And on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
"We hold these truths to be self-evident. that all men are created equal." One of the greatest ideas ever.
Was this idea implemented in practice? In the beginning, not even close. But an idea of such magnitude cannot be suppressed and this country has always been aspirational. So, for over two hundred years, we got closer and closer to the ideal.
It has taken only ten years to slide back one hundred years.
Maybe this is the last great battle for what Joe Biden called the "soul of this country".
I am also reminded of President Lincoln's wise word or reconciliation: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds . . . ."
Yet we must keep in mind of President Grant ten years later: “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”
As well as the wariness of Calvin and Hobbes: “Isn’t it sad how some people’s grip on their lives is so precarious that they’ll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?”
In the end, hopefully, we will come around to the vision of President Kennedy: “I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.”
For weaving so deftly together Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Calvin and Hobbes, FDR, and President Kennedy into a single, coherent and pleasing tapestry, I hereby award one golden laurel leaf and a field of well-deserved huzzahs all around… Hip Hip! 👏
Marshan Camese delivering a fiery speech at a Louisiana hearing over congressional redistricting:
"I have no doubt in my mind that the map is going to pass. If y’all can give us less than zero seats, you would do it. Y’all do this under the orders of somebody that said the civil rights act is harmful to White people. I believe the country as a whole is rebuking your party. Y’all are in a death spiral. That’s why y’all have to redistrict. That’s why y’all have to cheat. But the beautiful thing is, the children that y’all have made and the people that’s younger than y’all don’t support none of this racism that y’all want. The MAGA Party is the last breath of the Confederacy, and I’ll be happy to see Millennials and Gen Z bury the party."
Lincoln spoke of the American sacrifices in battle for the founding principles of this country. Today we can add to those sacrifices those of World Wars 1 and 2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War - all of which were (at least according to our leaders at the time) justified as defending the same principles. The Trump administration is now defiling all those American sacrifices by repudiating our precious founding principles. These traitors need to be thrown out!
Yes they do. And the R.I.C.O. laws applied to recover treble damages from the Trump Crime Syndicate. Yes, the whol rogue's gallery should impached, removed, disgraced, and jailed.
I understand that ‘the courts’ are BUSY…but after ‘postponing’ sentencing of “CONVICTED FELON > POTUS #45, Donald J. Trump < ‘OSTENSIVELY’ to not ‘influence’ (DUH!) the voting of the 2024 Election…these court decisions have not been RETURNED TO…
…WHY!
Is it because SENTENCING A CONVICTED FELON will point out that ‘apparently’ >Presidents < ARE ‘ABOVE THE LAW’?
🔥⚖️🔥 🤨
Or that SCOTUS justices 👀, are willing to shame themselves by ‘honouring’ a debt to DJT for their lifetime appointments❓ Trump is calling in that chip! 🤬
Hmmmm…they decided to not start a REVOLT over the ‘Birthright Citizenship’ issue, in lieu of some other ‘wishes’ of little Donie Trump’s - that the SCOTUS FAIRY has granted without so much as blinking.
Can you ‘hear’ the rest of the World LAUGHING when Trump says things like “Everybody knows…” or “That’s a fact…” or “Believe me…”
I deeply appreciate your sentiment, David. But you need to read about the history of the war in Vietnam. The sacrifices made by so many of our mostly young soldiers were certainly real, but the cause was not just - or even reasonable. That war did not support "the founding principles" of our country. The Vietnamese fought a war of national liberation against French colonialism that was very much like our Revolutionary War against the British. They made that point explicitly to our government when they came to us, asking for support. We rejected them, and when the French lost, we jumped into the breech. I recommend that you read A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan.
And then Elon Musk filtered in to declare that all billionaires were created equal and the rest should just buckle up and face the fact of indentured servitude for all time. And raise arms out front in glee.
In 1976, I took the train from CT to New York down to Battery Park to watch the parade of tall ships. Today I’ll use my press pass to set up under an awning with a local weekly and display my book for sale on the subject of the greatest Poop of the modern era. And I hope to get the hell out before the fireworks which I consider to be so terribly harmful to wildlife but we are too stupid or just plain selfish to comprehend.
BK...I covered the bicentennial Fourth for The Seattle Sun and as a UPI stringer. As I was leaving Green Lake Park at the end of the fireworks obnoxiousness, the seemingly solid meadow underfoot collapsed into a varmint-hole big enough to house a family of woodchucks, and I fell -- hard. Saved my cameras -- a pair of M Leicas and a Nikon F -- but the cave-in wrenched my left leg with the worst sprained ankle I've ever had, put me in a wheelchair and on crutches for nearly six weeks, and because you can't photograph in that condition, cost me a genuinely disastrous sum of anticipated income. The one element that makes the incident worth mentioning is something my lover said a few days later: "Has to be karma," she said; "what else for a descendant of British Loyalists?"
Wochucks is what the Algonquin called woodchucks. They are dear creatures to me. A few years ago, the two dug holes under my shed. I had hoped that would bear a litter and they did. I was delighted and I brought out apple chips and cabbage cuts 3x a day. I just didn’t want them to go exploring and cross the street. One baby suddenly died by the shed and I picked it up hoping to see a heart beat. I buried it. Then in short order the remaining three crossed the road and were all hit. I picked them all up and buried them together which is all I could do of course.
OMG…the ‘perfect’ pet for POTUS #47 > a burrowing WOODCHUCK!
Should the Ballroom-come-Bunker not be ready when the Iranian ninjas invade - 🥷🥷🥷 - the ‘pet’ woodchuck will dig Trump a HOLE big enough to hide in…um…did I say ARMY OF WOODCHUCKS ?… meant to! 😂
BTW Canada got all those pesky ‘Loyalists’…thanks USA.
If there is anyone left to remember the United States, history guarantees it will not be for its "contributions to the human spirit," but rather for its ecogenocidal contributions to the apocalypse: biological warfare; nukes; functioning as first the model and then the imposing force of global Nazism; re-igniting the patriarchy's wars of religion with modern technological omnipotence and thereby fulfilling the ultimate misogynistic goal of fatally poisoning our Mother Earth.
(What a bitter irony if the ChristoNazis pervert Lincoln's use of the phrase "under God" at Gettysburg into justification for their intended slave-nation theocracy.)
Very much agree, BK. Trouble is, the same censors who forcibly limit its use now -- these are the people who refuse to acknowledge that Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman are each knowingly malicious vectors of Nazism -- will always ensure what is exterminating our species and murdering our planet will never be properly named.
As are the Mormons, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, alt-right Christians, and many more. My opinion is that separation of church and state should be honored, or the churches and other places of worship should give up their tax-free status and pay taxes. Just think how flush with cash the U.S. Treasury would be. That influx of cash and if the billionaires were taxed at say, 75% we would be sitting pretty.
You left out the most direct contemporary echo of the Declaration and Lincoln: Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech:
“I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.””
Theodore Sorensen was such a phenomenal wordsmith, wasn’t he? Yes he was. Mamdani came pretty close yesterday and we can’t count out AOC who, unlike Mamdani (born in Uganda), could legally run for president someday.
*As an erstwhile Republican and confused conservative. I admire anyone who sticks to his or her beliefs -- especially when they are fresh ideas worth exploring.⚖️
WATCH: Episode #3 of the Netflix series “How To Become A Tyrant”, that chronicles the rise and rampage of Idi Amin in “Uganda”. The tactics Amin employed are no different to those Trump has already used - esp CONTROL OF THE PRESS (Episode #4), and when he needed to justify the mass murder of the military forces of the President he removed by COUP…he could not…so…started a “war’ with neighbouring Tansania, ostensively for “security” reasons, though no threat was ever made against Uganda by that country.
If the hairs on your arms don’t stand up while watching this series…you are DEAD…so cannot be expected to fight Trump’s dictatorial ‘Regime’.
and assassinated by the people against whose interests he went. considering what the US has done to too many OTHER countries, i'm thinking that THIS is the equality spoken about in those documents everyone loves waving around.
“The [Roman] Republic had in reality ceased to exist long before the establishment of the Empire. The interval was filled by ferocious, corrupt, and bloody factions. There was, indeed, a small but patriotic body of eminent individuals who struggled in vain to correct abuses and to restore the government to its . . . purity, and who sacrificed their lives in their endeavors to accomplish an object so virtuous and noble.”
--pf all people, John C. Calhoun, ‘A Disquisition on Government’; 1848.
yet how many(usu non-Americans) will remember invasion after invasion, coup after coup to make a few Americans more wealthy? and that's just in the last 80 years, which doesn't include all that happened before that. do so many of you have blinders on? or is it selective amnesia that happens on holiday celebrations? the hypocrisy is aSTOUNding.
Isaac, for us, the United States is like the uncle who drinks too much and beats his wife. You know what he does is wrong, but you love him anyway, and try to get him into rehab.
It is gobsmacking to read the words of President Grant, seeing how prescient he was. Ditto for the Calvin and Hobbes quote. Thank you for sharing those.
Zoran Mamdani did four things in his stellar speech for July 4 today:
He definitively changed the midterm contest from red vs. blue to working class vs, oligarchs
He re-anchored the American Dream in its universality across all the waves of immigrants in our history
He redefined the meaning of patriotism as believing in American values, and righteous dissent.
He outlined a progressive agenda with examples that struck an empathetic chord, and addressed the real needs of Americans without once using the word policy.
Mamdani gave the Democrats a gift, a pitch with a shot at uniting the deeply polarized electorate.
He did it all without mentioning Trump’s name once, starving the narcissist of attention.
He did it right. Georgia, the link doesn't work; I suppose I'll have to search the speech. From your description, it seems he said what I have known - others here too. I love that he didn't mention "it's name." It's been a constant annoyance for me to count how many times in this space, it's name is mentioned, when I've known full well that it was just the tool; The real blame lies with the leadership coalition that's been plotting all this for so many decades.
It will be interesting (and nerve wracking) to see if the dems adopt the gift; There are many I know who doubt they will.
Thank you for this, Lynell, MD & DC. (Because of how Substack positions dialogue, I didn't see your contribution until after my [unsuccessful] search.)
writing 'it's name' instead of Trump is as funny as putting an asterisk in place of a letter in a 'curse word'...i've never understood that mentality...and i'll leave it at this.
Everyone ‘poops’…so it is rather unfair to compare.
Those who can ‘fart on command’ could substitute that trick for Trump’s illustrious name, but, the ‘human-waste-of-space’ is already at the adolescent stage of fixation with poop & fart jokes - never having matured beyond them, and ‘😾grabbing’…🤬…so, more esoteric labels are required.
Besides…Trump thinks HIS ‘POTTY PRODUCTIONS’ are worthy of being ‘bonzed’ for sale! 💩
I've been patient with all your excrement talk, Bill but it is an insult to all we can learn from and do with this universally experienced result of being an eating organism (and another way all are created equal).
I clipped the article - buried in the back pages of the newspaper - of many years ago RE the ‘poo burgers’ created by some Japanese scientists, using ‘recycled human waste’ - I kid you not! And once the ‘test group’ got past the ‘idea’ of where the ‘protein’ came from…were able to enjoy these attempts at solving the ‘World Hunger’ issue.
It is certainly more ‘direct’ than my idea of ‘snail farming’ for quick protein production in times of famine (note that ESCARGO are quite the delicacy in some upscale restaurants!)
However, I doubt that the ‘Poo Burgers’ were anything more than a FAD.
