After July 4: Quo Vadis, America?

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Something remarkable, and optimistic, happened in the United States in the past 7 days. Amidst one catastrophic statement after another from a Trump Administration haplessly “caught below the level of historic events,” on matters of both foreign and domestic policy, two speeches were given on Friday, July 3, the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Taken together, the two speeches represent one of the most important acts of intervention through mass education in the United States in the past 60 years. In the first, this year’s recipient of the Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pope Leo XIV, urged his fellow Americans to make a “solemn commitment to these ideals that have made America a country that values peace and prosperity, a country characterized by generosity and nobility of heart.”“In these past two-hundred and fifty years, for so many peoples throughout the world, it was the firm resolve to achieve the noble vision of the nation’s founders that made America a byword for freedom, as the country opened its doors to successive waves of immigrants, enabling them and their children to play their part in shaping the future of the nation, “ Leo said.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Mayor Mamdani surprised many, including his closest supporters, with the way in which he framed George Washington’s vision of Manhattan. “Today, I think not only of the Fourth of July. I think, too, of the Ninth of July. Five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, it arrived here in our New York City. Redcoats had disembarked on Staten Island. More than a hundred British ships loomed just offshore. Across this city, the Continental Army prepared for an invasion. George Washington commanded his brigades to assemble just a few feet from this building. It was known then as the Commons. Today, we call it City Hall Park. There, within range of British guns, Washington ordered his generals to read the Declaration aloud.

“And with the world’s mightiest empire poised to attack, Washington told the people of New York City what we will celebrate tomorrow, that we had declared our independence, that freedom was within reach. That evening, danger loomed. Conflict was not a question, but a certainty. And yet when those early New Yorkers marched toward the statue of King George III that stood in the Bowling Green, a statue they would melt down into bullets for their young army, they walked in unison, grounded not in the pursuit of plunder, but an ideal that for the first time had a name, America.”

Indeed, America is first an Idea, and only secondarily a place. The two speeches, taken together, and combined with the July 5 proceedings of United States Independent Presidential Candidate Diane Sare’s conference, America 250: A Rededication, delineate a new day in America, for those that have actually co-signed” the Declaration of Independence. Let us finally note the largest assembly in human history probably occurred in Teheran on America’s Fourth of July weekend, in defiance of the assassination of the religious leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Whatever one chooses to think of what he stood for, it is clear that million of people rejected, through their physical presence, the politics of assassination, murder and war, and at significant personal risk. Is it possible that establishing a new security and development architecture, based on the worldview indicated in Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Tenth Principle—that “The basic assumption for the new paradigm is, that man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul, and being the most advanced geological force in the universe, which proves that the lawfulness of the mind and that of the physical universe are in correspondence and cohesion, and that all evil is the result of a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome”—is on the horizon, should we choose to continue to steer toward it?

Speakers: Bill Jones, Cliff Kiracofe