4th of July Address

Thank you so much for being here. I have, for many years, wanted to give talks on July 4th. I'm a little bit of a romantic about American democracy and American history, and I’ve often said that instead of this being a mindless holiday, it should be a mindful holiday. The second president of the United States, John Adams, said that he hoped that every July 4th, Americans would revisit our first principles, and I want to talk to you about, today, about what it means to have a mindful holiday on July 4th and what it means to revisit our first principles.

First of all, we want to do a little bit of touching up on our American history. In a way, this entire thing is about touching up on our American history. A lot of things that we either learned and we don't remember, or we're not so totally sure we learned. You know, I went into a secondhand book store a few months ago and I saw a book called American History for Dummies. And I think a lot of us, apparently, with everything going on over the last couple years, particularly, I think a lot of people are going, "I think it’s not the way it's supposed to be!" about certain things and kind of go google and find out more about how things should be. So let's do a little bit of brushing up on American history.

We all know that the Declaration of Independence was signed, supposedly was actually signed originally on July 2nd, 1776, but there was something with the printer, etcetera, so the official day was July 4th, 1776. Now, there are two basic documents that form the core, the sort of skeleton of our system, and that is the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, which was written years later. It's interesting, because what the Declaration of Independence did, is it said "this is our 'no' – we will no longer be that, we will no longer be part of Great Britain," and with our Constitution, we said, "we will be that." But both are extremely important. The Constitution has to do with the mechanics of how we would govern ourselves, but the Declaration of Independence is our philosophical basis. With our Declaration of Independence, we were telling the world why.

And our why is as important as our what. And that's really what's happened in American politics, it’s become all about the what, and one of the reasons we have so much conflict around the what is because we have forgotten too often as Americans the why.

So, when John Adams said that he hoped we would revisit first principles every July 4th, I want to start by reading you just a couple of paragraphs that are the beginning of the Declaration of Independence. We’ve all heard these words, but, you know, in the Jewish religion it says that every generation must rediscover God for itself. And as it turns out and is now, I think, abundantly clear, every generation of Americans have to re-bond with these first principles. That's what’s happened in our country. We have lost our psychological and our emotional connections to those principles on which we purport to stand, and that's very dangerous. That's why John Adams said we need to revisit them. And we can't just revisit them from the neck up. We have to really revisit them, because otherwise what happens, is that these principles become inscribed on marble walls somewhere. And they are written in parchment, you know, on parchment, and they’re put behind glass, and when our children are in the eighth grade, we send our kids to go visit Washington so that we can say that they saw that document.

But that's not enough. If those principles are not inscribed on our hearts, they lose their moral force. They lose their relevancy, because there're on marble or there're on paper, but there not inside us, and that makes us a generation easy to play. That makes us a generation easy to fool. That makes us a generation easy to distract. So let's revisit them, and let's revisit them not just intellectually, but let's revisit them emotionally and let's revisit them psychologically.

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." So, in other words, the founders were saying, "OK, we're announcing to the world what we're doing here and why we're doing it."

"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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." So that's how it– [cheering and applause] I know! Good on you, Thomas Jefferson! You know, when John Adams, supposedly, is to have said to Thomas Jefferson, "Thomas, you'll write it," about the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson said, "why do I have to write it?," and John Adams said, "because you're the one who can write." And I think history certainly proved that he was the one who could write.

So, with the Declaration of Independence, they gave America our mission statement. And what has happened is that we've forgotten, in too many ways and too often, what our mission statement is. Our principles are quite simple really, but they're radical. They were radical in 1776 and they're radical today. That all men, which we now realize means all men and women, are created equal; that we were given by our creator certain inalienable rights of life and of liberty and of the pursuit of happiness; and that governments are instituted among men to secure those rights. That's it! And later, during the civil war, Abraham Lincoln, in referring to that document and referring to the foundation of this country: "four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal." And Abraham Lincoln said that all of the men who had died at Gettysburg had died, he said, "so that a government of the people and by the people and for the people would not perish from the Earth." And I want to talk to you particularly today, because I think in our generation, we have to ask ourselves: in many ways, is it not perishing?

