Editor’s Note:
Nationally published writer and commentator Maureen Steele has built a reputation for asking the questions others often leave untouched….and for challenging her readers to think beyond the prevailing narrative.
In response to Colonel Allen West’s recent “Obituary for America,” Steele offers a measured but unapologetically hopeful counterpoint: America is not dead, because America was never merely Washington, its institutions, or its political class. America is her people.
Her response, “Never Count Out the American People,” acknowledges the gravity of West’s warnings without accepting despair as the inevitable conclusion.
Because nations are not saved by declaring them dead. They are saved when ordinary people remember who they are, what they inherited, and what they are willing to defend.
With all due respect, Colonel West, don’t write America’s obituary just yet. Maureen Steele certainly isn’t ready to, and she makes a compelling case for why none of us should be.
Find West’s words on his Substack here.
“With all due respect Colonel West, America does not need an obituary…she needs her people. And I for one am not giving up!”
Never Count Out the American People
By Maureen Steele
Colonel Allen West has sounded an alarm, and much of it deserves to be heard. Americans should be deeply concerned when political movements treat the Constitution as an obstacle rather than the supreme law that restrains government power. We should be concerned when institutions lose their way, government exceeds its boundaries, and citizens become so exhausted by politics that they simply stop paying attention.
But an alarm is supposed to wake people up. It is not supposed to convince them the house has already burned down.
And that is where I part ways with Colonel West.
I will not concede America.
Because for all that has gone wrong, there remains an enormous difference between the government of the United States and the people of the United States. Governments can become corrupted. Institutions can become captured. Bureaucracies can accumulate powers they were never intended to possess.
None of that means the American people have ceased being American.
And none of it changes the fundamental arrangement upon which this nation was built.
Our rights do not come from Washington.
The Declaration of Independence tells us we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights and that governments are instituted to secure those rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Those words changed the world.
Government was not placed above the American people. We created government and delegated limited powers to it. The Constitution put those powers inside a box, dividing them, checking them, limiting them and reserving enormous authority to the states and the people.
We are not subjects asking our government for freedom. We are free people who created a government and told it where its boundaries are.
Perhaps our greatest failure has been forgetting that.
For generations, Americans gradually handed over the steering wheel. We became busy building lives, raising children, starting businesses and pursuing happiness….the very things free people are supposed to do. But somewhere along the way, too many of us began practicing citizenship for fifteen minutes inside a voting booth every few years.
We stopped watching the machinery closely. We stopped teaching our children enough about the extraordinary documents their ancestors left them. We began treating public servants like rulers and government agencies like authorities unto themselves.
Government didn’t suddenly discover unlimited power.
We stopped demanding that it prove where its power came from.
That was a serious mistake.
It is not a death sentence.
In fact, it is precisely why I remain optimistic.
We do not need to invent another country to save this one. We don’t need another founding. We don’t need another Constitution. And we certainly don’t need to burn America down and begin again.
We need to remember.
We need Americans to rediscover the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, not as museum pieces under glass, but as instructions for self-government. We need to teach our children that freedom is not something government dispenses when it is feeling generous. We need to remind every elected official and government employee that public servant is not ceremonial language.
It is the job description.
Then we need to act like citizens again.
Peacefully. Lawfully. Relentlessly.
Speak. Assemble. Petition. Organize. Vote. Run for office. Challenge unconstitutional actions in court. Demand transparency. Demand accountability. Know what powers government possesses….and, perhaps more importantly, what powers it does not.
And pray.
Yes, pray.
Because America was not built entirely on political theory. Our founding generation understood something modern politics often forgets: liberty requires character. Self-government ultimately requires people capable of governing themselves.
Laws matter. Constitutions matter. Institutions matter.
But courage matters too. Faith matters. Decency matters. Truth matters.
And hope matters.
Never discount the power of hope, not the passive kind that waits for somebody else to fix things, but the kind that gets out of bed, rolls up its sleeves and goes to work.
Hope coupled with action is an extraordinarily dangerous thing to anyone depending upon your surrender.
And never discount the American people.
Americans can be maddeningly complacent. We can ignore problems far longer than we should. Sometimes we don’t wake up until the water is practically coming through the door.
But we have been counted out before.
This nation has endured civil war, depression, world wars, political assassinations, institutional corruption, racial injustice, terrorism, economic collapse and moments when Americans wondered whether the country could possibly hold together.
Our history is not the story of Americans never losing their way.
It is the story of Americans finding their way back.
That is why I refuse to call this a Second Civil War.
I refuse to look across the street and see an enemy simply because my neighbor votes differently. I refuse to believe that the loudest radicals represent the millions of decent Americans between them.
Most Americans are not revolutionaries. They’re parents and grandparents. Nurses and mechanics. Teachers and truck drivers. Farmers, firefighters, veterans and small-business owners. They’re trying to raise good children, care for their families, pay their bills and leave something worthwhile behind.
And when disaster comes, Americans still show up.
They bring boats into flooded neighborhoods. They arrive after hurricanes with chainsaws and generators. They donate blood, open their homes and feed people whose politics they never bothered to ask about.
That is America.
Washington is our government.
We are the country.
So sound the alarm, Colonel West. We should hear it. Warn us when constitutional boundaries are crossed. Expose dangerous ideas. Demand accountability from those entrusted with power.
But after sounding the alarm, tell people to get up.
Because despair has never saved a republic.
Courage has. Action has. Faith has.
Maybe America came dangerously close to forgetting who she is.
Then let us remind her.
Maybe government has wandered far outside its constitutional boundaries.
Then let us put it back inside them.
Maybe millions of Americans have been asleep.
Then wake them.
But never tell me it is too late.
I will not surrender my country while there remains a Constitution worth defending, a voice with which to speak, a God to whom I can pray, a neighbor whose hand I can take, and millions of Americans who still understand what freedom feels like.
I’m not ready to quit.
I will not quit.
And neither should you.
America does not need an obituary.
America needs her People to rise.
💗🇺🇸-M
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