Happy 250th Birthday to a nation like no other.
America is exceptional because it is the exception — a place where a particular set of ideas, a particular set of values, and a particular set of customs, formulated by a particular set of men in a particular place at a particular time created a covenant nation.
That the covenant has extended to men with different beliefs and histories — first to Catholics and to Jews, Irish and German and Italian, freed slaves and others, so long as they would embrace the ideas and values and customs and swear fealty to the same in the form of our Constitution — has not been a weakness but a strength, as has been borne out by the incredible rise of the new nation to heights previously unknown in human history.
The American Experiment, the “experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people,” as George Washington called it, is always just that. It’s never fully proven. It is a promise made by the republic to us and by us to the republic and to each other.
It is a republic, if we can keep it. A republic conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition 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.
The promise is ours to keep or to discard at our great peril.
The promise has been abused, both by the state and by ourselves and our neighbors.
It has been strained and tested.
It is being strained and tested now.
The ideas and values and customs are often attacked or co-opted by novel philosophies, or overwhelmed by uncontrolled and unassimilated migration, or hollowed out by our lack of faithfulness to them and to the Creator who is their author.
The covenant isn’t fragile. It has endured in the face of many faithless acts over two and a half centuries.
But nor is it, like the New Covenant of our Salvation, secured by the blood of Christ.
No. It is secured only by our own blood — and some incalculable measure of God’s grace.
It is ours only so long as we fight for it —against all enemies foreign and domestic — even the chief domestic enemy, our own faithlessness and fear and anger and despair.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. The American experiment should not be abandoned simply because it is showing wear. So beautiful, if a bit bruised, a reed we should not break.
To do so would be to forsake the blood of our fathers, and to flaunt the greatest blessing of God to man in almost half a millennium.
Today, let us renew the covenant. Let us carry on the great experiment, and let us embrace the exception so that it may remain exceptional.
Let us live out the great creed handed to us by those particular men and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
God bless America and help us to keep her.
@TheCriticalDri2@KurtSchlichter Maybe in a decade when your government is taken over by jihadis instead of the useless socialist cucks it is run by now. Then the UK will be a threat instead of a cautionary tale
I was saved by repentance and accepting Jesus Christ as your savior, buying and running the restaurant i worked at for years, and became a member of a wonderful faithful church in the past year, so I'm gonna be wearing a @WassonWatch this July 4th. God bless America ✝️🇺🇸
You've probably heard this before, but it's always worth repeating. Something extremely cool about the "Star-spangled Banner," the American national anthem, is that it asks a question, and it's the question at the heart of everything in the American worldview.
"Oh, say, can you see
By the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight's last gleaming..."
So the anthem begins with a question and a scene. One man, a patriot, is asking another man, another patriot, "can you see it?" at sunrise after a long, dangerous night.
The "it" in question is going to be revealed to be the flag, our "star-spangled banner," which they had last fully recognized and honored as the sun set, daylight failed, and night crept over them the evening before.
Can you see it? Say! Can you see it?!
IS IT STILL THERE?!
"Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched
Were so gallantly streaming..."
Here we find that the "it" is in fact the flag, our star-spangled banner, and we learn why the question is being asked.
The flag is described as having flown and streamed gallantly over ramparts of war through a perilous fight. All could have been lost. The flag, and even the fledgling country for which it stands, one nation under God and indivisible.
Say! Can you see it? Now that the light is back?
IS IT STILL THERE?!
"--And the rockets' red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there!--"
They could see it through the battle in the light of the rockets and bombs that threatened them, here and there in quick glimpses. But it was still there throughout! But now? At dawn?
Say! Can you see?
IS IT STILL THERE?!
"Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free
And the home of the brave?"
The urgency is palpable with every refrain. They have to know. It's the first thing they must know as the sun begins to light the sky, even before it rises.
IS IT STILL THERE?!
Say! Say!! Can you see? Can you see it?!
At the heart of every American beats the fundamental truth and reality that what we have here is precious, that it's worth fighting for, to the death if necessary, and that it's fragile. That at any moment it can be lost. That we have to remember to look for it because last night might have been the night in which it failed.
Every day, every year, every generation.
