The Light for Which Many Have Died

Memorial Day 2025

I always return to Memorial Day not only as a moment of remembrance, but as a reminder of responsibility. If you’ve read my earlier reflections—on the quiet lessons of cemeteries, the fraying threads of our civic fabric, or the unfinished work we inherit as citizens—you know I believe history isn’t just something we study; it’s something we carry. Memorial Day, especially, asks us to slow down and shoulder that burden. It’s not only about honoring the fallen, but about asking what we owe them—what kind of country we are building in their absence, and whether we are prepared to defend the ideals they died for with our words, our votes, and our daily lives.

There is a quiet place in the heart of Philadelphia, bracketed by trees and hemmed in by the rhythm of the city. Washington Square—once a burial ground, then a grazing field, later a parade ground—holds beneath its grass the remains of thousands of unnamed soldiers who fought for the fragile, radical idea of American independence.

They lie there still, without headstones, without certainty, but not without honor.

Their tomb is marked by a flame and a carved warning, both solemn and illuminating:

"Freedom is a light for which many men have died in darkness."

That line has settled in my head this year. It feels like a whisper from the past, growing louder as the headlines grow noisier.

These men died in obscurity, in suffering, in the confusion and chaos of a war that had not yet produced a nation. They died not for a flag or a president or a party, but for an idea—half-born, fragile, and still unproven: that people could govern themselves.

They did not live to see if it would work. They gave their lives for a future they could not claim, only imagine.

We are that future.

And the question we must ask this Memorial Day is not merely, “Do we remember them?” but rather, “Are we worthy of them?”

Because freedom’s light still burns—but it flickers.

In recent months, I’ve felt it dim in the distance, dulled by cynicism, selfishness, and a national attention span grown brittle. We argue more than we understand. We scroll more than we serve. We mock before we mourn. And too often, we confuse personal grievance with public virtue.

We’ve come to treat democracy as a spectator sport. We tally wins and losses like baseball box scores, forgetting that self-government was never meant to be a game—let alone a blood sport.

But history doesn’t unfold by accident. It is written by hands like ours—in ballot booths and classrooms, in boardrooms and around kitchen tables. The soldiers in Washington Square died without knowing who would take up the work. That task was left to us.

George Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address, reminded the country:

“The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and success.”

It was true then. It remains true now.

So this Memorial Day, we are called not only to decorate graves, but to defend ideals. To honor the dead not just with flags and flowers, but with action—with civic learning, civil dialogue, and a renewed belief that our shared work is still unfinished and still worth doing.

Because if freedom is a light, then we must be its keepers.

And if others have died in darkness to bring us this light, let us not extinguish it with our indifference. Let us carry it forward—however imperfectly, however urgently—so that future generations might look back and say:

They remembered.

They were worthy.

Washing Clothes, Reading History, and Rethinking the Constitution (REVIEW)

The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783–1789
by Joseph J. Ellis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I moved cross-country from Boise to Syracuse, I expected a few inconveniences—unpacking chaos, unfamiliar grocery stores, and adjusting to a colder, wetter climate. But I didn’t anticipate being without a washer and dryer for the first time in years. My appliances, loyal veterans of countless laundry days, were sitting in a storage unit across town. Which is how I found myself at the local laundromat one Saturday, armed with a basket of dirty clothes and a faint sense of nostalgia.

After jockeying for a dryer and realizing I’d forgotten both my Bounce sheets and my earbuds (rookie mistake), I did what any self-respecting person without a podcast would do: I wandered around the laundromat. That’s when I stumbled upon a weathered Little Free Library tucked beside the soda machine. Most of the offerings were exactly what you’d expect—Go Dog Go!, a few romance novels missing their covers, and Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul. But sandwiched between them was something unexpected: The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution by Joseph J. Ellis. I didn’t know if this was divine intervention or just a misplaced donation from a very patriotic cat lover, but I grabbed it. And as the spin cycle hummed behind me, I found myself drawn into a story about revolution, reinvention, and the stubborn art of keeping a country from falling apart.

