Today I’m sharing an important message from fellow Wisconsinite R.J. Johnson, president of the World Orphan Fund and longtime political consultant.
A Republic at the Edge
Our democracy feels like it’s standing at the edge of something vast and dark. Not because of abstract arguments or political theater, but because the instruments of violence that a free society keeps tightly controlled are being offered up as tools for domestic political warfare.
Last week, at a rare gathering of senior military leaders, the secretary of defense — Pete Hegseth — spoke not like a guardian of restraint but like a man eager for battle. He told America’s generals that their hands should no longer be tied — that they should “hunt and kill” the “enemies of our country,” free from the “stupid rules of engagement” that have long restrained them.
The idea that the armed forces should be freed from restraints meant to prevent abuses is not merely concerning; it’s constitutionally corrosive. We once understood that power was safest when wrapped in humility. We are forgetting that now.
Moments later, the president told those same generals that there is an “enemy from within” and that he had signed an executive order to prepare a quick reaction force to “quell civil disturbances.” He did not name the enemy, but everyone in the room knew who he meant. He has used those words before to describe his political opponents — the people who vote differently, think differently, or dare to stand against him.
Words matter. They are signals — to loyalists, to soldiers, to citizens. When a leader calls fellow Americans an “enemy,” and then wields the authority of the military as if it were his own personal sword, the line between politics and war begins to fade. And when that line disappears, the republic itself is in danger.
The administration has already dispatched troops to American cities — Portland, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Memphis — often over the objections of local leaders. These deployments test the very legal walls separating domestic policing from military power. The Posse Comitatus Act was born of wisdom: it understood that soldiers serve liberty best by standing apart from the daily disputes of politics. But the administration seems intent on pushing, bending, even erasing those limits.
Our democracy was never designed to survive a leader who sees fellow citizens as foes. It rests on three quiet but sacred understandings: that the military answers to civilians, that the law binds even the powerful, and that political competition is not a crime but a sign of national health.
Some will say this is alarmist. But institutions are only as strong as the people who uphold them. And when those people begin to forget their purpose — when they mistake loyalty to a man for loyalty to a Constitution — the great machinery of democracy begins to groan and shift in dangerous ways.
There’s something deeper happening too — the deliberate stirring of fear. When leaders label dissent as disloyalty, when they call protest an invasion, they invite citizens to see one another not as neighbors but as threats. Fear is the oldest and most efficient tool of tyranny. It numbs judgment. It silences conscience. It makes cruelty seem like common sense.
This moment calls for courage — the kind that lives in people who take oaths seriously. Congress must find its backbone again. The courts must remember their independence. And our military must be respected for what it has always been — a force meant to protect us from threats abroad, not to be turned inward against the people it serves.
But in the end, it always comes back to the people themselves — to whether we still believe freedom is something we must defend, not simply inherit.
America has survived depressions, wars, assassinations, and riots because somewhere, always, there were enough people who remembered what it means to be a free people — disciplined, self-governed, bound not by fear but by faith in something larger than any single leader.
We still have time to remember who we are. But not much.
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R.J. is a retired political consultant of 30 years, now devoting his full energy to The World Orphan Fund, which he launched in 2011 to deliver practical, life-changing solutions for orphaned and vulnerable children. From food and medical care to trauma therapy and education, the Fund is an all-volunteer group working through trusted local partners to meet urgent needs and create lasting change for thousands of children in 15 countries.