Yes ma’am. Oh and btw, if what I say disturbs you, please just block me and you will never read any of my comments. It’s easy enough to do. I have blocked about 5 people and i have no idea if there are still here because they are perfectly blocked until i unblock them.
Here’s to remarkable bright leaders and their passion for our future. Also, to “we the patriots” of our civilization who realize that what we have gained is fleeting (especially on this precipice of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) and that our three-legged stool is in desperate need of shoring up. Onward!
The strife going on here in the U.S. presently is Bottom vs. Top. The following was published by the New York Times in late May:
The New York Times
Your comment has been approved!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with The New York Times community.
Richard | Florida
The Democrats need to promote a new New Deal, the form of government that created a huge Middle Class, which was destroyed, beginning with Reagan, by the ultra wealthy, stripping $39 trillion out of the economy. Frances Perkins, FDR's Sec. of Labor and the person most responsible for our having Social Security said it best: "The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life." It is the people who create wealth. If the U.S. population were only 3.4 million people, there might not be any billionaires. But the U.S. population is 340 million people, so we have 1100 billionaires. We need a redistribution plan in place, similar to what they have in the Scandinavian countries, i.e., Pragmatic Capitalism.
THIS is what patriotic, mature leadership looks and sounds like. Good medicine for an ailing nation.
My only regret while watching this incredibly intelligent and benevolent mayor was the realization that he was not born in the USA and therefore cannot be president.
But there are lots of other important jobs ahead for him.
Mamdani’s speech was hopeful. And it was truly wonderful to see the newly naturalized standing on both sides of his desk. He is a breath of fresh air and a welcoming voice in our fractured country. As we witness the abject corruption of our current president and his administration, Mamdani inspires us and encourages us to remember what we are celebrating this July 4. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Agreed — I saw Mamdani’s speech as a potential turning point in this struggle for democracy. There will be backlash, for sure, and I hope he and his family have a strong security team for protection from the fascist whites-only crowd. But for those with ears to hear, it was a symphony of love for our country.
That anyone does not miss his ( Mandami’s ) unique ability to pull together , accomplish real ‘ stuff’ in our largest city..me thinks far too many squander their/our vast US wealth in the lust for self gain..but we all know this/well, most anyhow ..to be the greatest obstacle …that being greed..by the selfish minority
Yes, wise to avert the red verses blue container especially since the splitting apart is relentless among people I listen to and read. I've never been so uncommitted to a political party. Transformative times, and so needed.
Thank you. Alas, ChristoNazified YouTube has already suppressed the video, nor is it -- at least anywhere I can find with a 10-minute search -- available anywhere else. (A perfect "celebration" of the ecogenocidal moral imbecility that Trump and his ChristoNazi majority have made the [real] meaning of his Unified Reich's "Independence.")
Just discovered it; thanks! (I'm more than a bit useless tonight: runaway inflation combined with a dental emergency has destroyed my finances, which in turn means I've had to spend the last two days recalculating my monthly budget and am now -- terrified by the possibility my math is wrong due to the dyslexic idiocy that is the [true] ruler of my life -- obsessed with finding someone to check my work.) (My normal helpers are all out of town.)
(Yes of course I'm using a tape-making electric calculator, but as a dyslexic I know with 100 percent certainty I will fuck up the result, typically by transpositions. Hence the admissions of my 2012 dyslexia essay: "Perpetually Fucked: Notes on the Inescapable Curse of Dyslexia." )
Appalling -- though not surprising -- that ever-more-ChristoNazified YouTube would censor something this important. (Dunno how they found the video on AP; when I googled Mamdani there -- I am an AP subscriber -- all I got was a link to a 2025 story about how he was infuriating the Regular Democrats.)
In his Mount Rushmore speech on July 3, all Trump could bleat in response to Mamdani's speech was that we would "never be a communist country." Red meat for the MAGA cult, because Trump equates socialism with communism and the media won't call him on it because it's clickbait.
Maybe Democrats need to stop running away from the word socialism and face it head-on. Socialism has two aspects historically: government ownership of the means of production (as in Trump's taking ownership stakes in companies like Intel), and workers securing the benefits of their labor (as in Social Security). Call it like it is. It is casting the election in terms of what's good for the oligarchs vs. what's good for the working class.
Those government stakes are huge opportunities for graft, insider trading, self-dealing, cronyism, guaranteed revenue streams, favoritism, sweetheart deals... Meanwhile, the social safety net side of socialism is being ripped out from under us with Social Security benefits needing to be cut in 6 years if the continuing transfer of wealth to the oligarchs through tax cuts to them continues. Add in cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, and higher premiums on the ACA against a backdrop of companies no longer providing pensions, and you have a really good story to tell voters about what is going wrong in America and right in most of the rest of the developed world.
We the people must defend democracy, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Heather is a national treasure, just like our founding fathers. Let’s keep protesting in the streets and singing the no kings anthem together: https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/no-kings-anthem
It doesn't have to be "either/or." It can be "both/and," and as inclusive a list as your imagination provides. I'm fighting for democracy, for compassion, for morals, for clean air and water, for my children and grandchildren, and for truth. I could add many more reasons why I, and countless others, are in this fight. I'm sure that you could, too.
Compassion and equality are kind of two angles on the same thing, and I think morals have to do with honoring that. Democracy appears to me to be governance that honors and protects equality.
Until the radical divide in resources is eliminated, this type of conflict will return. If the billionaire class is truly & fully eliminated, we would be well on our way. All corporations must have reserves, but the biggest ones (Amazon, Meta, etc) have far more than they need. Which is obvious with the trillions being thrown into the AI black hole.
Back in the day, there used to be a thing called "anti-trust". It was supposed to keep corporations from taking over. One of the reasons that T. Roosevelt's likeness was blasted into Mt. Rushmore was his pursuit of anti-trust.
When the Democrats have been in power they have pursued antitrust while the Republicans have done just the opposite. All of this boils down to what Ayn Rand said in Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The struggle goes on.
You're absolutely right, David. That means we will need a government with the integrity to stand up for the common good, against the interests of corporations with too-deep pockets.
What we need is to remember George Washington's warning about party politics as being harmful in and of itself. We must unite as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans.
Danielle -you are so correct to emphasize our need to unite first as Americans. The false king and those arsonist supporters who surround him incessantly use divisive and hatefully incendiary language to drive people and parties further apart into their separate camps, raising the level of anger ever closer towards spontaneous combustion.
It’s critically important to be aware of this manipulation and resist falling into the abyss of chaos that wishes to destroy us as a people.
Remember that old TV spy spoof of a show? Get Smart - The Enemy was Chaos and now it’s our enemy
Oh, I haven't thought about Get Smart in decades! Brings back wonderful memories of sitting in the living room with my family when I was little. Thank you for that lovely trip down memory lane, Agee!
And yes, it's so hard to resist falling into that trap. I constantly have to check myself, whenever I'm reading or writing anything, whether my reaction is because I've thought about something and truly believe it, or whether it's because I've been taught to react that way.
I'd love to get your feedback on the article series I've just finished posting this week, by the way. I feel that I have done a pretty good job at avoiding dogwhistles and jingoism in my appeal, but I'm always happiest when people who aren't me check my work. ❤️
You're right, Annabel. This is the last great battle. We are fighting it now, in July of 2026, because we can't wait even for November.
If you have things you're doing to fight back against this tyranny, I encourage you to pursue them with everything you've got! You would be extremely welcome in the UTW comments and to join our fight, of course, but it's not just one idea that's going to save our Republic—it's going to be all of us, putting all our mind and heart and soul into it!
Bite your tongue! Pray Trump doesn't order his propagandists to drop the "n"; Moron Nation is so subjugated by prideful ignorance, his voters will merely accept it as another of his historical "corrections."
Right... I mean we know agents flow through here on a regular basis, gathering intel to "spin." Who would it surprise to shortly see the mis-leadership turning that notion into propaganda 'gold' ?
Trump and Crew, the US Supreme Court, the Republicans, MAGA, and Industrialists are returning to the law of the jungle (not Rudyard Kipling's view of Nature's rules among animals for survival). Instead of equity, many have descended to the behaviors of selfish miscreants in this terrible moment of backsliding. Use of force of all kinds to come out on top of everyone else is the way insisted on by the people listed above. Empathy does not exist for them. All people but a few rich white elite men are nothing, nothing but NPCS to be used and killed as needed. As Dr. Cox Richardson points out, our Republic is for the Rule of Law as our founding generations began the work to establish that rule, that law. They did say all men are equal. The writers didn't mean all people, they meant all rich elite men, like the men of ancient Rome and Florence afterwards. But, we have tried to grow toward true equality, where we acknowledge that all people are born equal. We have been moving in the direction of equity since FDR. Trump et al don't want to go anywhere near that behavior. They want to use force against the entire world to be the only thing that matters. It will be a hard row to hoe to get back on the track of true equity--a track barely seen or experienced in the history of this race where force has been used throughout human history to keep all of us in what amounts to various degrees of slavery--a condition set at birth either to the very few rich white elite and anyone else who is not that--all those beneath it. Can we do it? I keep a copy of the Gettysburg Address on my living room wall to remind me everyday of the battles we have fought and must keep fighting to be free! It is with such examples as Lincoln, and our founding generations, that we now must hold fast with all the love and passion in our bodies!
America was not born perfect. It was born with a promise. On July 4, 1776, revolutionary leaders declared that human beings possess rights no king, government, or wealthy class can rightfully take away. They did not fully live up to those words. They denied the humanity of enslaved people, ignored Indigenous nations, and excluded women from political life. Yet the words they placed before the world were larger than their own limitations.
That is why the Declaration still matters. It gave America a moral compass, even when the nation wandered far from it. Lincoln understood this at Gettysburg. The Civil War was not only a battle over territory or power. It was a test of whether a nation built on equality could survive those who wanted hierarchy instead.
We face that test again. Whenever leaders claim that some people are more deserving of rights, dignity, safety, or citizenship than others, they rebel against the best meaning of America. Patriotism is not blind praise of the past. It is faithful devotion to the unfinished work of freedom.
To honor July Fourth is to defend democracy, expand liberty, protect the vulnerable, and insist that “all are created equal” must finally mean all.
That is the American promise. That is the work still before us.
Michael-Your focus on perfection vs. promise is important. In his autobiography Thomas Jefferson describes in detail the ideas and negotiations involved with developing the Declaration of Independence. While many aspects of independence were debated, among the most contentious was religion and slavery.
How ironic that we're still grappling with the role of religion and equality today. Jefferson's autobiography reveals that he was a thoughtful and empathetic man about these issues, but he went along with the prevailing attitudes saying, "As the sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the declaration as originally reported."
He noted that he struck out narratives about ending slavery and including Christianity practiced by the Church of England which he labeled as "spiritual tyranny". Jefferson contended that establishing independence based on "fair principles" would insure the Union would last. However he conceded that "Reason, justice, & equity never had weight enough on the face of the earth to govern the councils of men".
Jefferson also called for an "aristocracy of virtue and talent" instead of an aristocracy of wealth" because those privileged by wealth over generations would cause "more harm and danger, than benefit, to society" if we want "a well
ordered Republican".
Jefferson, along with Adams and Monroe, were presidents that died on July 4th.
Here we are 250 years after the declaration hoping that "reason, justice and equity" h he will one day prevail. Happy birthday America!
