​Inheritance at America's 250

 

At the two hundred and fiftieth year of the American experiment, we find ourselves not at a beginning, but in possession.

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What we have inherited was not handed to us lightly. Institutions, liberties, and systems of care were built through judgment, sacrifice, and sustained attention. They did not arrive fully formed, nor were they guaranteed to endure. They have endured because responsibility was once taken personally.

 

Inheritance, however, carries a quiet danger. What is received rather than chosen can come to feel inevitable. What endures can begin to justify itself. Long before systems fail, they drift.

 

Drift is not disorder. It is stability without attention. It is the slow substitution of habit for judgment, and of assumption for responsibility. Because it feels like continuity, it rarely provokes concern.

 

This moment does not ask us to start again. It asks something more demanding. It asks whether those who have inherited successful systems are willing to examine them with the same seriousness with which they were created.

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The question before us is not whether our institutions continue to operate, but whether they remain accountable to the persons they exist to serve.

 

Enduring systems rarely fail suddenly. They erode as vigilance fades. Repair becomes more difficult not because it is impossible, but because it is deferred.

 

To inherit is not to preserve without question. It is to accept responsibility for what continues under our care. At America’s 250, the work before us is not to celebrate endurance alone, but to decide whether vigilance has kept pace with success.

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