LETTER: What kind of America do we want our children to inherit?

In 2026, a quiet truth is emerging across the United States —one that rarely makes headlines but echoes in classrooms, living rooms and the small, fragile spaces where children try to make sense of the world. It is the truth that many children in America are afraid. Not of the dark, or of imaginary monsters, but of losing the people they love to forces they cannot understand and cannot control.

When a child wakes up wondering whether a parent will still be there at the end of the day, something fundamental has shifted in the soul of a nation. Children are emotional barometers. They absorb the climate adults create. And right now, too many are absorbing fear instead of stability, uncertainty instead of trust.

This is not a marginal issue. It is not a niche concern. A child’s emotional well‑being is a national issue because children are the nation’s future — its next generation of workers, thinkers, caregivers and citizens. When fear becomes part of childhood, it becomes part of the country’s future.

The Founding Fathers did not imagine the modern immigration system, nor the complexities of today’s society. But they did imagine a nation where families could flourish, where government power was predictable rather than arbitrary and where liberty was not a privilege for the few but a guiding principle for all. They believed that the stability of the home was essential to the stability of the republic.

So what does it say about America in 2026 when children fear losing their families? It says that the gap between our ideals, our religious beliefs and our reality has grown too wide to ignore.

And there is another truth we must face: when fear becomes normalized — when people begin to worry about being watched, judged, or reported by their neighbors — it signals the early formation of a culture that erodes trust. A society where suspicion replaces the solidarity of a nation under God is not a society that protects its children. It is a society that teaches them to shrink rather than grow.

The ugly head of a “police state” culture does not appear all at once. It emerges slowly, in the quiet ways people begin to fear one another, in the pressure to conform, in the belief that safety comes from surveillance rather than community. When children sense that adults are afraid, they internalize that fear as part of the world’s natural order.

But fear is not destiny. The antidote to fear has always been community. “It takes a village to raise a child” is not just a proverb — it is a blueprint for a healthy society. Children thrive when surrounded by adults who look out for them, who protect them, who model compassion instead of suspicion. A village is not built on fear. It is built on trust, shared responsibility and the belief that every child deserves a chance to grow without the weight of adult anxieties on their shoulders.

So we must ask ourselves: What kind of society do we want for the children?

Do we want a country where children learn to fear the knock at the door, the glance from a neighbor, the unpredictability of systems they cannot understand? Or do we want a country where children feel rooted, safe and free to imagine futures that are bigger than the fears of the present?

The answer to that question will shape the next chapter of the American story. Protecting children — emotionally, socially and spiritually — is not an act of charity. It is an act of national preservation. It is how we honor our religious beliefs and the ideals we inherited and how we safeguard the future we hope to build.

A nation that protects its children protects its future. A nation that listens to its children listens to God and to its conscience. And a nation that chooses trust over fear chooses the kind of America the Founders hoped would endure long after their time.

The village is still here. The question is whether we will choose to rebuild it.

Duane Pitts

Moses Lake