Your words bring to my mind the lines from "Flanders Fields:" "To you from failing hands we throw, the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not rest though poppies grow in Flanders Field." Far, far too much has been sacrificed for us to shrink away from the present task of defeating the white Christian Nationalism funded by the wealthy oligarchs and the religious zealots.
The more I read of and about Karl Marx, the more I believe that he was on to something. One area regards religion, which Marx saw as being "the opiate of the masses." I get it. To believe in the validity of anything religious, one must, of necessity, suppress critical thinking skills. Those people can then be led to do stupid things. I mean, they're really stupid to believe what is coming down from the Republican leadership (sic.)
HCR writes: " In a world that had been dominated by a small class of rich men. . ." We're back to ground zero. The U.S. is now an oligarchy. The wealthy are now manipulating the white Christian Nationalists, the bigoted racists, misogynists, homophobes and xenophobes to extract trillions of dollars out of the U.S. economy, destroying our democratic republic in the process.
AA you wrote "We hold these truths to be self-evident. that all men are created equal."
The power of this statement is aspirational. It points to a governing goal. Of a nation dedicated to a government of the people, by the people and FOR the people.
Moses did not reach the the promised land, but got his people to its doorstep. But crossing that threshold was up to them.
Dr Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. It is up to the American people to work toward realizing that dream.
Stephen Spielberg's "Lincoln" showed up on my YouTube TV previews. I started watching the beginning (again) where black Union Soldiers spoke with Lincoln and the scene ends with the one Soldier reciting the ending of the Gettysburg Address. Hearing that today and in our present political environment and on our 250th anniversary of independence, it made me sad. The end of this day can't go fast enough.
America’s founding ideals were never self-sustaining. Every generation has to decide whether to expand them or abandon them. That’s the responsibility we inherit.
Last night at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, Governor Josh Shapiro reminded MS NOW’s Jenn Psaki and her audience of the must important phrase associated with our Constitution’s adoption in 1787. When asked by a woman in the street when the Convention finally disbanded — a person not even then considered a citizen — ‘what sort of government do we have, Mr. Franklin?’ Philadelphia’s delegate, and 1 of only 5 also to have signed the original Declaration of Independence, responded,
"a form of government in which the power belongs to a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by the leaders and representatives elected by those citizens to govern according to law."
Merriam Webster
Then I looked up "democracy"
a
: a form of government in which the people elect representatives to make decisions, policies, laws, etc. according to law
Free and fair elections are a hallmark of American democracy.
: a form of government in which the people vote directly against or in favor of decisions, policies, laws, etc.
… in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.
—James Madison
Thank you for asking this. I never really sat down and thought about the difference between a Democracy and Republic.
Thank you, Barbara! I remember HCR explaining the Republic is an easier means to a democratic end; otherwise, in order to conduct the people's business, all 300+ million of us would have to gather together to debate and vote on every single thing...how unwieldly that would be!
I wish you a happy 4th of July. We’ll be at a parade and I get to attend two concerts: the annual 4th of July Concert of the Ashland City Band who celebrates their sesquicentennial this year, and the evening Pops Concert of the American Band College.
Historically there have been two forms of republics, 1. oligarchy in which (in nearly all of the literally hundreds of cases) power is shared among a very small minority, hundreds or at most thousands of men, with the bulk of the population repressed if need be by force; and 2. what are loosely called democracies or democratic republics, in which effective voting power is shared by most adult males, at least. Our problem is that the power of immense wealth combined with gerrymandering etc. is leading to an oligarchic situation where most votes have no effect.
We the people must defend democracy, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Heather is a national treasure, just like our founding fathers. Let’s keep protesting in the streets and singing the no kings anthem together: https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/no-kings-anthem
I would just add the proposition that the Confederacy must be dealt with and finally defeated in order to advance the “aspirational” ideals of the Constitution.
I agree. One of the things I’ve been thinking about today is that we chose reconciliation before accountability after the Civil War. The Union was preserved, but much of the Confederacy’s ideology was allowed to survive and evolve. I ended up writing more about that this morning because I think we’re still living with the consequences of that choice.
Such an important idea—that the U.S. is a work in progress. The Civil War was of course a monumental stress test for our nation and we are in the midst of another one, not an exaggeration to be described as an existential crisis. We can thank Donald Trump for exposing our most severe vulnerabilities and for drawing the battle lines. May Americans of good faith and good intentions embrace the challenge and embrace their patriotism to prevail over today’s confederacy and may we emerge stronger and even more committed to the American experiment in self governance.
gwHorn you said that Trump is "exposing our most severe vulnerabilities” — this is a very important insight. He sought those vulnerabilities, and exploited them. That is the man’s game plan in a nutshell. I think this reveals a lot about who he really is. Always the con man, always looking for the loophole through which to crawl. Always seeking to “get over” on someone less adroit at seeing the coming con.
The power of the Declaration was never that America immediately lived up to its ideals. Its power was that it created a standard against which every generation could measure itself. The real question is not whether a nation is perfect, but whether it keeps moving closer to the principles it claims to believe in.
And before that dream of a standard could manifest, a difficult, often brutal war for independence had to be won first.
A reminder that in that hard slog of a war, the Continental Army actually lost more battles than it won. General Washington bet that the superior forces he fought against would eventually exhaust themselves, and leave. He was proven right, at a great cost.
Like that army, our victories today against our domestic tyranny have not been uniformly won. Yet we fight out of necessity. Every No Kings demonstration, every by-election, every local and national venue and battlefield. We do so out of necessity, much the same way General Washington did centuries before, not yet knowing how or when the war will be won, or how costly the final tally.
But this is our time. During that town hall in Philadelphia last night, Governor Josh Shapiro reminded his audience…
“If you have ever wondered how you might have responded during the great Civil Rights battles of the 1960s, when you saw injustice taking place all around — well, now’s your chance to find out.”
He works and lives toward making the words he spoke into reality. He inspires us to join in! He can't accomplish his ideals, his vision, his hopes and dreams without support.
“But just as in the 1850s, we are now, once again, facing a rebellion against our founding principle as a few people seek to reshape America into a nation in which certain people are better than others.”
But hasn’t it always been that way? America is not the classless society we wish to believe; it has always been class-stratified, as we insist on equating wealth with success. I wrote a book about it: *Servants in the House of the Masters*. The social rules are reproduced with each generation in an endless loop, until we choose to change it.
....It's always been this way (since the beginning of time)...."until we CHOOSE to change it."
"Sharing is caring"...my fellow Americans.....it has never been an easy task. Day by day, using every opportunity that is possible within each of us, we can make a difference to someone, somewhere, at some time.
Let us look for those opportunities and not turn away. LET'S DO IT!!!! Each one of us.
Signe K-Acknowledging our true history only helps us to "perfect our union". Indeed there were many in power who wanted America to be a White nation and many who wanted Christianity to be a national religion.
The Civil War was initiated by a forceful group of people who wanted, not just to protect slavery based on white supremacy, but to expand it throughout new territory.
"We have never dreamed of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race...Ours, sir, is the government of the white race". -John C. Calhoun (House Representative, Senator, Secretary of State, Vice President, Secretary of War)
A cadre of statesmen including Patrick Henry and John Jay wanted to fund Christian teachers and institutions. "It is the duty of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers". -John Jay
We're still grappling with these issues. These times seem like Civil
War 2.0 which includes a whole new arsenal of weapons especially technology which allows propaganda to flourish and education to be diminished. We'll soon see which side wins this time.
We have seen the Promised Land. We have seen what equality looks like. Thanks to this racist, sexist, greedy and sleazy administration, we can see what it looks like to lose it. There are only a few more months before midterms that will determine our fate.
This almost brings me to tears every time I hear it. There's a fascinating story behind Gaye's performance, but for another day. I put this up there with Hendrix as the two best renditions of our national anthem. Marvin Gaye, what an enormous loss, gone so young and tragically.
“On July 2, 2026, Democratic staff on the House Natural Resources Committee published a report alleging that the President’s fundraisers redirected donations meant for 🇺🇸 America250, the congressionally chartered anniversary foundation, into 👺 Freedom 250, an entity the White House controls, by giving donors 👺 Freedom 250’s routing and account numbers.”
“Wire fraud is a federal crime, and only federal prosecutors can charge it. The President whose fundraising operation the report’s authors describe appoints those prosecutors. The report supplies the evidence, and the evidence needs a prosecutor the President cannot control and criminal prosecutions that cannot be pardoned by Trump.”
*** see link below for full article on Substack ***
[Christopher Armitage’s written] Investigation requests went to the District of Columbia and New York, and a Charter Cancellation Request went to Delaware. ✅ The White House controls none.
✅ HOW WE CAN HELP CHRISTOPHER:
He suggested- “send this to your U.S. House Representative and ask them to publicly support further investigation into the matter and to immediately refer discovery of potential violations of criminal statutes to the states that can proceed with their own investigations and prosecutions.”
###
‘We Are Submitting Criminal Referrals to State Attorneys General Over The Freedom 250 Charity Fraud Allegations’
The Existentialist Republic | Christopher Armitage
This weekend the Drey Dossier revealed her suspicions about Trumps obsession with the Reflecting Pool - and she found connecting documents being tied to water infrastructure into a data center bunker under the East Wing.
It's all a diversion from the Epstein files and the Elite oligarchs trying to take over our government.
⛔️ Trump is lying about the Reflecting Pool - Drey Dossier (7/3/26) *watch video*
(they won’t admit that Tech overbuilt Data Centers…)
“Mark Zuckerberg recently said that he is proactively confirming that if Meta does end up with overbuilt capacity and excess compute, the company will launch a cloud computing business to sell it to outside customers.
The Strategy: Meta is building a new business unit, sometimes referenced as Meta Compute, designed to monetize surplus computing infrastructure. [1, 2]
The Plan: Rather than letting expensive GPUs and data centers sit idle, Meta plans to rent out raw computing capacity or sell API access to its AI models to third parties. [1]
Zuckerberg's Stance: During a shareholder meeting, Zuckerberg stated that while Meta currently uses all the capacity it builds, selling off surplus compute is "definitely on the table" as an option and provides confidence in their massive infrastructure spending.”
JaKsaa, Zuckerberg is borrowing a business model from what has been going on for years in the telecommunications space. The "Big Three," AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon control bandwidths on the spectrum that exceed their needs, "just in case." They sell their excess bandwidth to mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) like Consumer Cellular, Mint Mobile and RedPocket. Each of the Big Three also own MVNOs, Cricket, Metro and Visible, respectively.
The difference is that excess bandwidth doesn't consume and pollute vast quantities of natural resources.
Paul Shattuck, whose Substack posts I follow, comments brilliantly on the advanced state of corruption in the US, & the strategies that neutralize reporting on this subject, Turning Crimes Into Weather:
“The Times published a big analysis of Trump’s wealth that used the word corruption nine times. Every single use pointed at another country. Putin’s Russia. Berlusconi’s Italy. Dictators in Nigeria and Malaysia. The president whose $2.2 billion grift occasioned the article never once received the word. There is a name for a government run as a private extraction scheme. The name is kleptocracy. I have yet to see a mainstream American outlet apply it to the man it describes.”
Progress, yes, but we are so corruptly far, far from where we were 250 years ago.
Look beyond criminal Donald at his far-right ideologues on what we used to call the Supreme Court. These six do more than bless his criminality. Worse, they declare immune from law all he does to steroid the big money and dark money all coincident with his dictator vanities and sex trafficking pals.