The American fight for freedom, to live in self-governance within ordered liberty, is ongoing and never-ending. The price of the land of the free is that it must be the home of the brave. We have to defend it, defend it, and defend it again, against all enemies foreign and domestic, because what we have is amazing, rare, fragile, and worth every cent of treasure, every drop of blood, and every risk to our sacred honor to protect it.
Our anthem is not a declaration. It is not a proclamation. It is not a statement.
It is a question.
Every time we sing our wholly unique national anthem, we as American ask the question again. IS IT STILL THERE?! Are we still America? Does that star-spangled banner yet wave?
Because it's a question, the answer is not known. It is not a guarantee. It cannot be taken for granted and isn't. And what an honor to ask and take up our part in the story, in the American Experiment, in the greatest country the world has ever known.
For tonight, the last night of our first 250 years, as the sun gave way to twilight's last gleaming and darkness overtook our land once again, the answer was still yes. We can see it even tonight in the red glare of rockets, with small bombs bursting in air, fill the sky with the noble tribute of fireworks once again.
And we all ask ourselves, will it still be flying at dawn?
This is what it means to be an American.
Happy 250th, America! Now for many happy returns!
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
There was a time when the ideological lines were clear: Islamic jihad represented terrorists, and the left stood for secularism, feminism, and liberal democracy.
But today those lines have been obliterated.
The Islamic movements have embedded itself within the American left, not by sharing its values, but by exploiting its weaknesses.
At the center of this manipulation is the issue of Israel.
For the left, Israel has become a proxy for every postcolonial grievance: the “white settler,” the “imperialist outpost,” the supposed last bastion of Western oppression.
For Islam, the hatred of Israel is older, deeper, and more theologically rooted.
But Muslims know they can’t sell that openly in the American public square.
So instead, they wrap their agenda in the language of justice, decolonization, and civil rights.
They present themselves as just another oppressed minority struggling for liberation, knowing the left will embrace them as ideological kin.
And it works, because the left, obsessed with identity politics and historical guilt, has lost the ability to see when it’s being played.
Islamic groups flood the American public square with slogans about “resistance,” “apartheid,” and “liberation.”
But behind that façade lies a very different agenda, rooted in jihad theology, Islamic supremacy, and the long-term goal of dismantling both Israel and the foundations of Western civilization.
This alliance is deeply cynical. While the left parades rainbow flags and demands transgender inclusion, it turns a blind eye to the very ideology it empowers, an ideology that throw gays off rooftops, veil women, and silence dissent.
Facts don’t matter when grievance is the currency and victimhood is the path to power.
Islamic movements have learned the language of the left, colonialism, white supremacy, intersectionality, and speaks it fluently.
But it is a Trojan horse.
Inside the language of justice is a theology of domination. Inside the calls for equality is a scriptural command for conquest. And behind the tears for Palestine is a hatred not just for Israel, but for the Judeo-Christian West itself.
@CBHeresy@ConceptualJames I think it's just as likely he starts "asking": "why wouldn't people just sit out the midterms in protest? ". A 3rd party would have normies becoming aware of the evil and lies he's been spewing.
@entropyrian Doing a non violent protest on camera knowing dire consequences might be coming is a big step below in real world courage from "let's go armed with homemade melee weapons into a gun fight to a fortified building ", but I do see your point.
@EFischberger I'm praying trump is like 6d chess ING this whole deal thing and hanging Vance out to dry and the US ends up dropping more freedom munitions to finish the regime in Iran soon. Vance is 10/10 in doing media appearances, but has proved himself to not be the one to succeed Trump.
Muslims who keep repeating that Islam will take over the world aren’t “Islamists”, they don’t even know what an Islamist is, and they don’t think of themselves as plotting against the country they live in.
For Islam to rule the world, from a Muslim’s perspective, is like Christ ruling the world from a Christian’s, or the Moshiach ruling from a Jew’s.
It’s a good thing. It’s the inevitable, ultimate end, the rule of the Creator over His creation.
The difference is this.
A Christian who longs for Christ to reign, or a Jew who awaits the messianic age, doesn’t believe he has to conquer the world to install his messianic figure.
He believes that figure will do it himself, ushering in a world of justice.
Muslims, however, believe they themselves must subjugate the world to Allah’s rule, by any means necessary.
And it’s that Machiavellian logic, where the end sanctifies the method, that turns violence, manipulation, and exploitation into justified tools.