Now, this mission statement, that all men are created equal – let's go back to the beginning and talk about why that was so radical at the time. Before the United States was founded, the entirety of western civilization was ruled by a monarchical and aristocratic system. A monarchical and aristocratic system was based on the idea that a few people got to be the winners. And that was the social contract, and that was considered natural – a few people. The aristocracy, there was the king or the queen, and then the king or the queen's rich friends. And this group of rich people, this upper class, they were entitled. They were entitled to the land, they were entitled to wealth creation, they were entitled to education, and if you weren't born into that class, you were condemned, in a way, on a social level, to be, not a slave, not a serf, but not much higher than a serf. Your joy in life was limited, your life circumstances were limited, by the fact that you were not of the upper classes. With the founding of this country, with the statement in our Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, that all are created equal, and that God gave all of us life and liberty and the right to the pursuit of happiness – now, that, that was radical. You mean everybody? I mean, that was not how the world worked. And that governments are instituted to secure those rights. That's the purpose of government, that governments are instituted to secure those rights, and if it ever not doing its job, it is the right of the people to alter it or to abolish it.

Now, in so doing, the story began. But that's also where the story got gnarly, because of the signers of Declaration of Independence, and let's remember, by signing the Declaration of Independence, these men were risking their lives. If the British had won that war, then the people who signed the Declaration of Independence would have been executed as traitors against the king of England. You know, we all know about John Hancock and his big handwriting. "John Hancock, sign your John Hancock," 'cause John Hancock signed it so big – you know why John Hancock signed his handwriting in such a large way? Well, he'd been a problem for George the Third for a long time, and also it's interesting to know, that George the Third called all those pesky colonists "insurgents." Alright? So, John Hancock had been a problem for a while, and King George had said to John Hancock, "You know, here's some [no audio] go away, stop all this crazy revolutionary talk. So, he'd tried to bribe John Hancock. You know, a lot of these people, they knew each other, they were all part of that original crowd, you know? And he had tried to say to John Hancock, "stop doing this." John Hancock would not be swayed, and when he wrote his handwriting so big, he made some comment about how "I want to make sure George sees this." [laughter and applause] So by their signing the Declaration of Independence, they were risking their lives. That's how it all starts. It's also however, how it got so gnarly. Because 41 signers of the Declaration of Independence were themselves slaveowners.

Now, that's it. That's, that's our story right there. That's the characterological dichotomy of the American mind. That's the polarity at the center of the American narrative. That on one hand, we are founded on, and at our best aspire to, and sometimes even actualize, the most enlightened, the most illumined, the most aspirational principles that have ever founded the core of a nation.

And - we have also been, from the beginning, at times, the most violent transgressors against the principles on which we purport to stand. This is not new. This has been with us from the beginning. It couldn't be embodied more clearly than in the fact that some of the men who actually signed the Declaration of Independence were themselves slaveowners. Not all of them, but 41 of them.

Now, every generation has reenacted that polarity. And that is as true of our generation as of any generation before us. We have been, in every generation – and once again, remember, this is as true of us now as it has ever been – every generation has been filled with people so inspired, who really get how big this is. Who really, whose hearts are ablaze with how world-shattering this is, that it shatters the old order, that it shatters the notion of oppression, that it shatters the notion of domination, that it shatters the notion of injustice, and it opens the world, it opens life to the possibility that anyone can be. That anyone can simply be, that somebody, if they don't hurt anyone else, we can spread our wings, we can be whatever we want, we can manifest and actualize our God-given potential.

This is much bigger than just, "well, and you could have what you want." This is not just about our rights. This is about our collective responsibility that such an extraordinary gift is bequeathed to us, not just so that we can have fun with it. This is bigger than that, this is deeper than that. It's so that we, in our time, can so protect it and nurture it and expand it, that it is passed onto our children even better than we found it. And that is as true of those of us right here as it was true in 1776. But there have also been, and there are today, people who look at that, and hear that, and have the view, "No, that's not what we will be doing." And sometimes, it's because to do so would be inconvenient to their economic purposes. And sometimes, for reasons even more nefarious than that.