Four of the six justices this week plainly exhibited themselves illiterate to, contemptuous of our actual Constitution. Where Article 14 says at its outset that all born in the U.S. are thus citizens, those four openly scorn it – as the full ideologue cohort six for Donald two years earlier derided its insurrection clause.
The Constitution is a piece of writing. And our schools for decades now, up to the lordliest Ivy League, have reduced to but numbering (K-12 testing) and neutering (specialist silos) of all, only to buoy the rich by what this same court’s far right elevated in 2010 Citizens United.
No pieces of writing – no novels, memoirs, essay collections, histories, biographies, or the Constitution – compare to the big money, dark money whose corruptions fuel Donald, whose briberies corrupted justices rely on.
None here with Heather consciously cheers the rule of money. Several, however scorn, dismiss any public uses for arts. They dismiss them as too “intellectual” or “erudite,” or as nothing more than anyone’s private, consumerism, all public uses of humanities but marginal, showy ornamentalism.
So taught us the after-effects of 1971’s Powell memo through the 1970s.
So got us criminal Donald, his corrupted court, so far, far from 250 years ago.
“Several, however scorn, dismiss any public uses for arts. They dismiss them as too “intellectual” or “erudite,” or as nothing more than anyone’s private, consumerism…”
The usual stick-figured, one-dimensional, cartoonish gobbledegook-nonsense posted by the same person, obsessed with whatever he’s obsessed with…day after day, night after night. It never changes.
Nobody here fits your kindergarten caricature of a scorning Snidely Whiplash tying poor defenseless Nell (representing “the arts”) to the railroad tracks — no matter how much you want them to. And you sure as hell ain't no Dudley Do-Right on a Mountie suit galloping up to save her.
With the 6-3 high court Slaughter decision, it just got much worse. Nothing "cartoonish" about giving the criminal in the White House much more room for his criminality.
Sorry, it's not reciprocal. Prefer to venture a wider world for delights and ills whose artists and their skills go so far beyond the mere Dudley Do-Right, Rocky, and Bullwinkle of arrested imagination.
Because he was speaking about me, despite his Miss Piggy-style *moi?* affectations to the contrary.
If you just walk away from bullying without confronting it, you end up becoming an enabler, whether you wish it or not. So I choose to confront. It probably won’t change him, but it keeps me from being his silent enabler.
Thank you Heather, for reminding us of the great price so many have paid in the past to keep the promise of equality, justice, and freedom for all alive. I invite everyone to listen to the greatest musical tribute to this struggle I know: Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait”. Recently narrated by Hillary Clinton, in this version the narration is by the one and only James Earl Jones! 🎶😌👊🇺🇸
On this Independence Day, the 250th anniversary of this extraordinary document, we should be celebrating and solemnly commemorating all the sacrifices that have allowed USA's radical experiment to endure. Instead I weep for the travesty of an American government that holds the White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. I weep for my own shattered beliefs about our country and what it stood for, for all I was taught (born in 1952) about the Constitution, Bill of Rights, about civic responsibility and human dignity. All that is irreparably damaged IMHO and I can't see how this nightmare ends. Today I mourn.
We may not be able yet to see exactly “how this nightmare ends” but that doesn’t mean it won’t do so. While the damage is great, so is our resolve — yours too, I’m sure. Take heart. For the history of tyranny shows that it can all go south in a flash — with the tyrant himself the very last person on earth to figure it all out.
In 1986, nobody foresaw that the Soviet Union would choose a well-meaning, but largely inept General Secretary of the Communist Party to replace the animatronic corpses that had come to head the USSR before him. Within 3 years however, the spell would shatter and the outer layers of the Empire would simply melt away.
If you want to see what surprise and shock on the face of a cruel tyrant really look like, check out the video clips of Nicolae Ceausescu on his last day of power in Romania on December 23, 1989. It’s literally embedded on his — and his lovely, Lady Macbeth wife’s faces — before State TV stops the cameras. Within a day, both would resurface in a back alley somewhere, their corpses riddled with bullet holes.
No one wants that here, and the violence it spawned was an exception to all the rest, which truly did qualify as “velvet revolutions.” But it serves as proof of just how fast things can (and do) change.
Leslie, on this moment we pause and reflect. I sang a small refrain to myself knowing I was headed to the security of my encampment as I descended the mountain in winters darkness. “Oh I hate to go below, where the creeks and rivers flow. I want to stay way up high neath the stars in the sky. Oh I hate to go below.” It buoyed my spirits as I sank into the indistinct darkness of the ridge descending. Lion tracks told me I was being followed, measured and considered prey or foe. I set little backtracks to observe and see that shadow following me off the mountain. It wasn’t my imagination. Then I tracked the lion until I found him following my tracks. Something that simple threw his plan to the wind. Never did the lions and there were many, close. The bears were altogether unreasonable, but they too made their presence felt. The thing of it is we have nightmares that are real threats. They wake us sometimes. What I told those around me was to go back to sleep. We will deal with them when and if they rip their way into the tent. You would be surprised at how quickly these folks began to gain confidence and sleep through the night. We did in fact have bears rip their way into the tent, and after the excitement died down, some of them we ate. Now I was born in 51, and the vigor of my youth is waning. As my unknown exit plan approaches, I have learned the hard way to sleep through the night. I too find myself from time to time in that tent now, but I sleep pretty good knowing what comes in uninvited may be in fact pretty tasty.
Declaration of Independence is a reflection on the meaning of Independence Day and the enduring struggle to make the nation's founding ideals a reality.
Heather argues that while the Declaration's promise that "all men are created equal" originally excluded enslaved people, Indigenous peoples, women, and others, it was still a revolutionary statement for its time. It rejected the long-held belief that a person's rights and status should be determined by birth and instead asserted that equality is the foundation of legitimate government.
She traces how that ideal was challenged during the American Civil War, when Confederate leaders sought to build a society based on racial hierarchy. She highlights Abraham Lincoln's reminder in the Gettysburg Address that the nation was founded on the proposition of equality and that the Civil War tested whether a democracy built on that principle could survive.
Healther concludes that the United States faces a similar challenge today. She contends that some political forces are again attempting to create a society in which certain groups have greater rights and status than others, making the defense of equality as urgent now as it was in 1776 and 1863.
Her central message is that Independence Day is not only a celebration of America's founding but also a reminder that every generation has a responsibility to defend the ideals of equality, liberty, and government "of the people, by the people, for the people." She ends by suggesting that Lincoln's call for renewed devotion to those principles remains a fitting guide for Americans in 2026.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident. that all men are created equal." One of the greatest ideas ever.
Was this idea implemented in practice? In the beginning, not even close. But an idea of such magnitude cannot be suppressed and this country has always been aspirational. So, for over two hundred years, we got closer and closer to the ideal.
It has taken only ten years to slide back one hundred years.
Maybe this is the last great battle for what Joe Biden called the "soul of this country".
I am also reminded of President Lincoln's wise word or reconciliation: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds . . . ."
https://www.c-span.org/clip/joint-session-of-congress/user-clip-gerald-ford-on-the-united-states-2minvid/4679797 (President Ford; 2½min.vid.)
Yet we must keep in mind of President Grant ten years later: “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”
https://youtu.be/llslSCryzI8 (Jimmy Durante; 1min.vid.)
As well as the wariness of Calvin and Hobbes: “Isn’t it sad how some people’s grip on their lives is so precarious that they’ll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?”
https://youtu.be/qrNDwyj4u1w (President Roosevent; 2½min.vid.)
In the end, hopefully, we will come around to the vision of President Kennedy: “I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.”
For weaving so deftly together Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Calvin and Hobbes, FDR, and President Kennedy into a single, coherent and pleasing tapestry, I hereby award one golden laurel leaf and a field of well-deserved huzzahs all around… Hip Hip! 👏
Huzzah!
Wholeheartedly seconded. That was a beautiful weaving of history, Ned!
Thank you Danielle for your kindness. Now, you have me clushing.
Marshan Camese delivering a fiery speech at a Louisiana hearing over congressional redistricting:
"I have no doubt in my mind that the map is going to pass. If y’all can give us less than zero seats, you would do it. Y’all do this under the orders of somebody that said the civil rights act is harmful to White people. I believe the country as a whole is rebuking your party. Y’all are in a death spiral. That’s why y’all have to redistrict. That’s why y’all have to cheat. But the beautiful thing is, the children that y’all have made and the people that’s younger than y’all don’t support none of this racism that y’all want. The MAGA Party is the last breath of the Confederacy, and I’ll be happy to see Millennials and Gen Z bury the party."
Hear, here!
Lincoln spoke of the American sacrifices in battle for the founding principles of this country. Today we can add to those sacrifices those of World Wars 1 and 2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War - all of which were (at least according to our leaders at the time) justified as defending the same principles. The Trump administration is now defiling all those American sacrifices by repudiating our precious founding principles. These traitors need to be thrown out!
Yes they do. And the R.I.C.O. laws applied to recover treble damages from the Trump Crime Syndicate. Yes, the whol rogue's gallery should impached, removed, disgraced, and jailed.
I understand that ‘the courts’ are BUSY…but after ‘postponing’ sentencing of “CONVICTED FELON > POTUS #45, Donald J. Trump < ‘OSTENSIVELY’ to not ‘influence’ (DUH!) the voting of the 2024 Election…these court decisions have not been RETURNED TO…
…WHY!
Is it because SENTENCING A CONVICTED FELON will point out that ‘apparently’ >Presidents < ARE ‘ABOVE THE LAW’?
🔥⚖️🔥 🤨
Or that SCOTUS justices 👀, are willing to shame themselves by ‘honouring’ a debt to DJT for their lifetime appointments❓ Trump is calling in that chip! 🤬
Hmmmm…they decided to not start a REVOLT over the ‘Birthright Citizenship’ issue, in lieu of some other ‘wishes’ of little Donie Trump’s - that the SCOTUS FAIRY has granted without so much as blinking.
Can you ‘hear’ the rest of the World LAUGHING when Trump says things like “Everybody knows…” or “That’s a fact…” or “Believe me…”
Um…NO ‼️
I prefer public stocks all along the national mall. Then you can have at them.
Well, with the retro-racism going on, such stocks may fit right in.
I deeply appreciate your sentiment, David. But you need to read about the history of the war in Vietnam. The sacrifices made by so many of our mostly young soldiers were certainly real, but the cause was not just - or even reasonable. That war did not support "the founding principles" of our country. The Vietnamese fought a war of national liberation against French colonialism that was very much like our Revolutionary War against the British. They made that point explicitly to our government when they came to us, asking for support. We rejected them, and when the French lost, we jumped into the breech. I recommend that you read A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan.
You have overlooked: " . . . . (at least according to our leaders at the time) . . . ."
Thank you, It's Come to This, for complimenting me; now I am blushing!
great. one big circle jerk.
...not that there's anything wrong with that!
I concur!
huzzah indeed!
I absolutely agree!
And Jimmy Durante.
Exactly my reaction!
Such a great reminder. Thank you. Hope is a life line. Sometimes very difficult to hold on to...but we can make that last ditch effort to do so!
Hear, here!
And then Elon Musk filtered in to declare that all billionaires were created equal and the rest should just buckle up and face the fact of indentured servitude for all time. And raise arms out front in glee.
In 1976, I took the train from CT to New York down to Battery Park to watch the parade of tall ships. Today I’ll use my press pass to set up under an awning with a local weekly and display my book for sale on the subject of the greatest Poop of the modern era. And I hope to get the hell out before the fireworks which I consider to be so terribly harmful to wildlife but we are too stupid or just plain selfish to comprehend.
