Today, my fellow Democrats and fellow Americans, we honor the greatest nation on the planet. Let us not forget what happened on this day, July 4th, hundreds of years ago – the first democratic republic in the world sprung up from the chains of tyranny under the banner of guaranteeing the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to all of mankind. This was perhaps the most titanic shift in the development of society by humans themselves.
For the first time, all humans were declared equal. Whether by race, gender, or creed, all people on this Earth were declared everlasting brothers under the grace of God. For the first time, the individual human life was seen as what it truly was – the most important and golden thing on this planet, and deserving of the rights to a free and prosperous life, where he or she could do with it as he or she wanted too. No longer were bloodlines and ancestry the determinations of one’s life, but people were free and able to carve their own destinies. We Americans recognized what we had done on that day – that we had transcended above history, above savagery, and above evil. As John Adams said of that day, “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.”
Since those faithful words by John Adams we have progressed far indeed. We rose as one people, not reliant on any other nation or group or people of the world – we were self-sufficient, and slowly built up our foundations of government and found ourselves. Then, finally, when the world begun collapsing on itself, when the corrupt and broken nations of Europe unleashed a firestorm of death and brutality that threatened to destroy civilization twice, America was ready, the torch of liberty in hand. Under the leadership of the great American Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, along with all those who followed and preceded them, we shown the flame of liberty into the darkest corners of the Earth. All the evils of mankind, incarnated into the forces of Nazism and Communism, growled as they saw mankind’s last stand forment itself on the shores of America. As the rest of the world fell to darkness, we stood strong, our hearts reaching out to God and clinging to the American way of life and society. Our people, volunteered themselves en masse, ready to willingly and unhesitingly sacrifice themselves to defend the “last best hope of mankind”, as Lincoln called America. Our brave men and women then stormed across the planet, stars and stripes in hand, through the fields of France, across the hills of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, through the plains of China, the deserts of Arabia, the mountains of the Caucasus, pushing back the evil back to the hell from which it came. Then we faced the beast in its lair itself – but we stood strong, we marched through its camps of death, its prisons of misery, and broke the chains, freed the imprisoned, and slew the beast. We had liberated the Earth – we saved mankind from falling into a darkness from which it could have never recovered – we saved all of civilization itself.
That is what we honor today. The journey that began over 200 years ago and that continues until this very day, and eternally into the future. The defense of democracy, truth, honor, life, liberty, and humanity. Let us today honor our great nation – and dedicate ourselves to fighting for its prosperity and mission in the future.
