The Fire Still Burns

A Declaration of Continued American Values

The Mood of the People

My dear defenders, Happy Friday. I hope this week has brought you some bright moments, however small, in our upside-down world. With significant courtroom losses for the Regime and a steadily growing groundswell of resistance across this nation, we have no shortage of victories to celebrate.

And yet, while I’ve seen a few celebratory notes rightly marking those wins, I must admit that what I’ve encountered most this week is something else entirely: a heaviness. A kind of quiet resignation in the eyes of our fellow countrymen settling like dust after the collapse of the sacred. The brave are tired. The bold are disheartened. A spirit of disillusionment—darker and drearier than usual—seems to be settling in.

They see the Vichy Regime under which we live and see only an impossible task—too big for us to fix or solve. They see a political class so untouchable, so insulated, so entrenched in their own self-preserving theater, that to imagine a return to honest governance feels almost childlike. They see churches shuttered, free speech censored, and our children molded like state property. They look at the darkness of the past few months, look ahead to the coming three and a half years, and ask with growing doubt: how do we survive this?

It’s a fair question. And it deserves an honest answer—not empty optimism, but something deeper. Something older. Something American. Because while despair may be the instinct of the day, it is not the inheritance of a free people.

---

The Vichy Comparison

In moments like these, I often return to history—not for comfort, but for clarity. We are not the first people to live under an illegitimate regime pretending to be lawful. We are not the first to be governed by those who claim to serve the people, while instead serving power itself.

Consider the Vichy Regime in occupied France. Installed under the guise of national preservation, they were little more than puppets—signing decrees and enforcing policies under the approving gaze of their Nazi overseers. They claimed to uphold French law, French tradition, and French sovereignty. But in truth, they broke the very laws they swore to protect. They collaborated. They censored. They handed over dissidents, Jews, and resisters to a brutal fate. And still, they called it order.

And yet—even under occupation—the people did not surrender their spirit.

Ordinary men and women formed the underground resistance. They passed messages, forged papers, smuggled people to safety. They sabotaged rail lines and supply chains. They aided the Allies. They tracked the looting of French artwork and national treasures—risking their lives to ensure the soul of their nation would not be lost forever.

One such woman was Rose Valland, an unassuming art historian at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. During the Nazi occupation, the museum became a central depot for art looted from Jewish families and French institutions. Valland, fluent in German—a fact she concealed from the occupiers—secretly documented the details of over 20,000 stolen artworks, including their origins and destinations.

Her meticulous records became invaluable to the Allies and the Monuments Men, aiding in the recovery of thousands of artworks after the war. Valland's courage and dedication ensured that France's cultural heritage was not lost to tyranny.

That’s what courage looks like. Not grand speeches or sweeping victories. But quiet acts of faithfulness. Truth-telling. Record-keeping. Sabotage. Holding the line, even when the line is thin.

We, too, are occupied—but we are not broken.

The Vichy spirit is alive in our time: a class of rulers who wear the mask of democracy while subverting the will of the people. Bureaucrats who ignore constitutional limits, politicians who serve the regime of global finance and cultural decay rather than the communities that elected them. And yet, just as in France, there is a resistance rising here.

A grassroots groundswell has begun—one court case, one school board, one parental rights group, one state legislature at a time. We are tracking the corruption. Speaking the truth. Rallying the remnant. This is not surrender. This is preparation.

We are under siege, yes. But siege is not defeat. Siege is the moment before deliverance. And history has shown that no occupation, no matter how brutal, can outlast the fire of a free people.

---

A Declaration of Continued American Ideals

We hold these truths still to be self-evident—that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are not granted by the government; they are secured from government. And whenever any government becomes destructive of those rights, it is the duty—not merely the right—of the people to resist and reform.

We believe in liberty—not the hollow kind preached by tyrants in tailored suits, but the kind our ancestors fought for with bloodied boots and trembling hands. Liberty that protects conscience, demands due process, and never bows to convenience or political fashion.

We believe in justice—not just as a courtroom ideal, but as the firmest boundary between tyranny and civilization. Our Founders knew well what it meant to be locked away at the pleasure of the king. They had seen the Tollbooth, the Bastille, and the Tower of London—where men and women died nameless, starved in silence, forgotten by law and left to rot unless the monarch granted reprieve. They remembered the indentured prisoners, sent to the colonies in chains, separated from chattel slavery only by the ink of a contract—too often worked to death before their time expired.

And so they created a republic where due process was sacred—where the state could not cage you without charge, trial, and the testimony of your peers. That principle is not old-fashioned. It is eternal.

We believe in women’s equality under the law. There is no state in this union where a man can be denied bodily autonomy. No legislature has claimed dominion over his organs, his privacy, or his power to make medical decisions. Yet for women, those same choices are subjected to political calculus and theological litmus tests. We cannot claim to be a free nation while women are treated as second-class citizens in their own bodies. A right is not a right if it only applies to men.

