Good afternoon my fellow Americans. It’s been 250 years since our Founding Fathers declared themselves and our nation free from the oppressiveness of England and its king.

I know today we seem to be free. Slavery is outlawed. We can for the most part travel anywhere in the country.

Police departments have extensive public relations bureaus and neighborhood outreach programs. Still, I cannot help but feel that something is not right with America and freedom. There seems to be no realization that those who signed the Declaration of Independence were bigger men than we are.

There also seems to be no realization that though they were free in a lot of ways we are, the signers knew something was not right and were courageous for taking an unnecessary economic risk to attain what they passionately believed was the most important thing – political freedom.

Our Founding Fathers were grateful for the sacrifices their ancestors made for them. They considered the Pilgrims and Puritans superior to themselves.

We offer little gratitude to our Founding Fathers for being courageous, declaring their independence, lusting for liberty and creating our constitution. We feel that they were hypocrites. We feel Puritans were anal and Pilgrims somebody to laugh at for their strict religious beliefs.

We see mostly negative things in our history where our Founding Fathers saw mostly positive things in theirs. Each of the groups I mentioned had a mission to create a society where people are free from government interference.

We are not inspired by our Founding Fathers or their ancestors. We seem not to know or care that something is not right, that we will not be a source of inspiration to future Americans, if indeed America still stands.

What isn’t right is that because of our mobility, we are enslaved to frantic busyness and buying things. We are too busy to appreciate the frugality, hard work and faith of the Pilgrims and Puritans.

We are too fast moving and cynical to believe there is really such a thing as freedom, that those who believe in it are not naive but visionary, and that those who fight for it are not opportunists but courageous.

What is not right is that we do not realize that we need to take a risk, that like the Founding Fathers we are materially very comfortable and that like theirs, our liberties have eroded.

I know a lot of Americans feel patriotic. You say you fought in Vietnam or the first or second Iraq war or in Afghanistan. I know a lot of people patriotically supported our troops.

But those were wars of arrogance and greed. America was not threatened. We became a less free, greedier, more arrogant, more unhappy and more unhealthy nation following each of these wars.

Neither of these wars are something America should be proud of. We should feel ashamed of them.

There is another war we should feel ashamed of. It is the war against civil liberties which has been going on to a greater or lesser extent since the nation was founded. The war is usually waged by the federal government against the constitution.

Today a person cannot be stopped and beaten by police for being poor or not white. But when somebody puts their garbage can out for the next day’s pick up, it is legal for someone else to pilfer through the trash to obtrain the person’s discarded papers.

If an adult works with children, the adult fears being accused of a sex crime they did not committ, knowing the burden of proof is on them to prove their innocence not the accuser to prove guilt.

Each of these instances is unconstitutional. Our Founding Fathers valued privacy and they believed in innocence until guilt is proven.

It seems these issues follow upon our warmongering. For war breeds fear, suspicion, secrecy, spying, lies and the passion to destroy others.

We have feared and distrusted each other increasingly since Vietnam. We built more prisons in the 80s and 90s. Rape consciousness has been preached at the universities and in the media since the 80s.

Then, after the attacks in New York and Washington at the beginning of this century, my predecessors created and supported the Patriot Act. The act could not have passed if Americans had not accepted more prisons and believed that boys and men are to be feared not respected.

The act built upon and expanded our fear of each other. This is not the attitude that makes for a free nation or a great nation, but a foolish and cowardly nation.

When Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense he knew the timing was right for a rebellion because Americans had an enthusiastic rapport with one another. Now the timing is terrible for a rebellion against our police and surveillance state. We fear each other and envy each other.

But still there is hope. Our Founding Fathers believed that ordinary people can acquire and preserve freedom if they read and if they speak up.

Before the revolution, John Adams wrote, and I paraphrase: We colonists aren’t as free or happy as we used to be. We will speak up if directly confronted, but while we slowly lose our liberties we are too polite or afraid or embarrassed to say anything or write anything critical of England’s police state. But we must read and speak and write and take a big risk.

When I was elected I was thrilled because I felt there was a mandate that America wanted to be free and great and proud again. I have done my part.

My countrymen, you must speak. If you will not trust your neighbors or fellow citizens, at least trust yourself. Tell yourself you are tired of feeling shame and fear. Tell yourself you are being surveilled with a smile and it is slowly killing you.

America. Declare your independence.

Speak and write and demand and fight until you are not considered criminals and perverts and terroriosts, until you are once again free, until you have restored trust in yourself and reaffirmed your faith in each other.

Copyright © 2025 by David Vaszko