ROBERT L ARNOLD
On E Pluribus Unum
When Mike Madrid talks about E Pluribus Unum, I listen. That hasn’t always been true for everyone I’ve encountered in politics, but it’s true with him. Over time, through conversation, observation, and the simple act of paying attention, I’ve come to deeply respect his clarity, his honesty, and his refusal to flatten complicated truths into convenient talking points. Mike will tell you the phrase is better understood not as “from many, one,” but as from plurality, union.
And I should be clear here, for the sake of intellectual honesty and a little comedic humility… I am outright stealing that framing for this essay. Borrowing it heavily. Lifting it with affection. If this were a song, he’d already be owed a writing credit and a bourbon.
But I can’t leave good words alone. I’m stubborn, needy, maybe even a little crazy. So once Mike planted that idea in my head, I ouldn’t stop turning it over in my hands like a coin worn smooth by time, trying to feel what it must have meant when they first wrote it.
Imagine Franklin, Madison, and Jefferson in a cramped Philadelphia room, the summer heat clinging to them like guilt. They’re young… too young, maybe… ink-stained dreamers and philosophical arsonists trying to build a republic out of smoke and argument. Did they know what they were doing? Did they feel the weight of it? Or were they just giving it their best shot, thinking, if it breaks, we’ll fix it and keep going.
Maybe that’s the point.
Maybe that’s the real American creed.
To most of the world, we look arrogant. And maybe we are. But my favorite version of America has always been the one that rises from the dirt with a spark of defiance in its eye. The “the hell I won’t” version. The “hold my beer while we stomp out fascism” version. We are messy, hot-tempered, loud, and often wrong. We are descendants of firebrands, dirt farmers, dreamers, and drunks who thought they could make something holy out of ordinary people. And damned if they didn’t.
The plurality of Americans is a wild symphony… a thousand discordant notes that somehow, when it matters most, find harmony. That’s the real miracle. Not perfection. Not purity. But union. The kind of union that only exists when the storm hits and someone yells, “Hold the line.”
We are many colors, many creeds, many contradictions. We are Baptist and Buddhist, farmer and coder, miner and musician, sinner and saint. And yet, when we are truly threatened… not just politically inconvenienced but spiritually tested… something ancient and electric moves through us. Our divisions blur. Our blood remembers.
Because E Pluribus Unum was never about sameness. It was about choosing to belong to one another anyway.
We forget that sometimes. We let them sell us fear and call it patriotism. We let them pit us against our neighbors and convince us that anger is easier than empathy. But when the house starts to burn, none of that matters anymore. We reach for the same hose. We pull each other from the same flames. I believe we still have that in us.
So yes, Mike is right of course, it really is from plurality … union. But I think it might be something deeper still. I think it’s a promise… that when we are pushed too far, when they try to rule us instead of represent us, our divided hearts will remember their rhythm. And when one bleeds, we all bleed.
And when that day comes… when the people of this fractured country stand shoulder to shoulder again and say, enough… no tyrant, no party, no self-crowned king will be able to stop what’s coming.
Because that’s America. Not the flag. Not the anthem. Not the marble halls of power.
But the spark that catches in the chest of the common people when they remember what they were born to be.
Out of many, one.
Out of pain, purpose.
Out of fear, fire.
And that fire… is coming.