We believe in the dignity of LGBTQ Americans. In a truly free society, an adult should be able to choose not only who they love—but who they live with, who they share their finances with, who can speak for them in a hospital room, and who holds their hand in that final bed. The government has no rightful place in the intimacy of that choice. And neither does any public official who hides their bigotry behind a badge or a Bible. Freedom of religion does not mean freedom to deny others theirs. My faith ends where your freedom begins—and that boundary must be held with fierce resolve.

We believe in a nation governed by the consent of the people—not bureaucrats, not legacy media, not corporate lobbyists. Not courts that legislate from the bench, nor governors who rule by decree. The Constitution was never meant to be a relic. It is a living breathing embodiment of the Republic for which it stands. Our covenant. And it remains binding.

We believe that liberty cannot survive without truth. And truth cannot survive without courage.

That is why we must defend the Fourth Estate—a free and independent press—without apology. For when the power to define truth is placed in the hands of a would-be king, there can be no truth at all. And without truth, nothing else—no law, no liberty, no justice—can be secure. The press must be free not only to speak but to question, to challenge, to investigate, and to illuminate. When the flow of information is controlled, the people are not informed—they are managed.

Let this be our declaration—not just of defiance, but of identity. Not born of hatred for any man or political faction, but from love of the principles they so brazenly betray.

These are the ideals for which our ancestors fought and died—regardless of color, class, creed, or country of origin. From Concord to Gettysburg, from Selma’s Bridge to the bar stools of Stonewall , Americans have given everything to push these principles forward and enshrine them in law and conscience.

We do not resist because we hate this regime’s frontman or his many enablers. We resist because they have desecrated the sacred trust of democracy. They have mocked the freedoms our forebears bled to secure.

And so we do not merely react—we define. Boldly. Unapologetically. With full knowledge of the cost.

These are the truths we hold. These are the values worth every ounce of blood, sweat, toil, and tears we may offer in their defense.

---

The Work Before Us, The Hope Within Us

With our ideals defined and our goals set, we must shake the heaviness of the settling mood for what it is: the illusion of control desperately maintained by a weak and flailing tyrant. We must continue this battle not in the despair of an impossible task, but rooted in the enduring light of hope.

Hope is not naïve. Hope is not blind. Hope is not the absence of pain, fear, or exhaustion—it is what we cling to despite them. Hope is not foolishness. It is faithfulness. It is an act of will.

And today, we choose it.

Because we do not fight alone, and we do not fight in vain. We stand in a long, unbroken line of Americans who faced what felt like insurmountable odds—and fought anyway. Not out of certainty, but out of duty.

It was the patriots of the Revolution, ragged and freezing at Valley Forge, who declared that liberty was worth more than life under a tyrant’s yoke. It was the formerly enslaved soldiers of the Union who fought to preserve the republic and redefine it at the same time. It was the suffragettes who were jeered, jailed, and force-fed in prison before women were granted the right to vote. It was Black Americans who faced dogs, fire hoses, and beatings at Selma and Birmingham—not for special treatment, but for equal citizenship under law.

It was the queer community at Stonewall, led by voices like Marsha P. Johnson, who shouted into the void that they too deserved dignity, safety, and self-determination—regardless of who understood them or didn’t. Every generation, someone has stood up and said enough. And every generation, the ideals of America have taken another step forward—not perfectly, not painlessly, but purposefully.

Who are we, then, to surrender now?

What right have we to throw down hope when we still hold tools at our disposal that our forebears could only dream of? When our lives, even in hardship, are cushioned by their sacrifice?

Yes, we face a rising tide of opposition. Yes, many of our neighbors have been swayed and seduced by a corrupted, golden idol—an orange-skinned antithesis to every ideal in our founding charter. But this battle is not lost. It has only just begun.

In every war for liberty, there are losses. There are hard days. But a loss is not the end of the war. It is a signal to adapt. To dig deeper. To hold the line. The battle may shift, but the cause remains unchanged. The ideals we carry—liberty, justice, equality, and dignity—have been fought for across oceans, deserts, and decades by men and women of every race, religion, identity, and heritage.

We are a nation of immigrants, of rebels, of abolitionists, of resisters, of freedom riders, of truth-tellers. We are not the first to walk through the fire. But we may well be the next to light the torch.

So we rise—not in despair, but in defiance. Not because it is easy, but because it is ours to do.

Let the cynics mock. Let the cowards cower. We will hope. We will work. And we will win.

---

And so…

Let this be the spark.

If this Declaration has stirred something in you—if it speaks to what you still believe this nation can and must become—then pass it forward. Share it. Speak it. Print it. Publish it.

When our Founders signed their Declaration, they did not tuck it away in drawers. They sent it to every printer in every colony. From Boston to Charleston, their words were passed hand to hand, spoken aloud in churches and taverns, scrawled on broadsheets and nailed to courthouse doors. And in those words, a people found the courage to rise.

So too must it be with us.

Let our Declaration of Continued American Ideals be carried on every voice, in every classroom, courtroom, boardroom, and back porch. Let it be memorized, discussed, debated—lived. For when a people fight not merely against something, but for a future they know is better, they fight with a strength no tyrant can extinguish.

Let this be our stand. Let this be our vow.

---

Until our Next bold move,
Lady LiberTea