BK...I covered the bicentennial Fourth for The Seattle Sun and as a UPI stringer. As I was leaving Green Lake Park at the end of the fireworks obnoxiousness, the seemingly solid meadow underfoot collapsed into a varmint-hole big enough to house a family of woodchucks, and I fell -- hard. Saved my cameras -- a pair of M Leicas and a Nikon F -- but the cave-in wrenched my left leg with the worst sprained ankle I've ever had, put me in a wheelchair and on crutches for nearly six weeks, and because you can't photograph in that condition, cost me a genuinely disastrous sum of anticipated income. The one element that makes the incident worth mentioning is something my lover said a few days later: "Has to be karma," she said; "what else for a descendant of British Loyalists?"
Wochucks is what the Algonquin called woodchucks. They are dear creatures to me. A few years ago, the two dug holes under my shed. I had hoped that would bear a litter and they did. I was delighted and I brought out apple chips and cabbage cuts 3x a day. I just didn’t want them to go exploring and cross the street. One baby suddenly died by the shed and I picked it up hoping to see a heart beat. I buried it. Then in short order the remaining three crossed the road and were all hit. I picked them all up and buried them together which is all I could do of course.
OMG…the ‘perfect’ pet for POTUS #47 > a burrowing WOODCHUCK!
Should the Ballroom-come-Bunker not be ready when the Iranian ninjas invade - 🥷🥷🥷 - the ‘pet’ woodchuck will dig Trump a HOLE big enough to hide in…um…did I say ARMY OF WOODCHUCKS ?… meant to! 😂
BTW Canada got all those pesky ‘Loyalists’…thanks USA.
🇨🇦🤝🇺🇸
Thank you. I hope the book does well. The Bi-Centennial was anti-climactic; this time feels almost anti-social.
thank you, Bill.
Thankfully many people cannot afford fireworks this year - so there is this we can celebrate.
If there is anyone left to remember the United States, history guarantees it will not be for its "contributions to the human spirit," but rather for its ecogenocidal contributions to the apocalypse: biological warfare; nukes; functioning as first the model and then the imposing force of global Nazism; re-igniting the patriarchy's wars of religion with modern technological omnipotence and thereby fulfilling the ultimate misogynistic goal of fatally poisoning our Mother Earth.
(What a bitter irony if the ChristoNazis pervert Lincoln's use of the phrase "under God" at Gettysburg into justification for their intended slave-nation theocracy.)
Ya sa. I hope ChristoNazis is recognized as a new word in dictionaries.
Very much agree, BK. Trouble is, the same censors who forcibly limit its use now -- these are the people who refuse to acknowledge that Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman are each knowingly malicious vectors of Nazism -- will always ensure what is exterminating our species and murdering our planet will never be properly named.
It never occurred to me that it is not. Is Antifa, a made up group I'm trying to join, there?
Always refreshing to read of bit of optimism on a sunny morning.
Most of us could make a list of the good this country has done, maybe ten times as long as this, and without the gross exaggeration.
Happy Fourth to you too.
ok. THIS i agree with...but not at the exclusion of the truths i spoke.
".....and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”"
I wonder why Grant left out "greed".
President Grant was speaking out againt Catholic education being subsidized by tax-dollars.
And the Catholics are still trying for subsidies 150 years later.
As are the Mormons, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, alt-right Christians, and many more. My opinion is that separation of church and state should be honored, or the churches and other places of worship should give up their tax-free status and pay taxes. Just think how flush with cash the U.S. Treasury would be. That influx of cash and if the billionaires were taxed at say, 75% we would be sitting pretty.
Good question 🤷♂️
What a great post; thank you!
But all the ss's look like effs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOOQfGWt8Hc
Shamelessly stole this for linked-in.🤫
Your are welcome, Lygia.
From Lincoln to Calvin and Hobbes -- wonderful!
Thank you, Laurie!
You left out the most direct contemporary echo of the Declaration and Lincoln: Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech:
“I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.””
Good point. I am sure Frederick Douglas said some notably quotable statements., too.
Theodore Sorensen was such a phenomenal wordsmith, wasn’t he? Yes he was. Mamdani came pretty close yesterday and we can’t count out AOC who, unlike Mamdani (born in Uganda), could legally run for president someday.
*As an erstwhile Republican and confused conservative. I admire anyone who sticks to his or her beliefs -- especially when they are fresh ideas worth exploring.⚖️
WATCH: Episode #3 of the Netflix series “How To Become A Tyrant”, that chronicles the rise and rampage of Idi Amin in “Uganda”. The tactics Amin employed are no different to those Trump has already used - esp CONTROL OF THE PRESS (Episode #4), and when he needed to justify the mass murder of the military forces of the President he removed by COUP…he could not…so…started a “war’ with neighbouring Tansania, ostensively for “security” reasons, though no threat was ever made against Uganda by that country.
If the hairs on your arms don’t stand up while watching this series…you are DEAD…so cannot be expected to fight Trump’s dictatorial ‘Regime’.
Otherwise…get the lead out!
JFK was our last best chance to be a democratic republic. We are an empire.
and assassinated by the people against whose interests he went. considering what the US has done to too many OTHER countries, i'm thinking that THIS is the equality spoken about in those documents everyone loves waving around.
Anger is tempting, not helpful.
“The [Roman] Republic had in reality ceased to exist long before the establishment of the Empire. The interval was filled by ferocious, corrupt, and bloody factions. There was, indeed, a small but patriotic body of eminent individuals who struggled in vain to correct abuses and to restore the government to its . . . purity, and who sacrificed their lives in their endeavors to accomplish an object so virtuous and noble.”
--pf all people, John C. Calhoun, ‘A Disquisition on Government’; 1848.
yet how many(usu non-Americans) will remember invasion after invasion, coup after coup to make a few Americans more wealthy? and that's just in the last 80 years, which doesn't include all that happened before that. do so many of you have blinders on? or is it selective amnesia that happens on holiday celebrations? the hypocrisy is aSTOUNding.
Isaac, for us, the United States is like the uncle who drinks too much and beats his wife. You know what he does is wrong, but you love him anyway, and try to get him into rehab.
Now, that is a great analogy!💡
Hiicup.🤭
No. We see these things and protest against them, too. We love the country for its possibility.🗽
Ned, what a gem of thought you’ve woven here. BRAVO!!
Always cherish a compliment from my fave police-very-much-a-lady. Thank you, Ally.💖
<curtsies>
Happiness to you and your loved ones today.
Great set of quotes! Grant especially.
Thank you, Ma'am.
Thank you Ned for these words of inspiration. They give reason to celebrate!!
I only relay them to y'all since I need to re-play them in my heart, every day.
It is gobsmacking to read the words of President Grant, seeing how prescient he was. Ditto for the Calvin and Hobbes quote. Thank you for sharing those.
You are welcome, Ma'am.
Wouldn’t that just be more than wonderful…
And it still may yet be, just be, possible.
I have never heard the Grant quote. Thank you
You are welcome, Ma'am.
Brilliantly stated. Thank you!
You are welcome.
Zoran Mamdani did four things in his stellar speech for July 4 today:
He definitively changed the midterm contest from red vs. blue to working class vs, oligarchs
He re-anchored the American Dream in its universality across all the waves of immigrants in our history
He redefined the meaning of patriotism as believing in American values, and righteous dissent.
He outlined a progressive agenda with examples that struck an empathetic chord, and addressed the real needs of Americans without once using the word policy.
Mamdani gave the Democrats a gift, a pitch with a shot at uniting the deeply polarized electorate.
He did it all without mentioning Trump’s name once, starving the narcissist of attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JztQx56c2nA (currently working link, Thanks, Lynell)
He did it right. Georgia, the link doesn't work; I suppose I'll have to search the speech. From your description, it seems he said what I have known - others here too. I love that he didn't mention "it's name." It's been a constant annoyance for me to count how many times in this space, it's name is mentioned, when I've known full well that it was just the tool; The real blame lies with the leadership coalition that's been plotting all this for so many decades.
It will be interesting (and nerve wracking) to see if the dems adopt the gift; There are many I know who doubt they will.
Got this from AP, D4N, after being "FUBAR'd" numerous times. When I watched it yesterday, you could access it easily.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JztQx56c2nA
Thank you for the link, Lynell. It works!
Thank you for this, Lynell, MD & DC. (Because of how Substack positions dialogue, I didn't see your contribution until after my [unsuccessful] search.)
writing 'it's name' instead of Trump is as funny as putting an asterisk in place of a letter in a 'curse word'...i've never understood that mentality...and i'll leave it at this.
Do you discount the power of propaganda Isaac ? Having read you for some time, you cause me wonder.
It is now henceforth and forevermore, called Poop.
Husband of Ruth writing:
I’ll see your Poop, bill, and raise a Shitforbrains.
Tyranus-saw-us-coming Rex < 👑.
Everyone ‘poops’…so it is rather unfair to compare.
Those who can ‘fart on command’ could substitute that trick for Trump’s illustrious name, but, the ‘human-waste-of-space’ is already at the adolescent stage of fixation with poop & fart jokes - never having matured beyond them, and ‘😾grabbing’…🤬…so, more esoteric labels are required.
Besides…Trump thinks HIS ‘POTTY PRODUCTIONS’ are worthy of being ‘bonzed’ for sale! 💩
Joan is gonna get mad at you.
I've been patient with all your excrement talk, Bill but it is an insult to all we can learn from and do with this universally experienced result of being an eating organism (and another way all are created equal).
I clipped the article - buried in the back pages of the newspaper - of many years ago RE the ‘poo burgers’ created by some Japanese scientists, using ‘recycled human waste’ - I kid you not! And once the ‘test group’ got past the ‘idea’ of where the ‘protein’ came from…were able to enjoy these attempts at solving the ‘World Hunger’ issue.
It is certainly more ‘direct’ than my idea of ‘snail farming’ for quick protein production in times of famine (note that ESCARGO are quite the delicacy in some upscale restaurants!)
However, I doubt that the ‘Poo Burgers’ were anything more than a FAD.
DON’T TELL TRUMP!…Please!
Also, I’m debating marrying a robot. She is perfectly proportioned. And she doesn’t poop. I need to oil her up from time to time.
Yes ma’am. Oh and btw, if what I say disturbs you, please just block me and you will never read any of my comments. It’s easy enough to do. I have blocked about 5 people and i have no idea if there are still here because they are perfectly blocked until i unblock them.
Bill. there will never be here. ; - )
He's a wonderful Mayor -- you can feel the joy in the city these days (thanks to the Knicks also, of course!)
Mamdani had a humdinger of a speech after that, too!!
Joy
Here’s to remarkable bright leaders and their passion for our future. Also, to “we the patriots” of our civilization who realize that what we have gained is fleeting (especially on this precipice of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) and that our three-legged stool is in desperate need of shoring up. Onward!
Wonderfully summarized!
It is gonna spread like virus( round about if saying viral)…
The strife going on here in the U.S. presently is Bottom vs. Top. The following was published by the New York Times in late May:
The New York Times
Your comment has been approved!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with The New York Times community.
Richard | Florida
The Democrats need to promote a new New Deal, the form of government that created a huge Middle Class, which was destroyed, beginning with Reagan, by the ultra wealthy, stripping $39 trillion out of the economy. Frances Perkins, FDR's Sec. of Labor and the person most responsible for our having Social Security said it best: "The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life." It is the people who create wealth. If the U.S. population were only 3.4 million people, there might not be any billionaires. But the U.S. population is 340 million people, so we have 1100 billionaires. We need a redistribution plan in place, similar to what they have in the Scandinavian countries, i.e., Pragmatic Capitalism.
