My original theme for this newsletter was about taking stock, but as I wrote, I realized I was thinking too small.
I started out thinking about myself: Should I keep going as long as people ask for my advice and counsel? As long as I’m engaged with the work of small business?
But as I wrote this, on June 18, 2026, larger issues intrude upon my thoughts.
Many things may be going on for you personally, but we mark these communally today:
Not all is sunny, but FREEDOM HAS NEVER BEEN AUTOMATIC.
It has always required tending. Even in our own country, we sometimes forget that every generation has included newcomers seeking the same opportunities our own ancestors once sought.
How do we take stock of our country? We are part of a great nation and a beautiful, fragile world, and we must continue to get along, or at least co-exist.
We are 250 years on, into the Great American Experiment.
Do we quit? Of course not.
We reach for liberty while still learning how to live with each other.
We yearn for acceptance while denying it to those we disagree with.
There come times when we realize that we cannot tolerate or accept conditions as they are. Every generation has had to widen the circle of liberty just a little farther than the one before it The Founders did. The Civil War generation confronted slavery. The Greatest Generation confronted fascism. Each faced a question it wished it hadn’t been asked.
It is our time now.
We must face up to the unacceptable and face down the intolerable.
We must reach for each other as equals and be open to challenges to our own solutions.
In loving our neighbors, we offer the same love to the stranger, and to ourselves.
To be fair and open-minded, we must talk with each other, especially when it frightens us.
We must remember that in America, no individual is greater than the Constitution, and no office is greater than the people who lend it their authority.
We haven’t finished the work. We never will.
Our founders signed a document that began with three simple words:
We the people.
Not We the Government.
Not We the Politicians.
Not We the Corporations.
And the people say, in the Declaration of Independence...
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
A significant example of how the consent of the governed works is that the word “men” was amended to include women and people of color many decades past the original writing.
We are the people, we are the governed, and we give our consent with our votes--and with how we live together between elections.
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What can we do?
As small business owners, we don't write national policy. But every day we create little pockets of the country we want to live in. We decide whether to keep our word. We choose how we treat customers, employees, competitors, and strangers. We solve problems instead of creating them. We invest in our communities because we live there too.
Those may seem like ordinary decisions, but they're exactly the habits that make self-government possible.
I spent the Bicentennial, in 1976, in a 22-foot sailboat in New York Harbor watching the Parade of the Tall Ships. It was exciting and inspiring.
Much of the good work we started then will require more than one generation.
Fifty years later, perhaps this is a good time to take stock: Not of everything that's wrong or whether the experiment is complete, but of the responsibilities that belong to each of us.
We don’t quit. We continue the experiment. And we ask ourselves whether we are doing our part to make our country better.
I still believe we are.
And that gives me hope.
Lorette Pruden has helped hundreds of small business owners, sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and community leaders grow their businesses and manage that growth since 2000. She specializes in the Formerly Corporate—so many small business owners who’ve worked with her come from a corporate background that she finally wrote the book on it.
