A Call to Every Minnesotan: Be Brave, Take Back Our State
Fellow Minnesotans—farmers and factory workers, teachers and truckers, Hmong grandmothers in St. Paul and shopkeepers in Minneapolis, Iron Rangers and suburban dads—look up.
Atop our State Capitol, four golden horses strain forward, pulling Progress through the sky.
Their names are Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance.
Their driver lifts a fasces—the bundled rods of unity—and a banner that blazes “MN DOCET”: Minnesota teaches.
This is our inheritance.
This is our charge.
Yet today that chariot is stalled.
Grifters and thieves ride in the seats our grandparents built.
They have turned the mirror of Truth into a fun-house distortion.
They have emptied the cornucopia of Prosperity into offshore accounts.
They have unyoked Justice and left Prudence bleeding on the roadside.
Under the Walz administration and the puppet strings of the political class, the innocent are preyed upon, the hardworking are taxed into silence, and the vulnerable are sold for thirty pieces of campaign silver.
We have had enough.
Abraham Lincoln stood on a battlefield and asked whether a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” could long endure.
He answered with his life.
Warren E. Burger, son of St. Paul and Chief Justice of the United States, echoed his mother’s wisdom when he reminded a divided nation: courage is not a judge with a gavel in his hand—it is listening to the dissenters, weighing their words, and then holding fast to what is right, no matter the cost.
Today, courage is a Minnesotan who refuses to look away.
Rise, Minnesota—Rise Again
Rise like the wheat in July.
Rise like the ore boats on Superior.
Rise like the lakes named for saints—St. Croix, St. Louis, St. Mary—reminding us whose land this is and whose children we are.
The same Spirit that moved our Lutheran and Catholic forebears to carve churches from pine and prairie moves in us still.
The same Holy Spirit that guided the hands of Daniel Chester French as he sculpted Fortitude into bronze guides us now.
William Wallace stood on the field of Stirling Bridge and roared to the Scots who had fled the English once before:
“Fight, and you may die. Run, and you’ll live—at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!”
We are those people no longer.
Let Justice Roll Down
Let every city councilman who sold a vote feel the rod of Justice.
Let every bureaucrat who buried a scandal meet the mirror of Truth.
Let every lobbyist who fattened on Feeding Our Future fraud face the horn of Prosperity turned against him.
Let the political class tremble when they hear the hooves of Temperance and Prudence thundering back across the marble.
We will take back our Capitol.
Not with torches, but with truth.
Not with violence, but with votes cast like iron ingots.
Not with hatred, but with the fierce love of neighbors who remember that Minnesota Nice was never weakness—it was strength in reserve.
Be Brave. Stand Tall. Speak Loud.
So paint your face blue if you must.
Stand on the steps where the Quadriga watches.
Shout with me the old Scottish fire, baptized in Minnesota water:
“They may take our surplus, but they’ll never take our SOUL!”
And when the sun sets over the golden horses, let it gild a new inscription on every heart:
MN DOCET—
and Minnesota will teach again.
In the name of the Father who gave us this good land,
the Son who taught us to love the least of these,
and the Holy Spirit who makes lambs into lions—
RISE, MINNESOTA. RISE AGAIN.
Philip C. Parrish is a Republican candidate for Governor of Minnesota, retired Navy intelligence officer, father, farmer, teacher, administrator, and lifelong Minnesotan running to restore integrity and prosperity.
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