In The Quartet, Ellis turns his considerable talents to the underexplored period between the end of the Revolutionary War and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution—a stretch of time often glossed over in high school textbooks. His thesis is simple but profound: that the true founding of the United States as a unified nation happened not in 1776, but between 1783 and 1789. And it wasn’t the result of some grand inevitability, but of the determined efforts of four key figures—George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—who understood that liberty without structure was a recipe for collapse.

I studied The Federalist Papers and read Ketcham's The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates in college and have always considered myself fairly well-versed in the mechanics of the Constitutional Convention. I’ve even referenced Publius more than once in polite conversation—much to the confusion (and occasional concern) of friends. Yet what struck me most about Ellis’s narrative was how fresh and human the story felt. His account offered something different: a real sense of the urgency, messiness, and sheer improbability of what Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay managed to pull off. These weren’t just abstract ideas being batted around in Philadelphia meeting rooms; these were strategic gambles, emotional appeals, and backroom compromises aimed at coaxing a fragmented confederation into becoming something that could survive.

Ellis presents these men not as marble-carved heroes, but as complex, occasionally conflicted individuals grappling with the chaos of post-war America. Washington’s quiet gravitas and personal restraint become political tools in their own right. Hamilton’s financial savvy and rhetorical firepower give backbone to the argument for federal authority. Madison, the book’s intellectual workhorse, emerges as a master strategist—crafting the Virginia Plan, writing the Federalist Papers, and shaping the very structure of the Constitution. And Jay, often the most overlooked of the four, plays a crucial role in diplomacy and consensus-building, bringing legitimacy to the process through his experience and careful words.

What’s most striking is how much of their work feels urgently relevant today. As I read Ellis’s account of political gridlock, fragile alliances, and public mistrust of centralized power, I couldn’t help but think about our current political climate. The rhetoric may be flashier now, and the internet has certainly raised the volume, but the underlying tensions—between state and federal power, between populism and pragmatism, between ideology and governance—remain stubbornly familiar. Ellis reminds us that our system was never designed for ease. It was built for negotiation, compromise, and above all, balance:

In the long run—and this was probably Madison’s most creative insight—the multiple ambiguities embedded in the Constitution made it an inherently “living” document. For it was designed not to offer clear answers…but instead to provide a political arena in which arguments about those contested issues could continue in a deliberate fashion. (Ellis, p.174) 

This idea—that the Constitution was never meant to be a static rulebook but a dynamic framework for ongoing debate—feels particularly resonant now, when so many of our most pressing challenges hinge on interpretation, intent, and the willingness to engage across divides.

The brilliance of The Quartet lies in its clarity. Ellis peels away the mythology surrounding the Constitution’s creation and exposes the deliberate, often messy reality underneath. This was not a moment of national consensus; it was a hard-fought campaign by a determined minority who believed the American experiment needed stronger scaffolding if it was to survive. The Articles of Confederation, noble in their idealism, had left the country vulnerable—economically unstable, diplomatically weak, and internally fragmented. These four men saw what others feared to admit: that revolution was not the end of the story, but the beginning of a new and equally complicated chapter.

Ellis walks us through the Philadelphia Convention, the state ratification battles, and the artful persuasion that made unity possible. He brings a historian’s rigor to the narrative but writes with the accessibility of someone who wants his work to be read on park benches, in coffee shops—and yes, even in laundromats. His focus on character-driven storytelling makes the political feel personal, which is a good reminder that it always has been.

Reading The Quartet while navigating a personal transition gave me a deeper appreciation for the kind of collective work that goes into building anything lasting—be it a new home, a new community, or a functioning republic. Moving to a new city, starting over in many ways, I found a surprising kinship in the story of four men trying to knit together a fledgling country from a patchwork of states that didn’t always like or trust each other. It reminded me that reinvention takes vision, patience, and a willingness to wrestle with uncomfortable truths.

In the end, The Quartet is a book about second chances—not just for the country, but for the idea of America itself. It challenges us to recognize that founding principles are only as strong as our ability to uphold them. And maybe, as we navigate our own uncertain political era, there’s something comforting in the reminder that we’ve faced this kind of instability before—and that good ideas, backed by hard work and a willingness to compromise, can still win the day.

So if you find a copy in a Little Free Library—or in your local bookstore—pick up The Quartet. It won’t just teach you about history. It might just remind you why it matters.

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