Now, you look at American history and you see that that has been our narrative. Every generation writes its own chapter in this continuing story. So every generation takes its, takes its stand, and basically writes its story one way or the other. Over time, we tend to self-correct. So, yes, we had slavery in this country. Two and a half centuries of slavery. But then we also had abolition. [audio distortion] I won't be doing that again! [audience laughs] We had the suppression of women. We also had the women suffragette movement and two major waves of feminism. We had segregation and institutionalized white supremacy in the United States, and then we also had the civil rights movement. We had the denial of marriage equality to gay people in the United States, then we had the rise of the marriage equality movement. We had genocide of Native Americans, genocide, but then also cultural annihilation of Native Americans, and we have had some improvement, much improvement, much to be done, and you see even now, people standing up at Standing Rock. So you can see how America plays itself out.

Now, it's very important that we revisit these principles, particularly now. Because if you realize that your mission statement is your guiding – "God bless America. Guide her with the light from above." What does "the light from above" mean? "The light above" means the understanding, means philosophical understanding. "Guide her with the light from above." "The light from above" means a deeper understanding. If you take every single public policy in the United States, both domestic and international, and you ask yourself, "does this or does this not align with our idea that all men are created equal?" We already got the part that it doesn't mean just men, it also means women, it doesn't just mean blacks, it also means – it doesn't just mean whites, it also means people of color. Every time we have anything going on – it doesn't just mean straight people, it also means gay people – it's always that same struggle. And even now, there are many ways in which we are faced, I think, and challenged as a generation to get – that also doesn't just mean Americans. It means everyone. It doesn't just say God created, all Americans were created equal. All men are created equal. So, when we allow ourselves to open up to this and to revisit this as 21st century thinkers, that what's wrong with our politics today. It's a 20th century thinking, it's not 21st century. 21st century is much more integrative, 21st century is much more whole-person. 21st century gets that you can't just approach something from the level of reason, you also have to approach it from the level of an emotional understanding and a psychological understanding.

And so, for us to revisit those first principles today, means first of all the realization that we must reclaim those principles for ourselves. It is not enough to just assume that they are being handled by someone. As our founders said, the power of the United States and the governance of the United States is safe in only one place, and that is in the hands of its people. And we in many ways have abdicated that. Because when you abdicate your emotional and psychological connection to something, you're abdicating the power of that something. America will not be all that America can be unless Americans are all that we can be. That's the whole point.

So when we see things happening today in which the desires of people are thwarted, the dreams of people are capped – you might have heard me in this campaign, I've talked a lot about children. We have millions of American children who are living in chronic trauma. Millions of American children who go to school every single day, in schools that don't even have, who don't even have the adequate school supplies with which to teach a child to read. And if a child cannot read by the age of 8, then the chances of high school graduation are drastically decreased and the chances of incarceration are drastically increased. Many of these children, millions of them, live in what's called "America's domestic warzones," where the PTSD of a returning veteran from Afghanistan or Iraq is considered no more severe than the PTSD of these children. Now look at this in terms of the Declaration of Independence. Where is the right of these children to pursue happiness? Excuse me, do we mean this or not? Because that's what our generation now has to ask, do we mean this or not? Because these children are full-on citizens of the United States, and even for those who are not full-on citizens of the United States, if all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – and that's drilled down even more – government's role is to secure those rights. So isn't it the function of government to secure the right of all these millions of children to pursue happiness? And then let's drill down even more and talk about why it's not happening. Because the more you drill down, the worse it gets, ladies and gentlemen. The more you drill down, the worse you get, and you realize that we're it, we're the adults of our time and it's our job to stand up for this, just as the Declaration of Independence says, because when the Declaration of Independence says a government is not doing what it is instituted to do, it is the right of the people to alter it. It is the right of the people to alter it.

So let's talk about these children, these millions of children. They might not be your children, but the love that will save the world is not just love for your children. It's love also for the children on the other side of town, and for the children on the other side of the world, and that is the pivotal understanding which will open us up to survivability, not only of our democracy, but possibly to the human race in the 21st century. [cheering and applause]

