A new year arrives each January bearing a familiar invitation: to pause, to reflect and to begin again.
It is a season marked by resolutions and reckoning, by the quiet hope that what lies ahead can be shaped differently than what came before. We take stock not only of our personal lives, but of our shared civic life. Renewal, after all, is not merely private. Nations, like individuals, must periodically examine their values, confront their failures and recommit themselves to the principles they claim to hold sacred.
“My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.” These opening words are both a promise and a challenge. They speak not only of what America claims to be, but of what it demands from those who call it home.
Liberty, in the American tradition, is not inherited like property nor preserved by inertia. It is sustained only through vigilance, participation and moral courage. Five years after January 6, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: liberty, once taken for granted, can be weakened not only by foreign enemies but by domestic neglect, disinformation and silence.
“My Country, ’Tis of Thee” is a hymn rooted in aspiration. Written when freedom was unevenly applied and fiercely contested, it imagined a nation that could rise above its contradictions. Its verses celebrate “freedom’s holy light” while calling the land to “ring with freedom’s song.” The song is not passive. It is not a lullaby. It is a summons, a demand that citizens participate in the work of democracy, even when that work is difficult, messy or personally uncomfortable.
January 6 stands as a stark interruption to that song. On that day, the seat of American democracy was breached not by a foreign army, but by fellow citizens driven by falsehoods, fear and a rejection of democratic outcomes. The violence of that moment was shocking, but perhaps more troubling was the erosion it revealed: a weakening trust in institutions, an indifference to truth and a willingness to trade democratic principles for partisan victory.
Five years later, the question is not whether January 6 was significant; it is whether we have learned from it. Yet January 6 was not an endpoint. It was a warning flare. In the years since, we have seen that democratic erosion does not always announce itself with mobs and broken windows. Sometimes it arrives through policy choices and enforcement practices that stretch the bounds of accountability.
The recent escalation of federal immigration enforcement, marked by heavily armed operations, aggressive tactics and limited transparency, has raised urgent questions about proportionality, oversight and the balance between security and civil liberty.
The murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota have become painful symbols of those tensions. Their deaths remind us that when power operates without sufficient restraint or public trust, the cost is borne not in abstractions, but in human lives.
Patriotism is often misunderstood as uncritical loyalty. But the truest form of patriotism is rooted in responsibility. To love one’s country is to hold it accountable to its ideals.
“My Country, ’Tis of Thee” does not celebrate power or dominance; it celebrates liberty. Liberty requires structure, laws, norms and peaceful transfers of power. When those are threatened, patriotism demands action, not applause, not slogans, but engagement.
Democracy is not self-executing. It relies on citizens who vote, stay informed and challenge lies — even when those lies are convenient or comforting. It depends on people willing to listen across differences and defend the rule of law even when outcomes disappoint them.
January 6 did not happen in isolation. Neither did the conditions that made tragedies like the Minnesota murders possible. These are products of years of civic erosion, where outrage replaced reason, fear displaced empathy and authority too often went unquestioned.
If we treat these moments as isolated incidents rather than connected warnings, we risk repeating them.
The fifth anniversary offers us the opportunity for a recommitment to truth as a civic value. Recommitment to democratic processes as legitimate even when imperfect. Recommitment to the idea that freedom is collective, that one person’s liberty cannot come at the expense of another’s rights.
These are not abstract ideals. They show up in school board meetings, local elections, jury duty, community organizing and daily conversations where misinformation is either challenged or allowed to spread unchecked.
“My Country, ’Tis of Thee” reminds us that freedom is meant to “ring from every mountainside.” That ringing is not automatic. It is produced by voices; voices that vote, speak, organize and stand up when silence feels safer.
Americans cannot outsource democracy to institutions alone. Courts, legislatures and enforcement agencies are only as strong as the public’s insistence on accountability. When citizens disengage, extremes fill the vacuum.
The task before us is clear. We must teach civic literacy with the same urgency as technical skill. We must reward leaders who respect democratic norms rather than those who exploit outrage or fear. We must recognize that freedom is not preserved by nostalgia, but by participation.
Liberty must be practiced, protected and, when necessary, defended.
As we move into 2026, Americans face a choice: to treat democracy as fragile and therefore worthy of protection, or as inevitable and therefore expendable. History makes clear that only one of those paths leads to lasting freedom.
If the land is to remain “sweet,” if liberty is to remain more than a word, Americans must act — not someday, not abstractly, but now. Democracy does not survive on faith alone. It survives because ordinary people decide, again and again, that it is worth defending.
Johnny V. Boykins is a political organizer, husband, amateur chef and U.S. Coast Guard veteran.
