If this past week has shown us anything, it is that progress cannot rely on the institutions of the compromised and captured. The people’s will and focus may falter and shift with the headlines, but the Steward’s duty remains

Voting matters, but it is only the floor, not the ceiling. A Steward citizen participates in strengthening the civic process, not merely “winning.” They attend local meetings, write to representatives, volunteer in campaigns, and serve on boards. They converse with their family and friends who may be taken in by the disinformation, propaganda, and apathy of the day, to guide them towards the truth. All with an ethic of contribution over conquest.

Democracy, like any public resource, works only if enough of us show up to maintain it.

Stewardship, as a political concept, rather than religious or ecological, came to me during my studies in the mid-2000s. It was during that time that I called together my first Steward’s Circle. We discussed all that was going right, wrong, and weird with the world.

The same desire that can drive us to fill the streets, must now drive us to fill the rooms: meeting halls, libraries, and community spaces where the long-term work begins.

Every steward must understand that their strength comes from the four interlocking forms of power that sustain public trust and enable genuine leadership: personal power, relational power, communal power, and institutional power.

Helplessness is not inevitable. It is taught, and it can be unlearned. Each of us carries the capacity to become the stand for something larger than ourselves: our community, our country, our common good. And once enough of us remember that, the tide turns.

Today’s false declaration about “Antifa” is tomorrow’s precedent for labeling anyone who dissents. That is the pattern, and it must be broken. The lesson is plain. Beware of rulers who need enemies more than they need citizens.

The signs are multiplying. Comedians lose platforms when their satire cuts too close. Journalist are pressured into silence when their stories lack the “right” editorial angle. Broadcasters face direct threats to their licenses. Citizens are encouraged to report on coworkers and neighbors, with bureaucratic reprisals and doxxing used as weapons of intimidation.

In the aftermath of violence, the parties rush to script their stories. Who is to blame? Whose narrative wins? Whose outrage is more justified? Each side crafts its lines, and the public consumes tragedy as entertainment.

Politics is not theater. Lives are not props. Violence is not a script. To turn the nation’s wounds into partisan spectacle is an act of desecration. Not restricted to the victim of the moment, but a desecration to the very sanctity of human life and the values of the American people.

The once-beautiful house that I was born into is leaning badly. One party accelerates the collapse. The other fails to stop it. Neither can be trusted with the task of rebuilding.

In government, there are few things more disastrous than bad data. When leaders base decisions on false, incomplete, or manipulated information, policy misses the mark, people are misled, and the country veers off course. What I mean by ‘bad’ isn’t that it is inconvenient for a particular party or ideology. I mean objectively inaccurate, wrong. Data that is objectively wrong produces wrong outcomes, no matter what the intentions behind it.

What we live under today is what I’ve termed Vacuum Economics: instead of wealth trickling down, it gets sucked upwards. The many work harder and fall behind, while the few accumulate fortunes beyond imagination.

This is not a natural law. It is the result of political choices that have often been purchased through corporate capture of politicians. Choices that left wages flat while costs exploded, allowed oligarchs and private equity to dismantle institutions, and let housing markets become a playground for investors instead of a foundation for building families and communities. Vacuum Economics keeps the middle squeezed, the poor desperate, and less than 1% richer than kings.

Stewardship reframes public investment as the scaffolding of freedom. It is not about control. It is about capacity. A person trapped by hunger, isolation, untreated illness, or unpayable debt may have rights on paper, but they do not have the freedom to use them.

The problem is not only force. It is also instability, unpredictability, and overreach. Governments that drift into authoritarianism, swing wildly with elections, or insert themselves into the most personal decisions of private life are not protectors. They become threats.

The truth is that a government worthy of trust must do more than enforce rules. It must protect the people from harm. Economic, environmental, structural, and social. And it must provide the foundations that allow individuals, families, and communities to thrive.

Representation cannot mean speaking about the people from a distance. It must mean speaking from the people and carrying their experiences into rooms where decisions are made. Leadership should come from the community, not just claim to act for it.

When systems fail, they invite reform or replacement. This moment of collapse is also a moment of choice.  If the politics we’ve known no longer works, then what should it look like? Who should lead and how should they perform that duty? What standard can replace the ones that have been hollowed out?

Political Stewardship offers an answer. It is not a slogan, or a marketing strategy plucked from thin air. It is a philosophically grounded approach to the sacred duty of leadership, rooted in care, accountability, and moral clarity.