Now, we're grownups, and my experience of people for the last 35 years – I worked very up close and personal with people in crisis – and my experience of people is that when you hear something that's bad news – your child's on drugs, you're addicted, someone you love died, your marriage is falling apart, your business is falling apart, you just got a diagnosis of cancer or whatever – my experience of people is that we drop the stupid things really quickly in the first five minutes. All the superficial preoccupations and petty thoughts, they just drop away in the first five minutes. And what I have seen over and over and over again, and experienced this in my life is well – you get really intelligent really fast. And you get really serious really fast. And you get really noble. I've seen it over and over and over again. Now, if you have a doctor and you're looking to the doctor to heal you, you know that the doctor's also going to have to be honest if the test results didn't come in good. So I'm telling you, we're going to drill down a little deeper into what I just said, and what I'm telling you is not good news! Now, the way politics operates in America today, which is stuck in this 20th century mindset, among other things, nobody wants to tell you any bad news, because it'll come across as "negative." And so we're having a high school conversation. We're not having a real conversation. Do you think abolitionists didn't name slavery? Do you think the women suffragettes didn't name their oppression? Do you think the civil rights workers like didn't name the fact that segregation was going on? They were adults, they got what was going on here, and you and I, we need to be adults too and we need to get what's going on here, and if the political establishment wants to keep it all superficial and only about the symptoms and only about the leaves, that's no excuse for us. We need to get deep and we need to water the roots and we need to rise to the occasion the way other generations have done before. [cheering and applause]

Because when we do and if we do, we'll talk about why those children aren't helped. We should be, we should be rescuing those children, no differently than if they were the victims of a natural disaster. This is a huge humanitarian emergency in our midst. When you have 40% of all Americans who are having trouble on a daily basis – chronic economic stress and anxiety. Chronic, on a daily basis, not knowing exactly what they'll do if there's really a hit on the, on the costs that they must address, whether it has to do with transportation or health, their rent, their work, whatever it is. You have a sea of human suffering in the richest country of the world. So let's talk about why. Why is it that these children aren't being helped? Well, they don't work, do they, so they don't have any financial leverage. Not old enough to work. And they're not old enough to vote, so there's no constituency there. So what is our political establishment, our quote, unquote "government" whose job according to the Declaration of Independence, you know? Their job – "instituted among men to secure the rights of the pursuit of happiness" – and clearly these children are not able to pursue happiness. Why are they not helping those children? Why are they only normalizing their despair?

I'll tell you why. Because our government has become so corrupt. Because at this point, we're not a government of the people by the people and for the people. Let's not kid ourselves, ladies and gentlemen. We have transitioned over the last 40 years, we've actually reverted just like a person regresses, a nation can regress. And we have regressed, we have regressed from a functioning democracy to a functioning aristocracy, corporatocracy, oligarchy, whatever you want to call it. At this point, we do not function so much as a government of the people by the people and for the people as we are a government of multinational corporations by multinational corporations and for multinational corporations. The dark influence of money, called "dark money," on our governmental system is so great that there is more advocacy to enable those who are already very rich to get richer than there is to allow just the regular average citizen of the United States to even make it at all. We have a situation now where it is like a bunch of aristocrats. They're our new corporate overlords and they're sitting up on a table somewhere like a bunch of aristocrats from old Europe, and they are dropping, they're dropping crumbs down on the table in the forms of jobs that you may or may not be able to get, and you wonder how you have one major political party who has sort of been bought hook line and sinker into this view that maybe that's the way to run things. But you have too many other people, even in the other party, whose basic view is, "we could take all those crumbs and give you a cookie." Ladies and gentlemen, this is the United States of America, everybody gets to feast here! [cheering and applause]

This is the United States, and we have been trained to expect too little. That's why the radicalism of 1776 is a spirit we need to claim for ourselves again. You know, if you don't hold on to your power, you can't be really that upset if somebody comes and takes it away, you kind of weren't protecting it. We have acted as though the revolution, the American revolution of 1776 and the establishment of the democracy was kind of a done deal and that was our mistake as it turns out. And in a way, if you think about it, well, I guess we should have known better. If you don't take care of your health, can you really complain if later you start losing your health? And if you don't take care of your marriage, can you really start complaining later if you start losing your marriage? And if you don't take care of your business, can you really complain later if you start losing your business? No, we have to recognize now the American revolution is an ongoing process. Every generation, it is always thus. As my father used to say, the bastards are always at the door. And that's just like in our own personal lives, until and unless you're some enlightened master, we all have character defects, we all have places in our personality where we know, if we're not cultivating the best that we can be, the worst that we can be is going to have its way with us. If we're not cultivating the part of us that's generous and kind and loving and of service, then the part of us that's neurotic and selfish and angry is going to have its way, and same with the country.

