest with the powerful, but with the governed. We must not only remember what this nation was meant to be — we must demand it. And we must build it, not tomorrow, not someday, but now.
Michael Hanna
Manchester, NH