Just watched it. (I used Lynell's link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JztQx56c2nA). It was also the featured item on Jess Craven's Substack.
THIS is what patriotic, mature leadership looks and sounds like. Good medicine for an ailing nation.
My only regret while watching this incredibly intelligent and benevolent mayor was the realization that he was not born in the USA and therefore cannot be president.
But there are lots of other important jobs ahead for him.
Mamdani’s speech was hopeful. And it was truly wonderful to see the newly naturalized standing on both sides of his desk. He is a breath of fresh air and a welcoming voice in our fractured country. As we witness the abject corruption of our current president and his administration, Mamdani inspires us and encourages us to remember what we are celebrating this July 4. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The fact he cannot be president makes Mamdani even more impressive to me. He isn't going for the typical brass ring - the presidency.
Agreed — I saw Mamdani’s speech as a potential turning point in this struggle for democracy. There will be backlash, for sure, and I hope he and his family have a strong security team for protection from the fascist whites-only crowd. But for those with ears to hear, it was a symphony of love for our country.
That anyone does not miss his ( Mandami’s ) unique ability to pull together , accomplish real ‘ stuff’ in our largest city..me thinks far too many squander their/our vast US wealth in the lust for self gain..but we all know this/well, most anyhow ..to be the greatest obstacle …that being greed..by the selfish minority
<< sigh>>
Yes, wise to avert the red verses blue container especially since the splitting apart is relentless among people I listen to and read. I've never been so uncommitted to a political party. Transformative times, and so needed.
always true, Joan. there should ALways be room for improvement in our lives.
Thank you. Alas, ChristoNazified YouTube has already suppressed the video, nor is it -- at least anywhere I can find with a 10-minute search -- available anywhere else. (A perfect "celebration" of the ecogenocidal moral imbecility that Trump and his ChristoNazi majority have made the [real] meaning of his Unified Reich's "Independence.")
Loren, the link that Lynell posted works!
Or this: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office
Again thanks.
Just discovered it; thanks! (I'm more than a bit useless tonight: runaway inflation combined with a dental emergency has destroyed my finances, which in turn means I've had to spend the last two days recalculating my monthly budget and am now -- terrified by the possibility my math is wrong due to the dyslexic idiocy that is the [true] ruler of my life -- obsessed with finding someone to check my work.) (My normal helpers are all out of town.)
(Yes of course I'm using a tape-making electric calculator, but as a dyslexic I know with 100 percent certainty I will fuck up the result, typically by transpositions. Hence the admissions of my 2012 dyslexia essay: "Perpetually Fucked: Notes on the Inescapable Curse of Dyslexia." )
My husband was dyslexic -- it's one tough challenge!! Wishing you all the very best Loren!
Thank you for the good wishes. (On even my very best days, some irremediably ruinous dyslexic dysfunction will make me look like a low-grade moron.)
Appalling -- though not surprising -- that ever-more-ChristoNazified YouTube would censor something this important. (Dunno how they found the video on AP; when I googled Mamdani there -- I am an AP subscriber -- all I got was a link to a 2025 story about how he was infuriating the Regular Democrats.)
Please refrain from that name and call it President Poop.
In his Mount Rushmore speech on July 3, all Trump could bleat in response to Mamdani's speech was that we would "never be a communist country." Red meat for the MAGA cult, because Trump equates socialism with communism and the media won't call him on it because it's clickbait.
Maybe Democrats need to stop running away from the word socialism and face it head-on. Socialism has two aspects historically: government ownership of the means of production (as in Trump's taking ownership stakes in companies like Intel), and workers securing the benefits of their labor (as in Social Security). Call it like it is. It is casting the election in terms of what's good for the oligarchs vs. what's good for the working class.
Those government stakes are huge opportunities for graft, insider trading, self-dealing, cronyism, guaranteed revenue streams, favoritism, sweetheart deals... Meanwhile, the social safety net side of socialism is being ripped out from under us with Social Security benefits needing to be cut in 6 years if the continuing transfer of wealth to the oligarchs through tax cuts to them continues. Add in cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, and higher premiums on the ACA against a backdrop of companies no longer providing pensions, and you have a really good story to tell voters about what is going wrong in America and right in most of the rest of the developed world.
It was an excellent speech. Maybe one of the best, IMHO.
nice post, Georgia.
Try https://www.youtube.com/live/JztQx56c2nA?
We the people must defend democracy, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Heather is a national treasure, just like our founding fathers. Let’s keep protesting in the streets and singing the no kings anthem together: https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/no-kings-anthem
I am not fighting for Democracy. I am fighting for Compassion and Morals.
It doesn't have to be "either/or." It can be "both/and," and as inclusive a list as your imagination provides. I'm fighting for democracy, for compassion, for morals, for clean air and water, for my children and grandchildren, and for truth. I could add many more reasons why I, and countless others, are in this fight. I'm sure that you could, too.
Compassion and equality are kind of two angles on the same thing, and I think morals have to do with honoring that. Democracy appears to me to be governance that honors and protects equality.
sounds good/healthy to me, J L.
That, too.
yes
Until the radical divide in resources is eliminated, this type of conflict will return. If the billionaire class is truly & fully eliminated, we would be well on our way. All corporations must have reserves, but the biggest ones (Amazon, Meta, etc) have far more than they need. Which is obvious with the trillions being thrown into the AI black hole.
Back in the day, there used to be a thing called "anti-trust". It was supposed to keep corporations from taking over. One of the reasons that T. Roosevelt's likeness was blasted into Mt. Rushmore was his pursuit of anti-trust.
Lina Khan as Chair of the FTC under Biden is surely needed now but, in my opinion, will be welcomed back come 2029.
She and Jonathan Kanter at DOJ anti trust were a great collaborative team.
One can only hope!
When the Democrats have been in power they have pursued antitrust while the Republicans have done just the opposite. All of this boils down to what Ayn Rand said in Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The struggle goes on.
You're absolutely right, David. That means we will need a government with the integrity to stand up for the common good, against the interests of corporations with too-deep pockets.
What we need is to remember George Washington's warning about party politics as being harmful in and of itself. We must unite as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans.
Danielle -you are so correct to emphasize our need to unite first as Americans. The false king and those arsonist supporters who surround him incessantly use divisive and hatefully incendiary language to drive people and parties further apart into their separate camps, raising the level of anger ever closer towards spontaneous combustion.
It’s critically important to be aware of this manipulation and resist falling into the abyss of chaos that wishes to destroy us as a people.
Remember that old TV spy spoof of a show? Get Smart - The Enemy was Chaos and now it’s our enemy
Oh, I haven't thought about Get Smart in decades! Brings back wonderful memories of sitting in the living room with my family when I was little. Thank you for that lovely trip down memory lane, Agee!
And yes, it's so hard to resist falling into that trap. I constantly have to check myself, whenever I'm reading or writing anything, whether my reaction is because I've thought about something and truly believe it, or whether it's because I've been taught to react that way.
I'd love to get your feedback on the article series I've just finished posting this week, by the way. I feel that I have done a pretty good job at avoiding dogwhistles and jingoism in my appeal, but I'm always happiest when people who aren't me check my work. ❤️
You're right, Annabel. This is the last great battle. We are fighting it now, in July of 2026, because we can't wait even for November.
If you have things you're doing to fight back against this tyranny, I encourage you to pursue them with everything you've got! You would be extremely welcome in the UTW comments and to join our fight, of course, but it's not just one idea that's going to save our Republic—it's going to be all of us, putting all our mind and heart and soul into it!
I hope so!
I don't know if it will be the last battle - but it certainly is the next one...
Mamdani's speech is posted on the mayor's website: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office
You’re right Annabel, ideas can’t be killed, only executed in time if the intention is right and the will to do so is top notch.
that made me laugh, considering a different meaning of 'executed'. but i get what you're getting at.
thank you 🙏
Per Axios' News' 7/23 23 hours ago:
"Democrats plot subpoena storm over Trump's $2 billion gold rush".
First step take back the House of Representatives in November.
It seems to me that under Trump you are further away than ever.
It a mix certainly, but the war goes on and the danger dire.
And I think that danger is more than backsliding 100 years or even 250. Maybe back before the Magna Carta.
Just tell Trump supporters that it’s Magna Carta not MAGA Carta.
lol
Bite your tongue! Pray Trump doesn't order his propagandists to drop the "n"; Moron Nation is so subjugated by prideful ignorance, his voters will merely accept it as another of his historical "corrections."
Right... I mean we know agents flow through here on a regular basis, gathering intel to "spin." Who would it surprise to shortly see the mis-leadership turning that notion into propaganda 'gold' ?
Trump and Crew, the US Supreme Court, the Republicans, MAGA, and Industrialists are returning to the law of the jungle (not Rudyard Kipling's view of Nature's rules among animals for survival). Instead of equity, many have descended to the behaviors of selfish miscreants in this terrible moment of backsliding. Use of force of all kinds to come out on top of everyone else is the way insisted on by the people listed above. Empathy does not exist for them. All people but a few rich white elite men are nothing, nothing but NPCS to be used and killed as needed. As Dr. Cox Richardson points out, our Republic is for the Rule of Law as our founding generations began the work to establish that rule, that law. They did say all men are equal. The writers didn't mean all people, they meant all rich elite men, like the men of ancient Rome and Florence afterwards. But, we have tried to grow toward true equality, where we acknowledge that all people are born equal. We have been moving in the direction of equity since FDR. Trump et al don't want to go anywhere near that behavior. They want to use force against the entire world to be the only thing that matters. It will be a hard row to hoe to get back on the track of true equity--a track barely seen or experienced in the history of this race where force has been used throughout human history to keep all of us in what amounts to various degrees of slavery--a condition set at birth either to the very few rich white elite and anyone else who is not that--all those beneath it. Can we do it? I keep a copy of the Gettysburg Address on my living room wall to remind me everyday of the battles we have fought and must keep fighting to be free! It is with such examples as Lincoln, and our founding generations, that we now must hold fast with all the love and passion in our bodies!
i like what you're saying here, Teresa. thank you.
''The Promise Still Before Us''
America was not born perfect. It was born with a promise. On July 4, 1776, revolutionary leaders declared that human beings possess rights no king, government, or wealthy class can rightfully take away. They did not fully live up to those words. They denied the humanity of enslaved people, ignored Indigenous nations, and excluded women from political life. Yet the words they placed before the world were larger than their own limitations.
That is why the Declaration still matters. It gave America a moral compass, even when the nation wandered far from it. Lincoln understood this at Gettysburg. The Civil War was not only a battle over territory or power. It was a test of whether a nation built on equality could survive those who wanted hierarchy instead.
We face that test again. Whenever leaders claim that some people are more deserving of rights, dignity, safety, or citizenship than others, they rebel against the best meaning of America. Patriotism is not blind praise of the past. It is faithful devotion to the unfinished work of freedom.
To honor July Fourth is to defend democracy, expand liberty, protect the vulnerable, and insist that “all are created equal” must finally mean all.
That is the American promise. That is the work still before us.
Michael-Your focus on perfection vs. promise is important. In his autobiography Thomas Jefferson describes in detail the ideas and negotiations involved with developing the Declaration of Independence. While many aspects of independence were debated, among the most contentious was religion and slavery.