A country is just like a person, it has different aspects to it, and this was true in 1776 they were slaveowners. We have people today, the problem today is not a particular institution. It's not an institution like slavery or an institution like segregation, but it's a mindset, and it is actually no less dangerous. And it has corrupted our government and it has hijacked our value system. It is the very idea that apparently some people are entitled. Some people are entitled to health care, some people are entitled to education, some people are entitled to wealth creation opportunity. A few people are entitled, and that's how we got to where we are. And it has been the patriots, this is patriotism we're talking about, ladies and gentlemen. This is patriotism, by which every generation rises up and historically and traditionally pushes back against overreach by any system, whether it is a capitalist system, any – this is why we have, pushing back against the overreach of capitalism when it has deviated from its moral core. That's why you have child labor laws, that's why we had the labor movement period, that's why we have antitrust laws. We have been, we have been played, we have been fooled, we've become too sleepy, we become too cynicist, cynics, cynical, and you know what, ladies and gentlemen, cynicism is just an excuse for not helping.

Now it's our turn. It's important that we identify the problems in this country and that we – and we have a lot of them, and we've had a lot of problems in our past. But it's important that we identify with the problem solvers. So yeah, we, we had slavery in our past, but let's identify with the abolitionists. And yes, we had suppression of women in this country – let's identify with the women suffragettes. And, yes, we had segregation and institutionalized white supremacy in this country – let's identify with the civil rights movement. It's simply our time. This stuff is back and now it's our time, and let me tell you something else. This is part of the history lesson that I think is very important for all of us to remember right now. In none of those cases – abolition, women suffrage or civil rights movement – did the, did the political establishment of the time rise up and change things. That's never the way it happens. It happens when the people stepped in. So [cheering and applause]

People, the political establishment didn't wake up and say, "oh, let's free the slaves." That's not what happened. The abolitionist movement arose when the people and the people stepped in. And the political establishment didn't wake up one day and say, "oh, let's give women the right to vote, shall we?" That's not what happened. The woman suffragette movement arose, the people stepped in. And the civil rights, the political establishment didn't just rise up and say, "oh, let's desegregate the American south, shall we?" No, it was the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, the people stepped in. Ladies and gentlemen, today we have reverted to an aristocratic paradigm. We are living at a time when major multinational corporations are given advocacy before the safety, the wellbeing and the health of our people and our planet. That is the way America works today. First, short-term profits for health insurance companies and big pharma and gun manufacturers and fossil fuel companies and chemical companies and defense contractors. They get their profits, and then after that, whatever crumbs fall to the table, that goes to everybody else? No no no no no, this is America. We don't do that here! They didn't want to do it in 1776 and we don't want to do it in 2019! [cheering and applause]

And this is the most patriotic thing in the world. It's time for economic patriotism. It's time for social patriotism. It's time for us to recognize what is happening. What is happening to these children. It is time for us to recognize that, how America has just sacrificed all moral values, democratic values, humanitarian values, not only in our public policies domestically, but also internationally; for us to recognize that for the sake of 350 billion dollars in arms sale to Saudi Arabia, we in our country are willing to go along with a genocidal war that we are supporting with aerial support, that could not be happening without our aerial support, which is committing genocide against the people of Yemen. Tens of thousands of people have starved including all those children whose pictures are all over the Internet. And when the state department was asked how could we do this in this country, the statement from the state department said, "well, you know, sometimes you can have, you have strategic partnerships with people who do not share your values." Ladies and gentlemen, no, you can't have strategic partnerships with people who don't share your values. It means that you have given up your values.

If this country gives up the moral core of what we stand for, what are we? And for this to be happening on our watch? And for us to be told, "well, we'll do some incremental fixes here and some incremental fixes there." We have one major political party that, as I said, has, too many people in that party seem to now think it's OK because "there's money to be made, money to be made!" And then too many people of another stripe, even in the other major political party, who do want to do everything possible to ameliorate the suffering that is caused by all these terrible things. It's not enough to ameliorate the suffering. We must challenge the underlying forces that make all that suffering inevitable. [cheering and applause] That's what we must do. Otherwise, you what, you're going to beat Donald Trump in 2020 – you think those people won't be back in '22? You think those people won't be back in '24? No no no, we need to grow up and rise up. And that's the thing, as long as that political conversation remains like we're not really getting down and talking about how bad it is – if we don't have an adult conversation about how bad this is, how will we get to how good it can be?

