By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, Esq.
On Valentine’s Day, most people write love letters to spouses, partners, or that one person who tolerated them in law school. Today, I’m writing mine to America.
Before anyone clutches their imported fainting couch, let me be clear: this is not blind love. This is not “everything is fine” love. This is not “ignore the headlines and hum quietly” love. This is the kind of love that recognizes flaws — loudly, publicly, sometimes in pleadings — and stays anyway.
Because love without honesty isn’t love. It’s propaganda.
America right now is complicated. We are polarized, loud, impatient, perpetually online, and occasionally allergic to nuance. We treat disagreement like treason and compromise like surrender. Cable news shouts. Social media fumes. Politicians preen. Entire industries now exist to keep us permanently outraged.
But here’s the thing: we are still arguing.
And that matters.
In most of human history, disagreement with power meant prison. Or worse. The reason we can complain about Congress, governors, presidents, prosecutors, and the guy yelling on X is because the system — imperfect, bruised, sometimes maddening — still allows dissent.
Now, if you listen to enough cable news, you might think prison is right around the corner for anyone who disagrees with the current administration. It isn’t — at least not as a governing principle. And when public figures test the boundaries of speech or controversy — see Don Lemon — the response isn’t a midnight knock. It’s litigation, public debate, contracts, and consequences.
Courts exist. Lawyers exist. Appeals exist.
Don’t you love lawyers?
My wife does. Well, one anyway.
This tension between power and speech isn’t new. One of the earliest controversies of the young republic was the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, signed by President John Adams. Those laws criminalized certain criticism of the federal government. Yes, the Founders — those marble demigods we quote selectively — once made it illegal to say unkind things about them.
The backlash was swift. The laws expired. The country corrected itself.
That pattern — overreach, resistance, recalibration — is as American as apple pie and Supreme Court oral arguments.
If you know my politics, you know I have no love for the far right or the far left in this country. Ideological purity tests exhaust me. More than twenty years ago, Mitch Daniels told me something that stuck: “Purity tests are for Nazis and suicide bombers.” It was blunt. It was provocative. And it made the point.
Rigid ideological conformity is dangerous — whether it’s wrapped in a red hat, a black hoodie, or a blue checkmark.
And yes, even Nazis — the fictional ones from The Blues Brothers or the real-life fringe imitators who occasionally crawl out from under their rocks — have the right to speak in this country. That doesn’t mean we have to listen. It doesn’t mean we have to amplify them. It means the government cannot silence them simply because their views are abhorrent.
The First Amendment protects speech from government suppression. It does not require the rest of us to provide a microphone.
I will even defend the right of people who have defamed me to speak. I believe in free expression that strongly. But the moment speech crosses the line into provable falsehood that damages someone’s reputation, it is no longer protected opinion — it is defamation. And the same Constitution that protects speech also provides a remedy when that line is crossed.
That’s not hypocrisy. That’s the rule of law.
And here’s the part that makes some people uncomfortable: even flag burning.
Yes, even that.
Protecting the right to burn the American flag is not an endorsement of the act. It is an endorsement of the freedom that makes the act possible. People do not burn the flags of countries they feel nothing about. They burn the symbol of a country they believe has fallen short of its promise. It is protest rooted in expectation.
And expectation is a form of belief.
I even defend the right of people who want to put on sheets and march in the streets. Not because I admire them — I don’t. Not because I agree with them — I certainly don’t. But because once you start deciding which speech is too offensive to protect, you’ve already surrendered the principle.
The First Amendment doesn’t exist for polite dinner conversation. It exists for the speech that makes you uncomfortable.
Freedom means tolerating speech you despise so that your own speech remains protected when someone else despises you. That’s discipline. Not weakness.
And I love that in this country a kid from the South Side of Chicago can grow up — cigar-smoking, bacon-eating, whiskey-drinking, agnostic Muslim with a penchant for Seattle, Benny Hill, and comic books — spend several years in Europe, come back, reinvent himself repeatedly, build a career in media and law, and still walk into a courthouse with the expectation — not the hope, but the expectation — that a judge will apply the law.
Where else does a profile like that not disqualify you from belonging, but instead become part of the story?
America was not designed to be perfect. She was designed to argue, adjust, and endure. She has survived depressions, assassinations, corruption, wars, cultural upheavals, and leadership both inspiring and embarrassing. She endures because she corrects. She corrects because she allows criticism. She allows criticism because she protects freedom.
Now, as much as I love America, let me be clear: I love my wife more. I even love my loud, occasionally irrational, but fiercely loyal dogs more. And yes — I love myself more too. You knew that was coming.
But that’s the point.
In America, I get to love them openly. I get to choose my faith — or my agnosticism. I get to criticize my government without a midnight knock at the door. I get to argue, rebuild, reinvent, and occasionally raise a glass to the absurdity of it all.
Valentine’s Day isn’t about pretending your partner has no flaws. It’s about choosing them anyway — and committing to helping them become better.
That’s how I feel about this country. I don’t love her because she’s flawless. I love her because she’s free. And freedom — messy, loud, inconvenient freedom — is worth fighting for. Even when she tests my patience. Happy Valentine’s Day, America. Now get your crap together and start acting like a 250-year old constitutional Republic.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is the editor and publisher of Indy Politics. He is also an attorney licensed in Indiana and Illinois.