How ironic that we're still grappling with the role of religion and equality today. Jefferson's autobiography reveals that he was a thoughtful and empathetic man about these issues, but he went along with the prevailing attitudes saying, "As the sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the declaration as originally reported."
He noted that he struck out narratives about ending slavery and including Christianity practiced by the Church of England which he labeled as "spiritual tyranny". Jefferson contended that establishing independence based on "fair principles" would insure the Union would last. However he conceded that "Reason, justice, & equity never had weight enough on the face of the earth to govern the councils of men".
Jefferson also called for an "aristocracy of virtue and talent" instead of an aristocracy of wealth" because those privileged by wealth over generations would cause "more harm and danger, than benefit, to society" if we want "a well
ordered Republican".
Jefferson, along with Adams and Monroe, were presidents that died on July 4th.
Here we are 250 years after the declaration hoping that "reason, justice and equity" h he will one day prevail. Happy birthday America!
Your words bring to my mind the lines from "Flanders Fields:" "To you from failing hands we throw, the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not rest though poppies grow in Flanders Field." Far, far too much has been sacrificed for us to shrink away from the present task of defeating the white Christian Nationalism funded by the wealthy oligarchs and the religious zealots.
The more I read of and about Karl Marx, the more I believe that he was on to something. One area regards religion, which Marx saw as being "the opiate of the masses." I get it. To believe in the validity of anything religious, one must, of necessity, suppress critical thinking skills. Those people can then be led to do stupid things. I mean, they're really stupid to believe what is coming down from the Republican leadership (sic.)
HCR writes: " In a world that had been dominated by a small class of rich men. . ." We're back to ground zero. The U.S. is now an oligarchy. The wealthy are now manipulating the white Christian Nationalists, the bigoted racists, misogynists, homophobes and xenophobes to extract trillions of dollars out of the U.S. economy, destroying our democratic republic in the process.
AA you wrote "We hold these truths to be self-evident. that all men are created equal."
The power of this statement is aspirational. It points to a governing goal. Of a nation dedicated to a government of the people, by the people and FOR the people.
Moses did not reach the the promised land, but got his people to its doorstep. But crossing that threshold was up to them.
Dr Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. It is up to the American people to work toward realizing that dream.
Stephen Spielberg's "Lincoln" showed up on my YouTube TV previews. I started watching the beginning (again) where black Union Soldiers spoke with Lincoln and the scene ends with the one Soldier reciting the ending of the Gettysburg Address. Hearing that today and in our present political environment and on our 250th anniversary of independence, it made me sad. The end of this day can't go fast enough.
America’s founding ideals were never self-sustaining. Every generation has to decide whether to expand them or abandon them. That’s the responsibility we inherit.
Last night at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, Governor Josh Shapiro reminded MS NOW’s Jenn Psaki and her audience of the must important phrase associated with our Constitution’s adoption in 1787. When asked by a woman in the street when the Convention finally disbanded — a person not even then considered a citizen — ‘what sort of government do we have, Mr. Franklin?’ Philadelphia’s delegate, and 1 of only 5 also to have signed the original Declaration of Independence, responded,
“You have a republic, madam…if you can keep it.”
Pls define a republic.
Republic
"a form of government in which the power belongs to a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by the leaders and representatives elected by those citizens to govern according to law."
Merriam Webster
Then I looked up "democracy"
a
: a form of government in which the people elect representatives to make decisions, policies, laws, etc. according to law
Free and fair elections are a hallmark of American democracy.
—CISA.gov
called also representative democracy
b
: a form of government in which the people vote directly against or in favor of decisions, policies, laws, etc.
… in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.
—James Madison
Thank you for asking this. I never really sat down and thought about the difference between a Democracy and Republic.
Thank you, Barbara! I remember HCR explaining the Republic is an easier means to a democratic end; otherwise, in order to conduct the people's business, all 300+ million of us would have to gather together to debate and vote on every single thing...how unwieldly that would be!
Morning, Lynell!
I wish you a happy 4th of July. We’ll be at a parade and I get to attend two concerts: the annual 4th of July Concert of the Ashland City Band who celebrates their sesquicentennial this year, and the evening Pops Concert of the American Band College.
Historically there have been two forms of republics, 1. oligarchy in which (in nearly all of the literally hundreds of cases) power is shared among a very small minority, hundreds or at most thousands of men, with the bulk of the population repressed if need be by force; and 2. what are loosely called democracies or democratic republics, in which effective voting power is shared by most adult males, at least. Our problem is that the power of immense wealth combined with gerrymandering etc. is leading to an oligarchic situation where most votes have no effect.
Thank you for the extra explanation.
You have a mind of a scholarship. K-12 education must teach.
Res publica is roughly the “things/matters of the people”
Thank you for tracing to the origin.
Pls do go back to whatever dark, damp space you crawled out of. Thank you for your attention to this matter…😜
We the people must defend democracy, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Heather is a national treasure, just like our founding fathers. Let’s keep protesting in the streets and singing the no kings anthem together: https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/no-kings-anthem
Much agreed. "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work..."
I would just add the proposition that the Confederacy must be dealt with and finally defeated in order to advance the “aspirational” ideals of the Constitution.
I agree. One of the things I’ve been thinking about today is that we chose reconciliation before accountability after the Civil War. The Union was preserved, but much of the Confederacy’s ideology was allowed to survive and evolve. I ended up writing more about that this morning because I think we’re still living with the consequences of that choice.
Such an important idea—that the U.S. is a work in progress. The Civil War was of course a monumental stress test for our nation and we are in the midst of another one, not an exaggeration to be described as an existential crisis. We can thank Donald Trump for exposing our most severe vulnerabilities and for drawing the battle lines. May Americans of good faith and good intentions embrace the challenge and embrace their patriotism to prevail over today’s confederacy and may we emerge stronger and even more committed to the American experiment in self governance.
gwHorn you said that Trump is "exposing our most severe vulnerabilities” — this is a very important insight. He sought those vulnerabilities, and exploited them. That is the man’s game plan in a nutshell. I think this reveals a lot about who he really is. Always the con man, always looking for the loophole through which to crawl. Always seeking to “get over” on someone less adroit at seeing the coming con.
Exactly, Kelli. If those ideals you mention were self-sustaining, would we ever have been able to add those important amendments afterward?
Yes. The amendments are proof that freedom isn’t static. Every generation has been asked to move the promise closer to reality.
“ …that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—”
And there’s the rub. Under whose God and how free? We just can’t keep renewing our freedoms without doing the work it took to gain them.
SIGNING THEIR LIVES AWAY;
The fame and misfortune of the men who signed the declaration of independence. By Denise Kiernan and Joseph D’Agnese
Portrayed the men who pledged their lives to sign it and the time they lived in.
The original jacket of the book also unfolds as a full color reproduction
of the declaration of independence
"Every generation has to decide whether to expand them or abandon them." So well put Kelli. Thank you for making that point.
The power of the Declaration was never that America immediately lived up to its ideals. Its power was that it created a standard against which every generation could measure itself. The real question is not whether a nation is perfect, but whether it keeps moving closer to the principles it claims to believe in.
And before that dream of a standard could manifest, a difficult, often brutal war for independence had to be won first.
A reminder that in that hard slog of a war, the Continental Army actually lost more battles than it won. General Washington bet that the superior forces he fought against would eventually exhaust themselves, and leave. He was proven right, at a great cost.
Like that army, our victories today against our domestic tyranny have not been uniformly won. Yet we fight out of necessity. Every No Kings demonstration, every by-election, every local and national venue and battlefield. We do so out of necessity, much the same way General Washington did centuries before, not yet knowing how or when the war will be won, or how costly the final tally.
But this is our time. During that town hall in Philadelphia last night, Governor Josh Shapiro reminded his audience…
“If you have ever wondered how you might have responded during the great Civil Rights battles of the 1960s, when you saw injustice taking place all around — well, now’s your chance to find out.”
May each of us rise to the occasion.
"...in order to form a more perfect Union..."
That is such a beautiful and inspired phrase, "...in order to form a more perfect union..."
I saw a post which went something like, "Remember, the Republican Party doesn't own July 4, it owns January 6".
Ding! Ding! Ding!…We may have a winner here, folks.
Important words to live by indeed. Also here is a link to Mayor Mamdani’s inspiring speech from
Friday: https://www.youtube.com/live/XcxRUkGAM-w?si=DFri1IfjUYSkOsV2
Yes. It will take fourteen minutes of your time, and it is time exceedingly well spent.
MLRGRMI,
Mamdani is such a gift to each of us.
He works and lives toward making the words he spoke into reality. He inspires us to join in! He can't accomplish his ideals, his vision, his hopes and dreams without support.
Wow. Did you hear Mamdani's speech?
“But just as in the 1850s, we are now, once again, facing a rebellion against our founding principle as a few people seek to reshape America into a nation in which certain people are better than others.”
—-Heather Cox Richardson
Substack 7/3/26
But hasn’t it always been that way? America is not the classless society we wish to believe; it has always been class-stratified, as we insist on equating wealth with success. I wrote a book about it: *Servants in the House of the Masters*. The social rules are reproduced with each generation in an endless loop, until we choose to change it.
Signe K.,
....It's always been this way (since the beginning of time)...."until we CHOOSE to change it."
"Sharing is caring"...my fellow Americans.....it has never been an easy task. Day by day, using every opportunity that is possible within each of us, we can make a difference to someone, somewhere, at some time.
Let us look for those opportunities and not turn away. LET'S DO IT!!!! Each one of us.
Signe K-Acknowledging our true history only helps us to "perfect our union". Indeed there were many in power who wanted America to be a White nation and many who wanted Christianity to be a national religion.
The Civil War was initiated by a forceful group of people who wanted, not just to protect slavery based on white supremacy, but to expand it throughout new territory.
"We have never dreamed of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race...Ours, sir, is the government of the white race". -John C. Calhoun (House Representative, Senator, Secretary of State, Vice President, Secretary of War)
A cadre of statesmen including Patrick Henry and John Jay wanted to fund Christian teachers and institutions. "It is the duty of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers". -John Jay
We're still grappling with these issues. These times seem like Civil
War 2.0 which includes a whole new arsenal of weapons especially technology which allows propaganda to flourish and education to be diminished. We'll soon see which side wins this time.
We have seen the Promised Land. We have seen what equality looks like. Thanks to this racist, sexist, greedy and sleazy administration, we can see what it looks like to lose it. There are only a few more months before midterms that will determine our fate.
Let’s Roll!
🇺🇸 Terry Gross on NPR FreshAir podcast played this version of the Star Spangled Banner and it stopped me in my tracks…it’s such a good version:
💕 Marvin Gaye sings the American national anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game. Enjoy.
https://youtu.be/QRvVzaQ6i8A?is=9faUnEWwlqrsem2f
This almost brings me to tears every time I hear it. There's a fascinating story behind Gaye's performance, but for another day. I put this up there with Hendrix as the two best renditions of our national anthem. Marvin Gaye, what an enormous loss, gone so young and tragically.
I played the National Anthem today and sang the third verse which is my favorite when I don’t do all three.
Good work! I always “sing” a combination of verses when I play “America the Beautiful.”
Thanks for posting this link-it's good to hear a soulful rendition.
“On July 2, 2026, Democratic staff on the House Natural Resources Committee published a report alleging that the President’s fundraisers redirected donations meant for 🇺🇸 America250, the congressionally chartered anniversary foundation, into 👺 Freedom 250, an entity the White House controls, by giving donors 👺 Freedom 250’s routing and account numbers.”
