I was seven years old when President John F. Kennedy delivered the line that lit up a generation: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Even as a child, I felt the electricity of that moment. The early days of the Kennedy administration carried a sense of youth, vitality, and possibility. America stood at the apex of its postwar power — confident enough to promise the moon and bold enough to believe we could get there. It was exhilarating.
There was a swagger to the country then — not arrogance, but a deep, instinctive pride. America had defeated Nazism and imperialism, helped rebuild a shattered world, and emerged as a force for stability and prosperity. The promise of America felt inevitable, and for a time, it seemed the world was better for our being in it.
I begin here because that feeling — that sense of a country working, a country rising — is foreign to many today. Our civic life feels strained. Our narratives feel fractured. The media amplifies division, and our collective anxiety about “being number one” can make the moment feel hopeless. But memory is short. America’s postwar dominance was always going to recede as the world recovered. The extraordinary position we held after World War II was an aberration — a brief window created by the devastation of global conflict. As other nations rebuilt, they relied less on us, and our dominance naturally softened.
But somewhere along the way, we confused dominance with greatness.
America’s strength was never just its wealth or its markets. It was the architecture of freedom laid down in the founding documents — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights — a framework that treated ordinary people as capable of self-government. That idea traveled farther than any army. It reached my family in Castlecomer, Ireland. They didn’t cross an ocean for riches; they crossed it for dignity, for the chance to build something of their own and to stand as equals in the civic project. For four generations, they voted for the Union because they believed in that promise. I stand in that line.
Which is why the ReUnion matters.
What I’m doing now — what all of us are trying to do, whether we name it or not — is gather the pieces back together. Not in some sentimental way, but in the way my people always did: by showing up, by staying connected, by refusing to drift into isolation. The ReUnion isn’t an event. It’s a posture. It’s the quiet decision to keep the line intact, to keep faith with the ones who came before us, and to make sure the next generation knows where they stand.
Today feels like a good day to show up for democracy, because no other country offers what America still offers. To lose that, you would have to tear up those three founding documents — and that won’t happen easily. The memory of what they promise is too deeply embedded in us.
I’m not fretting the moment. When I look at my family, I see the frame for understanding it. America has broken promises before, but my family never broke faith with the idea of America. They endured. They found common ground. They built. And they kept building even when the country faltered. That’s the inheritance I carry.
I don’t need agreement to find common ground. I know who I am. I know what I need. I’m seeking the middle because I’m itching to build something new.
But building something new requires clarity about what the country needs now. Every generation of my family built according to the demands of their moment — farms, communities, civic trust, stability. Our moment demands something different: national projects that strengthen the country for the next fifty years.
Right now, we’re stripping the capacity of our nation. This is not sustainable, and farmers know that instinctively. They understand soil, water, seasons, and limits. They know when the land is tired. They know when a field needs to rest. They know that you cannot take more than the earth can give without paying a price later. I left California because the air became unlivable — a climate refugee in search of breathable days. And when I arrived in Buffalo, I was greeted by the same problem: smoke drifting from the Boreal Forest, settling over the Great Lakes, reminding me that climate is not a coastal issue or a partisan issue; it’s a capacity issue — the capacity of the land, the air, and the people who depend on both.
Environmental resilience isn’t a political argument; it’s a stability argument. A country that cannot breathe cannot thrive. We need resilient grids, protected forests, modernized water systems, and regional and global planning that anticipates the next fifty years rather than reacting to the last five.
We also need high-speed rail that knits the regions together and makes the country feel whole again. We need new energy systems that reduce volatility and give rural America a stake in the future economy. We need to re-engineer governing for the 21st century — modern, responsive, transparent, capable of handling the scale of today’s challenges.
These are not partisan dreams. They are the modern expression of the Ring philosophy: endure, find common ground, and build something amazing. This is the work of citizenship today — the work my ancestors would have recognized instantly. And there’s plenty of work to be done.
This year marks the 180th anniversary of the Ring–Delaney–Mackin–Fitzgerald line in America. My genealogical research — casual at first — revealed a spine of civic responsibility that has held firm across nearly two centuries. That continuity is why this moment matters.
We’re gathering this July for a family reunion on home turf in Manhattan, Illinois. It’s already turning into a collaborative affair — of course it is. My cousin Denny has the same genealogical curiosity, and together we’ve uncovered new pieces of our story that will help everyone understand who we are and why. I’ll see relatives I haven’t seen in decades, yet I know them. I’ll recognize their way of being — respectful, curious, steady. We will have a good time because we were raised to find common ground. We carry the instincts of our ancestors into the present moment. We understand the work that needs to be done.
And the Rings would have understood exactly what Kennedy was asking of his fellow citizens. They would have answered wholeheartedly, as they always did: we give our country the support it needs to realize its promises. I’m channeling them today. I’m choosing to believe, as they did, that the American Experiment is worthy — and that our work is to help it rise to its ideals.
This is the ReUnion. A choice, again. And in that simple act of returning, we become a beacon for the unfinished work of the American Experiment.
Patrick Fitzgerald contributes to The Fulcrum, a nonpartisan publication dedicated to strengthening democracy through informed civic engagement and diverse perspectives. Raised in the Midwest and shaped by farm communities, he later spent 29 years in San Francisco, where the city’s civic diversity and neighborhood culture influence his writing. He focuses on rebuilding trust in one another and environmental stewardship. He now lives in Buffalo, New York, where he continues to write essays grounded in personal experience.
