Today, we celebrate the 248th anniversary of the independence of the United States of America.

It is July 4th, 2024, 123 days to go until Election Day, and 46 until the Democratic National Convention.

This is the morning.

Today, we celebrate as Americans the day that ruptured history, that began a new epoch.

When the white flag flew over the British lines at Yorktown, the young major general commanding

American forces, Gilbert Dumontier, the Marquis de Lafayette remarked, humanity has its victory.

Liberty has its country. Lafayette prophesied that the New World, the United States, would be the salvation of the old.

And it was, as American forces stormed the beaches of France and liberated Europe from the darkness of fascism in the middle years of the 20th century. The July 4th independence of the United

States of America gave rise to the most powerful nation the world has ever known. We are a nation

today of 330 million people. Since our beginning, there have only ever been 700 million

of us. At that beginning, there were 3 million Americans, 3 million who rebelled against the

King, 13 states on the eastern seaboard of the United States that would go on to become what Churchill called

the Great Republic. We are the only country made up of all of the peoples of the world,

where every known language is commonly spoken every day. Our nation, despite all of its flaws and manifest hypocrisies,

has done more good in the world than all of the other nations put together since the beginning

of time if the measurement is liberation, clothing, feeding, curing, the record of the United States and the improvement of humanity is clear.

And our country over time has moved closer to its goals, to its charter. Today, it is true in America

that all of us are created equal, endowed by a creator with

inalienable rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Think about it.

How radical a concept that the purpose of life, of government, is to secure the pursuit of happiness, not the service of a king

or a dictator. This is a nation that places the citizen at the center, and we have rights and freedoms

that have been handed down to us for us to be trustees of for every future American not yet born. We are obligated to hand

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