The people who founded this country, these were very mature thinkers. Abolitionists were mature thinkers. Women suffragettes were mature thinkers. People in the civil rights movement were mature thinkers. My experience of America is we're mature thinkers, too – when it comes to our private lives. I don't think the problem is that Americans aren't good, we're very good. We're as good and decent and dignified as any people anywhere in the world, that's my experience, we're no better but we're no worse than anybody anywhere else. The problem is not that we don't think about what it means to live a moral and an integrous and a good life. My experience of people is that we do. The problem is that we have, over the last few decades, particularly, gotten into the mental habit of circumscribing the conversation about ethics and goodness only in the personal domain. We have to do more than ask, "is this a good thing for me to do?" We need to be asking, as citizens, "is this a good thing for our country to do?" "Is this the democratic thing to do?" "Is this the humanitarian thing to do?" And that's what citizenship is.

We need to wake up. The political establishment is not going to quote, unquote, "fix" this. The people are going to realign the political establishment. That's what needs to happen right now, and when we do, it's not going to be enough to just know, "oh, we've elected a new president," it has to go so much deeper than that. We have to expand our sense of what it means to be dignified, mature, responsible human beings, and part of that means to be citizens. Citizenship has got to become part of an aspect of who and what we are. We need to realize all the ways, we need to realize, whether it has to do with mass incarceration, or racial injustice in our criminal justice system, whether it has to do with the shooting of unarmed black men, whether it has to do with immigrants at the border, whether it has to do with attacks on women's freedom, whether it has to do with attacks on the press, whether it has to do with whatever the issue is, whether it has to do with economic system in which it has become entrenched that it's so much easier for the rich to get richer and harder for everybody else to even make it. We need to remember that hell yes, we have the money! What is this, "we don't have the money?" We should do everything, it is the purpose of government, it is the purpose of government to help people thrive. That is how this country is going to become all that it can be, is when the people of the United States become all that we can be. That's what this country is, and that's why, that's why we should repeal that, that 2017 tax cut. Two trillion dollars, 83 cents of every dollar to the richest among us. That's why we should stop ridiculous things like corporate subsidies giving 26 billion dollars to fossil fuel companies. That's why we need to stand up when chemical companies are able to put known carcinogens into our water, into our food, into pesticides, that we absolutely know harm a child's developing brain. That is why every American should be able to go to college, free at college, states' colleges and universities. That's why we should remove the burden of these college loans – so that people can soar, so that people can be. If you want peace and prosperity, that's how you get it.

You know, I used to ask myself – years ago, I asked myself, "I wonder why they don't talk about peace and prosperity anymore." Politicians used to always talk about peace and prosperity. And then my next thought was, "well, I guess they don't use that phrase anymore because it's kind of a cliché." And then I thought, "no, that's not why they don't talk about it. They don't talk about it 'cause it's not the goal."

If you want prosperity in this country, you don't have an economic system that sucks from the future for short-term profits in the present for just a few people. I'll tell you how you have prosperity 10 years from now: take better care of your 10-year-olds today. [cheering and applause] That's how you have prosperity ten years from now. That's where – you want to, you want to talk about the fuel that will give us the most extraordinary century? It's not just in the wind, is not just in the sun, it sure as hell isn't in the earth – it's in the brain, and particularly in the brain of every child under eight years old. And we are the only country that bases our, that bases our educational funding on property taxes. Ladies and gentlemen, every single kindergarten in this country should be a palace of learning. And if we really want to have prosperity, think of the millions and billions, possibly trillions of dollars that will not be realized if we do not allow every child and help every child actualize their God-given potential.

