This July Fourth, commit yourself to a new breath of freedom and hope

This country began in both light and dark.

It began in light for being the first nation to posit that ordinary people had the intellect and the wisdom to govern themselves, with no need for kings, tyrants, or an official church.

It began in darkness because of its genesis in the displacement and genocide of the native population, and the chattel enslavement of an entire race of people to fuel its economic rise.

But, throughout our history, fitfully, haltingly, with one step forward and two steps back and then a leap forward, it has not been the darkness which has defined this nation, but the light.

We are facing a dark time. We have a movement towards fascism which is making a final, last-gasp breath for power. If this republic falls to it, the world will suffer. It will not be a lasting thing; the darkness never is. But the recovery will be long, arduous, and filled with pain and death.

But, the future is not written. Nothing is foretold. Augury does not exist.

As much as the forces of darkness want to upend and destroy this most improbable of experiments in the organization of human affairs, the forces of light push back. They are not silent. They are not complacent. The do not accept anything as an unavoidable fate.

The past week has shown how frightened the forces of dark are. They are pulling out all of their tricks and subterfuges. They are abetted by a political press which has long eschewed its function in a democratic republic, which is to protect that democracy for which so many of bled and died. It instead seeks to aggrandize its own power, its own privilege, becoming an active player on one side, a side which favors its oligarch ownership. It has been a torrent of disinformation and malefaction, all to dispirit and disarm those who stand against the dark. And it will fail.

It will fail because we are the children of our ancestors. Of the ancestors who marched in Selma. Of the ancestors who were beaten up by police when they fought for decent working lives. Of our ancestors who brought women out of the home and into the world.

We are the children of those who fought the vile fascism which now threatens to overween the world. We are the children of those who escaped to this country from tyrannies and dictatorships around the world, and we will be damned if we let that tyranny take root here. My parents did not flee a communist caudillo only for their children and grandchildren to be enslaved under a fascist führer. Not only can that not happen; it will not happen.

We are the children of ancestors who strove to perfect an imperfect union. We are the children of the ancestors who fought at Gettysburg, at Belleau Wood. We are the children of the ancestors who liberated a world from the progenitors of today's fascism. There is no reason we can not be their equal. There is no reason we cannot exceed them.

This is our time. This is the moment where we draw a line in the earth and say, "No further." No pasaran. You shall not pass. Your time is done. You are simply too mired in your own hatreds and animus to realize that you are yesterday's people. You are the hollow men and women, shuffling along to destruction. We will not mourn you. We will not miss your absence.

We will not hang our flag upside down in distress. We shall fly it as it was meant to be flown: as a symbol of hope, of the potential of what a free people can accomplish. 

Freedom is never free. It must be secured by every generation. This is our task. This is our mission. And we will not fail in it.

A very happy Fourth of July, my friends. We have a world to save.

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