Hyten is co-executive director of Essential Partners.
During his 40-year career in the military, my father served under seven presidential administrations through countless policy decisions, three wars, innumerable budget votes and huge changes at every level of society. He says that what makes this country special is the fact that he swore an oath to serve not a person, a party or even the state, but to the Constitution of the United States — an oath to uphold the rights and institutions of democracy.
A strong democracy, though, needs more than free elections and enshrined civil rights. As the great American thinker John Dewey argued, democracy is not merely a political institution. It is a way of life. It’s a way of living with one another, being able to agree and disagree, embracing our different perspectives and individual histories.
“Unless democratic habits of thought and action are part of the fiber of a people,” he wrote, “political democracy is insecure. It can not stand in isolation. It must be buttressed by the presence of democratic methods in all social relationships.”
The violent insurrection that took place on Jan. 6, one year ago, was not just an attempt to halt the peaceful transfer of power. It represented a collective failure in the practice of our democracy, a warning that we have failed to keep alive those fundamental democratic methods in our social relationships.
And we know that Jan. 6 was not an isolated incident. Over a third of young people in America believe they’ll witness civil conflict in their lifetimes. That is astonishingly tragic. We need to make sure it is not a prediction. It shouldn’t be controversial to say we should work like hell to turn back the tide, repair our social fabric, heal our communities and snuff out the threat of political violence on a larger scale.
At Essential Partners, we equip communities, schools, congregations and institutions to build a more perfect union, one founded on trust and belonging. We envision an America where we can belong no matter our identities or beliefs, where we can be heard even if we’re in the minority, where we can vigorously disagree without violence.
If you want to be a part of real and lasting change for our country, we need to invest in the health of the communities where we live and work. We need to heal the broken relationships and mend the frayed trust. Here are three things you can do right away:
- Talk to the people you love about the issues that matter most with honesty, curiosity and compassion. Politics, religion and social issues can no longer be off limits. Extremism takes root in isolation and loneliness. Work within your trusted communities to make space for difficult conversations. Practice disagreeing with people you love and care for. Practice holding onto those relationships even when you differ. If you need support and tools, browse our resources, join us for a workshop or schedule a free consultation.
- Foster a culture around you of collective discernment and collaborative decision-making. In your workplaces, schools, congregations and institutions, invite people to think about what they need to be a lone voice, to share a minority view, to offer a perspective that may be hard for others to hear. Find out what people need to be resilient together, to care for themselves, and to disagree in ways that do not diminish a people’s experiences and identities. Our lives are intertwined. We share responsibility for the health of the whole community.
- Search for seeds of hope in your community. You cannot do the hard work of hope when your heart is depleted. Hope is vital. You can find it when neighbors of different faiths share food on a holiday. It’s there when people on opposite sides of the political divide enjoy a high school basketball game together. And when you lose hope, let someone else come forward, someone who can carry on while you replenish yourself.
You are not alone in this work. There are thousands of people around the country who are changing the way we talk about politics, shared values and identities. I am convinced that the bonds we forge in compassion will be stronger than the forces tearing this country apart.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers a keynote speech at the 62nd Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, in Munich, Germany.
Marco Rubio is the only adult left in the room
Finally free from the demands of being chief archivist of the United States, secretary of state, national security adviser and unofficial viceroy of Venezuela, Marco Rubio made his way to the Munich Security Conference last weekend to deliver a major address.
I shouldn’t make fun. Rubio, unlike so many major figures in this administration, is a bona fide serious person. Indeed, that’s why President Trump keeps piling responsibilities on him. Rubio knows what he’s talking about and cares about policy. He is hardly a free agent; Trump is still president after all. But in an administration full of people willing to act like social media trolls, Rubio stands out for being serious. And I welcome that.
But just because Rubio made a serious argument, that doesn’t mean it was wholly persuasive. Part of his goal was to repair some of the damage done by his boss, who not long ago threatened to blow up the North Atlantic alliance by snatching Greenland away from Denmark. Rubio’s conciliatory language was welcome, but it hardly set things right.
Whether it was his intent or not, Rubio had more success in offering a contrast with Vice President JD Vance, who used the Munich conference last year as a platform to insult allies and provide fan service to his followers on X. Rubio’s speech was the one Vance should have given, if the goal was to offer a serious argument about Trump’s “vision” for the Western alliance. I put “vision” in scare quotes because it’s unclear to me that Trump actually has one, but the broader MAGA crowd is desperate to construct a coherent theory of their case.
So what’s that case? That Western Civilization is a real thing, America is not only part of it but also its leader, and it will do the hard things required to fix it.
In Rubio’s story, America and Europe embraced policies in the 1990s that amounted to the “managed decline” of the West. European governments were free riders on America’s military might and allowed their defense capabilities to atrophy as they funded bloated welfare states and inefficient regulatory regimes. Free trade, mass migration and an infatuation with “the rules-based global order” eroded national sovereignty, undermined the “cohesion of our societies” and fueled the “de-industrialization” of our economies. The remedy for these things? Reversing course on those policies and embracing the hard reality that strength and power drive events on the global stage.
“The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending,” Rubio said, “because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.”
I agree with some of this — to a point. And, honestly, given how refreshing it is to hear a grown-up argument from this administration, it feels churlish to quibble.
But, for starters, the simple fact is that Western Civilization is an abstraction, and so are nations and peoples. And that’s fine. Abstractions — like love, patriotism, moral principles, justice — are really important. Our “way of life” is largely defined and understood through abstractions: freedom, the American dream, democracy, etc. What is the “Great” in Make America Great Again, if not an abstraction?
This is important because the administration’s defenders ridicule or dismiss any principled objection critics raise as fastidious gitchy-goo eggheadery. Trump tramples the rule of law, pardons cronies, tries to steal an election and violates free market principles willy-nilly. And if you complain, it’s because you’re a goody-goody fool.
As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said not long ago, “we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Rubio said it better, but it’s the same idea.
There are other problems with Rubio’s story. At the start of the 1990s, the EU’s economy was 9% bigger than ours. In 2025 we were nearly twice as rich as Europe. If Europe was “ripping us off,” they have a funny way of showing it. America hasn’t “deindustrialized.” The manufacturing sector has grown during all of this decline, though not as much as the service sector, where we are a behemoth. We have shed manufacturing jobs, but that has more to do with automation than immigration. Moreover, the trends Rubio describes are not unique to America. Manufacturing tends to shrink as countries get richer.
That’s an important point because Rubio, like his boss, blames all of our economic problems on bad politicians and pretends that good politicians can fix them through sheer force of will.
I think Rubio is wrong, but I salute him for making his case seriously.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.