And you want peace? If you want peace, you don't just have a national security agenda that basically just serves short-term profits for defense contractors. We need to wake up. Many of us are old enough to remember Dwight Eisenhower, who was the supreme commander of all Allied forces during World War 2 – when he warned us, when he left the presidency in 1961, he warned us of the military industrial complex. Because before World War 2, we had no standing army. Obviously, we need a standing army now. I have great respect for the military, my father fought in World War 2, but anybody who thinks that our national security agenda is based only on the legitimate security needs of, of the United States is someone who is simply not looking deeply and it is not an accident that the political establishment would not have you look deeply. There's a reason for that, and so the truth of the matter is that there are national security needs, which it's understandable must be funded and funded correctly and appropriately, and then there are a few hundred billion dollars on top of that that have to do with short-term profits for defense contractors, and can we talk about how that money would help those children who are hungry? 41 million food-insecure Americans. Two million American children theoretically, supposedly, go to school hungry every day.

If you want peace, you can't just endlessly prepare for war. You have to wage peace. Even Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense under George Bush said that. How do you wage peace? Well, peacebuilders have skill sets and expertise every bit as sophisticated and as important as those who wage war when war is necessary. And I'm going to tell you the main factors in peace building and it's not going to surprise anyone. Number one: expand educational opportunities for children. Number two: expand economic opportunities for women. Number three: ameliorate unnecessary human suffering. And four: diminish violence against women. We should see large groups of desperate people as a national security risk. Desperate people do desperate things. Desperate people are more vulnerable to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces. And so, ladies and gentlemen, right now, we have a 750 billion dollar military budget. Our state department, which is diplomacy, development and mediation, that's 40 billion, and those who actually carry out peacebuilding projects, they get less than a billion. And the US, independent US department of peace, what that gets – institute of peace gets 36 million. Ladies and gentlemen, this whole thing has to be turned around. We need a political, moral, economic and social revolution in the United States. [cheering and applause] We need a revolution of consciousness. We need a basic and fundamental interruption of the economic and social patterns in the United States. Why? Because it's the patriotic thing to do.

That's what our founders saw. They saw something right and they fixed it. That's what the abolitionists did–– excuse me, they saw something wrong, and they fixed it. That's what the abolitions did. They saw something wrong and they fixed it. That's what the women suffragettes did. They saw something wrong and they fixed it. That's what the civil rights movement did. They saw something wrong and they fixed it. They didn't ask for permission from the political establishment. They saw that the political establishment wasn't making it happen. And the last thing that we're doing is seeing only the people who had made it happen as qualified to fix it. That is foolish thinking. The idea that only those whose careers have been entrenched in the same system that drove us into this ditch should be qualified to lead us out of it. No, we are the people of the United States. I'm not saying they're not the people of the United States, but we know in issue after issue after issue, the will of the people is not driving public policy in the United States. The people are fine, the American people are fine. The problem is that our democracy works now in such a way that it is not the will of the people that is driving our domestic policy, it is not the will of the people that is driving our international policy – it is too often the short-term profits of these huge major multinational corporations, the new aristocracy. Well, we handled that in 1776. It is time to handle it again, and this is July 4th. [cheering and applause]

This is July 4th, and this is the day that we revisit our first principles and we remember that all men are created equal; that we were endowed all of us by our creator with inalienable rights of lives and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That should include clean water. That should mean that we don't have lead in the water in Flint, Michigan and we don't have teflon in the blood of people in Merrimack, New Hampshire. It should mean we do not have carcinogens in our pesticides that are being, that are being consistently manufactured even though billions of dollars are being paid up, paid in lawsuits having to do with Roundup, having to do with non, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, etcetera. We know that this stuff is happening, and it will continue to happen until and unless we the people rise up. And if we are looking to a system that has taken us to this point, just hoping that it's going to fix it, then I think we are fooling ourselves. We have been fooled, but we don't have to be fooled any longer. And so today, on July 4th, in remembering some very brave people before us, who got it right in many ways. And even remembering those of us, those among them who got it wrong. But as Martin Luther King said, he wasn't asking for, the civil rights movement was not asking for new freedoms, they were asking to cash a check that had already been given. We can't look to our founders, given how many of them were misogynists, how many of them were slaveowners, we can't look to them and say with great honor everything they were and they embodied. But we can honor and be very, very grateful for the principles that were bequeathed to us in our Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution. Others did their part. Founders did their part. Revolutionary generation did their part. The abolitionists did their part. The women suffragettes did their part. Civil rights movement did its part. Ladies and gentlemen, it's our turn. [cheering and applause] Thank you very, very much. Thank you! Happy July 4th! Happy July 4th! Thank you very, very much! Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.