Using Your Voice Is Enough

The answer to "what can one do" is as simple as it is profound.

In moments like this, the question always comes up—what can one do?

Not what must be done, not what will save the republic, just: what is within the power of a single person who is not trying to become a hero, a pundit, or a professional activist.

My answer is simple: using your voice is a lot.

I don’t mean refuting every argument, mastering every dataset, or appointing yourself the final authority on some vast political or moral question. Most people don’t have either the time or inclination for that, and they certainly shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Moral seriousness does not require omniscience.

What does matter is this: stating your values, openly, and saying when the world you see no longer squares with them.

Sometimes that takes the modest form of saying, “When I heard X, it made me stop.”

Or, “This policy unsettles me, and here’s why.”

Or even, “This doesn’t seem right, given what I believe about human dignity, the rule of law, or basic decency.”

People who know you—who know your temperament, your habits of mind, your seriousness—listen differently than they do to strangers shouting on the internet. They know whether you’re impulsive or measured. Whether you exaggerate or understate. Whether you chase applause or avoid conflict. When you say something gives you pause, it gives them pause. When you explain how a concrete event triggered a deeper concern, you encourage others to think through the matter themselves.

That is how thinking spreads. Not through refutation, but through recognition.

There is a temptation to believe that if you can’t say everything, you should say nothing. That if you haven’t read all the briefs, you have no standing to speak. That unless you can defeat the strongest version of every opposing argument, silence is the safer option.

It isn’t. Silence doesn’t preserve neutrality. It preserves the status quo.

To be clear, I’m sympathetic to people who remain silent. Some feel it’s not their fight. Some are dealing with obligations far more immediate than politics. I don’t fault anyone for choosing quiet over conflict. Life is finite, and attention is precious.

But we should be honest about what silence is—and what it is not.

Silence does not change the world. Silence does not correct course. Silence does not stiffen the spine of anyone who is wavering. It simply leaves the field to those who are loudest, most shameless, or least constrained by doubt.

Using your voice, by contrast, requires integrity. It requires saying: These are my values. This is where I’m coming from. This is the moment that made me stop and think.

That is important. It is how moral lines become visible in the fog. It is how decent people recognize one another. And in times like these, that recognition matters more than we like to admit.

You don’t need to win the argument.

You don’t need to end the debate.

You don’t need to speak for anyone but yourself.

You just need to speak.