Today's broadcast is titled A Memorial Day Requiem.

Not because this country is dead.

But because memory is dying.

Every Memorial Day, America pauses briefly to honor the fallen — the young men and women sent off to fight wars, defend ideals, preserve unions, topple tyrants, and occasionally protect the interests of people who never once intended to step onto a battlefield themselves.

Flags wave.
Politicians speak.
Old songs are played.
Jets scream overhead.
And for one long weekend, we pretend remembrance is still a sacred act instead of a seasonal advertisement between mattress sales and barbecue discounts.

But memory is fragile.

And republics do not usually collapse because enemies invade them from the outside. More often, they slowly forget who they were, what they once believed, and what previous generations already learned the hard way.

This broadcast begins with the quiet death of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and travels backward through American history — through Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, wartime censorship, midnight arrests, fear campaigns, and the recurring temptation of every administration, left or right, to decide criticism has become inconvenient.

Because America has done this before.

Again.
And again.
And again.

The names change.

The excuses change.

The fear changes costumes.

But the temptation remains remarkably consistent:
silence dissent in order to “save” the nation.

In 1861, the grandson of Francis Scott Key — the man who wrote The Star-Spangled Banner — was arrested by federal troops and imprisoned at Fort McHenry for criticizing the President of the United States.

Yes.
That Fort McHenry.

The same fort immortalized as the symbol of “the land of the free.”

And yet most Americans have never heard the story.

Because memory disappears quietly.

One forgotten fact at a time.

A Memorial Day Requiem is not a left-wing broadcast.
Or a right-wing broadcast.

It is a memory broadcast.

A reminder that power — regardless of party, ideology, or historical moment — has always had a difficult relationship with criticism.

And that every generation eventually hears some version of the same seductive lie:
that freedom must be temporarily restrained… in order to preserve freedom.

Sometimes the republic survives that bargain.

History suggests eventually one may not.

This is Good Morning, John Q.

Broadcasting, as always, from somewhere between memory… and forgetfulness.