“Wire fraud is a federal crime, and only federal prosecutors can charge it. The President whose fundraising operation the report’s authors describe appoints those prosecutors. The report supplies the evidence, and the evidence needs a prosecutor the President cannot control and criminal prosecutions that cannot be pardoned by Trump.”
*** see link below for full article on Substack ***
[Christopher Armitage’s written] Investigation requests went to the District of Columbia and New York, and a Charter Cancellation Request went to Delaware. ✅ The White House controls none.
✅ HOW WE CAN HELP CHRISTOPHER:
He suggested- “send this to your U.S. House Representative and ask them to publicly support further investigation into the matter and to immediately refer discovery of potential violations of criminal statutes to the states that can proceed with their own investigations and prosecutions.”
###
‘We Are Submitting Criminal Referrals to State Attorneys General Over The Freedom 250 Charity Fraud Allegations’
The Existentialist Republic | Christopher Armitage
Jul 03 2026 | Substack
https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/we-are-submitting-criminal-referrals?r=kxzps&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
.
I am hopeful not happy this fourth.
Sounds like you and I are of nearly the same minds Virginia.
This weekend the Drey Dossier revealed her suspicions about Trumps obsession with the Reflecting Pool - and she found connecting documents being tied to water infrastructure into a data center bunker under the East Wing.
It's all a diversion from the Epstein files and the Elite oligarchs trying to take over our government.
⛔️ Trump is lying about the Reflecting Pool - Drey Dossier (7/3/26) *watch video*
https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/trump-is-lying-about-the-reflecting?r=kxzps&utm_medium=ios
.
Holy Moly, JK. I could hardly follow the technical details but so onboard with this theory. Really. Thanks for sharing.
Oblique yet relevant evidence of ways in which the 1% with no consent of the impacted.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-your-ram-costs-400-more-than-last-year/
(they won’t admit that Tech overbuilt Data Centers…)
“Mark Zuckerberg recently said that he is proactively confirming that if Meta does end up with overbuilt capacity and excess compute, the company will launch a cloud computing business to sell it to outside customers.
The Strategy: Meta is building a new business unit, sometimes referenced as Meta Compute, designed to monetize surplus computing infrastructure. [1, 2]
The Plan: Rather than letting expensive GPUs and data centers sit idle, Meta plans to rent out raw computing capacity or sell API access to its AI models to third parties. [1]
Zuckerberg's Stance: During a shareholder meeting, Zuckerberg stated that while Meta currently uses all the capacity it builds, selling off surplus compute is "definitely on the table" as an option and provides confidence in their massive infrastructure spending.”
JaKsaa, Zuckerberg is borrowing a business model from what has been going on for years in the telecommunications space. The "Big Three," AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon control bandwidths on the spectrum that exceed their needs, "just in case." They sell their excess bandwidth to mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) like Consumer Cellular, Mint Mobile and RedPocket. Each of the Big Three also own MVNOs, Cricket, Metro and Visible, respectively.
The difference is that excess bandwidth doesn't consume and pollute vast quantities of natural resources.
Pipe liner indeed. Neuralink is a nightmare.
Paul Shattuck, whose Substack posts I follow, comments brilliantly on the advanced state of corruption in the US, & the strategies that neutralize reporting on this subject, Turning Crimes Into Weather:
“The Times published a big analysis of Trump’s wealth that used the word corruption nine times. Every single use pointed at another country. Putin’s Russia. Berlusconi’s Italy. Dictators in Nigeria and Malaysia. The president whose $2.2 billion grift occasioned the article never once received the word. There is a name for a government run as a private extraction scheme. The name is kleptocracy. I have yet to see a mainstream American outlet apply it to the man it describes.”
https://paultshattuck.substack.com/p/turning-crimes-into-weather?r=3bp80&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Progress, yes, but we are so corruptly far, far from where we were 250 years ago.
Look beyond criminal Donald at his far-right ideologues on what we used to call the Supreme Court. These six do more than bless his criminality. Worse, they declare immune from law all he does to steroid the big money and dark money all coincident with his dictator vanities and sex trafficking pals.
Four of the six justices this week plainly exhibited themselves illiterate to, contemptuous of our actual Constitution. Where Article 14 says at its outset that all born in the U.S. are thus citizens, those four openly scorn it – as the full ideologue cohort six for Donald two years earlier derided its insurrection clause.
The Constitution is a piece of writing. And our schools for decades now, up to the lordliest Ivy League, have reduced to but numbering (K-12 testing) and neutering (specialist silos) of all, only to buoy the rich by what this same court’s far right elevated in 2010 Citizens United.
No pieces of writing – no novels, memoirs, essay collections, histories, biographies, or the Constitution – compare to the big money, dark money whose corruptions fuel Donald, whose briberies corrupted justices rely on.
None here with Heather consciously cheers the rule of money. Several, however scorn, dismiss any public uses for arts. They dismiss them as too “intellectual” or “erudite,” or as nothing more than anyone’s private, consumerism, all public uses of humanities but marginal, showy ornamentalism.
So taught us the after-effects of 1971’s Powell memo through the 1970s.
So got us criminal Donald, his corrupted court, so far, far from 250 years ago.
“Several, however scorn, dismiss any public uses for arts. They dismiss them as too “intellectual” or “erudite,” or as nothing more than anyone’s private, consumerism…”
The usual stick-figured, one-dimensional, cartoonish gobbledegook-nonsense posted by the same person, obsessed with whatever he’s obsessed with…day after day, night after night. It never changes.
Nobody here fits your kindergarten caricature of a scorning Snidely Whiplash tying poor defenseless Nell (representing “the arts”) to the railroad tracks — no matter how much you want them to. And you sure as hell ain't no Dudley Do-Right on a Mountie suit galloping up to save her.
Rocky and Bullwinkle were at least funny…
"It never changes," ICTT?
With the 6-3 high court Slaughter decision, it just got much worse. Nothing "cartoonish" about giving the criminal in the White House much more room for his criminality.
I was talking about YOU, not the Court!…wasn’t that obvious to you?
I know, ICTT -- you've got a thing for me.
Sorry, it's not reciprocal. Prefer to venture a wider world for delights and ills whose artists and their skills go so far beyond the mere Dudley Do-Right, Rocky, and Bullwinkle of arrested imagination.
Why not just scroll on past?
Because he was speaking about me, despite his Miss Piggy-style *moi?* affectations to the contrary.
If you just walk away from bullying without confronting it, you end up becoming an enabler, whether you wish it or not. So I choose to confront. It probably won’t change him, but it keeps me from being his silent enabler.
Great Q, laurie.
I enjoy his wit. I love (often) his takedowns of pretension.
But he cannot imagine any serious, sincere application of humanities to our larger public issues.
Instead, he will at best apply childish references to show his refusal of adult literacy.
Our America drowns in this wholesale, institutionalized, normalized childishness.
Carry on, Phil. I heartily agree with you. “Nil illegitimi carborundum” …pardon my Latin, it’s been many years..but you get my drift.
I was fond of the Aesop's Fables as well!
Thank you Heather, for reminding us of the great price so many have paid in the past to keep the promise of equality, justice, and freedom for all alive. I invite everyone to listen to the greatest musical tribute to this struggle I know: Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait”. Recently narrated by Hillary Clinton, in this version the narration is by the one and only James Earl Jones! 🎶😌👊🇺🇸
https://youtu.be/e7_d_4QS9u4?is=PXlrjXGdspmUgL8i
On this Independence Day, the 250th anniversary of this extraordinary document, we should be celebrating and solemnly commemorating all the sacrifices that have allowed USA's radical experiment to endure. Instead I weep for the travesty of an American government that holds the White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. I weep for my own shattered beliefs about our country and what it stood for, for all I was taught (born in 1952) about the Constitution, Bill of Rights, about civic responsibility and human dignity. All that is irreparably damaged IMHO and I can't see how this nightmare ends. Today I mourn.
We may not be able yet to see exactly “how this nightmare ends” but that doesn’t mean it won’t do so. While the damage is great, so is our resolve — yours too, I’m sure. Take heart. For the history of tyranny shows that it can all go south in a flash — with the tyrant himself the very last person on earth to figure it all out.
In 1986, nobody foresaw that the Soviet Union would choose a well-meaning, but largely inept General Secretary of the Communist Party to replace the animatronic corpses that had come to head the USSR before him. Within 3 years however, the spell would shatter and the outer layers of the Empire would simply melt away.
If you want to see what surprise and shock on the face of a cruel tyrant really look like, check out the video clips of Nicolae Ceausescu on his last day of power in Romania on December 23, 1989. It’s literally embedded on his — and his lovely, Lady Macbeth wife’s faces — before State TV stops the cameras. Within a day, both would resurface in a back alley somewhere, their corpses riddled with bullet holes.
No one wants that here, and the violence it spawned was an exception to all the rest, which truly did qualify as “velvet revolutions.” But it serves as proof of just how fast things can (and do) change.
Leslie, on this moment we pause and reflect. I sang a small refrain to myself knowing I was headed to the security of my encampment as I descended the mountain in winters darkness. “Oh I hate to go below, where the creeks and rivers flow. I want to stay way up high neath the stars in the sky. Oh I hate to go below.” It buoyed my spirits as I sank into the indistinct darkness of the ridge descending. Lion tracks told me I was being followed, measured and considered prey or foe. I set little backtracks to observe and see that shadow following me off the mountain. It wasn’t my imagination. Then I tracked the lion until I found him following my tracks. Something that simple threw his plan to the wind. Never did the lions and there were many, close. The bears were altogether unreasonable, but they too made their presence felt. The thing of it is we have nightmares that are real threats. They wake us sometimes. What I told those around me was to go back to sleep. We will deal with them when and if they rip their way into the tent. You would be surprised at how quickly these folks began to gain confidence and sleep through the night. We did in fact have bears rip their way into the tent, and after the excitement died down, some of them we ate. Now I was born in 51, and the vigor of my youth is waning. As my unknown exit plan approaches, I have learned the hard way to sleep through the night. I too find myself from time to time in that tent now, but I sleep pretty good knowing what comes in uninvited may be in fact pretty tasty.
Yep. Different terrain and a different area but the same tent for myself. We get better at it. It doesn't seem so at first, but it does.
Declaration of Independence is a reflection on the meaning of Independence Day and the enduring struggle to make the nation's founding ideals a reality.
Heather argues that while the Declaration's promise that "all men are created equal" originally excluded enslaved people, Indigenous peoples, women, and others, it was still a revolutionary statement for its time. It rejected the long-held belief that a person's rights and status should be determined by birth and instead asserted that equality is the foundation of legitimate government.
She traces how that ideal was challenged during the American Civil War, when Confederate leaders sought to build a society based on racial hierarchy. She highlights Abraham Lincoln's reminder in the Gettysburg Address that the nation was founded on the proposition of equality and that the Civil War tested whether a democracy built on that principle could survive.
Healther concludes that the United States faces a similar challenge today. She contends that some political forces are again attempting to create a society in which certain groups have greater rights and status than others, making the defense of equality as urgent now as it was in 1776 and 1863.
Her central message is that Independence Day is not only a celebration of America's founding but also a reminder that every generation has a responsibility to defend the ideals of equality, liberty, and government "of the people, by the people, for the people." She ends by suggesting that Lincoln's call for renewed devotion to those principles remains a fitting guide for Americans in 2026.