My dear little one, waiting to greet this world,
Though you'll enter a fractured nation, you'll be cradled in the arms of a community that holds fast to hope, believing that you, our next generation, will mend what's broken and restore the values we cherish. You may be surprised to know that your mother and I were never interested in having children. In fact, we'd occasionally spoken about how opposed we were to the idea. We just didn't see the point. We were watching the way our society was falling apart—the way people treated one another, the way we'd stopped listening to each other. "Why bring someone into this mess?" we'd often say.
But then I started to think—or should I say, dream—of a potential future community where I'd finally feel comfortable raising a child. Now, in one of these thought exercises, you can get pretty wild and come up with some unrealistic, unobtainable ideas of dream worlds we'd all like to live in. But as I worked in the garden, milled some lumber, or walked through the forest with your mother, I'd try to boil it down to a basic list—maybe 10 or so things that would need to change for me to feel proud and ready to welcome someone new into this world.
I'm not going to dive into all 10 ideas right now, but I took a hard look at them and decided to start with one or two I could actually work toward. The first was crime. I believe we have a duty to build communities where we can reasonably expect safety. They'll never be completely free from evil—that's the reality of our fallen world—but we can do better than where I live now, in Coos County, Oregon, where there's practically zero accountability for crimes like theft, harassment, disorderly conduct, property damage, trespassing, and so many other petty yet incredibly disruptive offenses.
So, what can one person do about something like that? Not much on their own, but I could speak up. And maybe, by speaking up, I'd find others who shared my views. I started attending city council meetings, school board meetings, political party gatherings—lots and lots of meetings.
I had coffee with public officials, shared long walks with members of law enforcement, and even sat down with the sheriff for three hours one day to pore over the county budget, wondering if the problem boiled down to money.
It's hard to pinpoint just one conclusion from all that effort, but I can tell you this: It changed me. And I think it changed some people around me, too. I soon found a group of concerned citizens who weren't just willing to speak out, but to step up and put in the work to make a difference. We set up a network of cameras around town to identify criminal activity. We toured encampments in the woods where some of these folks were living, and we interviewed them–not with the intention to judge, but to understand what led them down this path of destructive habits. We shared our findings with the community, and slowly but surely, we began to attract more people eager to join in and start turning things around.
So, what does all this have to do with you, my little one?
Well, as we went down that rabbit hole—just one deep dive into the criminal underworld of our county—we all started to realize the issue was multifaceted. But everything pointed back to our society having too many weak minds and not enough strong leaders. We need more young people to fall in love, start families, and instill in our future mayors, senators, and everyday citizens the traditional American values upon which this great nation was founded: faith, family, hard work, personal responsibility, and a deep respect for one another. These aren't just abstract ideals— they're the bedrock that built this country, the principles that allow us to thrive as individuals and as a society. As one of my heros Charlie Kirk once put it, “The American way of life is very simple. I want to be able to get married, buy a home, have kids, allow them to ride their bike till the sun goes down, send them to a good school, and have a low crime neighborhood…” It's a vision of everyday freedom and security, one we must defend against those who would erode it.
And this ties into the hopeful vision that President Ronald Reagan so eloquently described in his farewell address, speaking of America as that "shining city upon a hill"—a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. Reagan reminded us that this city isn't just a dream; it's what we build together through our values and our actions. It's the America we're fighting to preserve and pass on to you.
You're giving us hope, my daughter. And is hope a sure thing? No, certainly not. Nothing ever is, and sometimes hope feels like a silly notion in a world like ours. But that's exactly why we need it.
So, I want to end this letter like this, my dear future daughter: I'm excited for you to bring to the world that little bit of silly, beautiful hope we're all waiting for.
And I have just one minor request: Whatever you do, please don't get here early. We're not quite ready yet—but we're working on it.