By Michael Smith, Patriot Post - The challenge, then, is not merely to resist imported extremism or domestic radicalism, but to restore the nation’s confidence in the principles that once unified a diverse people. A republic endures only when its citizens — native and immigrant alike — agree that its foundational rules are worth upholding. Liberty, in the American sense, is not self-sustaining. It must be chosen, taught, reaffirmed, and defended against the ideologies that inevitably emerge when a people forget what made them free in the first place.