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Civitas No. 10

To The People of the United States:

Liberty is rarely lost by sudden seizure. It is surrendered gradually through habits of avoidance and quiet consent. The most enduring threats to a free People do not announce themselves with force. They arrive wrapped in familiarity, tolerated because they disturb neither comfort nor routine. In such conditions, silence is mistaken for neutrality. Looking away is mistaken for prudence.

Silence is not neutral. It is acquiescence. When power expands without objection, silence functions as permission. It signals acceptance -- and acceptance is enough. What is unchallenged becomes established. What is established becomes unquestioned.

Inaction preserves power more effectively than loyalty ever could. Authority does not require enthusiasm to endure; it requires only the absence of objection. Where citizens choose quiet over engagement, the path of least resistance becomes the path of governance.

This abdication is rarely born of fear. Fear provokes attention and invites resistance. Comfort, by contrast, dulls judgment. It encourages delay and the belief that tomorrow will offer a better moment to speak. Comfort persuades Citizens that the cost of involvement outweighs the benefit. In this way, comfort succeeds where coercion fails.

The result is a peculiar moral condition. People permit the injustice they do not intend. They accommodate the overreach they do not endorse. They reassure themselves that responsibility lies elsewhere -- with officials, institutions, or future generations. They claim to be busy, uninformed, or powerless. None of these explanations is false. Together, they are sufficient.

A People who look away become complicit. Complicity does not require action; it requires only tolerance. Over time, the extraordinary becomes ordinary. When The People finally recognize what has been lost, they cannot recall the moment when resistance might have mattered.

This process does not implicate villains. It implicates neighbors. It implicates professionals and families -- people who consider themselves reasonable and decent. It implicates those who value stability above principle and those who wait for clarity before acting. Clarity rarely arrives without action.

The Constitution cannot defend itself against this condition. Laws do not object. Structures do not protest. They rely on the vigilance of those who inhabit them. Where vigilance fades, liberty persists only as memory. The forms remain intact, but their substance thins.

Loss of liberty is the consequence of permission quietly given. A free People may endure many errors if they remain attentive. They cannot endure indifference.

There comes a moment when silence no longer preserves peace but guarantees decline. That moment feels like normalcy. It feels like patience. It feels like waiting for someone else to speak first.

Book II ends here with responsibility. The reader is confronted with a mirror. Self-government does not fail only because of those who act without restraint, but because of those who choose not to act at all.

Liberty is not always taken. Sometimes it is simply left behind.

Civitas Americana