America Stands Tall At 250

Two hundred fifty years on, it’s an undisputed fact - America is the shining city on the hill. The trouble is that the people living inside its borders have stopped looking up at it.

As the country celebrates its milestone birthday, nearly three-quarters of Americans tell the I&I/TIPP poll they are proud to be American, yet fewer than half believe the nation is living up to the ideals of its founders. A separate Cato Institute survey found that almost half of us cannot say what the 250th anniversary commemorates, a figure that climbs past six in ten among the youngest adults. A people this blessed should not need reminding what it is celebrating.

Familiarity has closed our eyes to what we have. We criticize the president by name in public, worship as we choose or not at all, and move to any state we please. We take these freedoms for granted. For most of human history, they were almost unimaginable. They are the fruits of a liberty that has always been the exception, not the rule.

America’s greatness was never guaranteed. It was won at a price most of us have never been asked to pay, and it has been held ever since by hands willing to keep it.

Begin where the Founders began, with God. In this year’s I&I/TIPP poll, two-thirds of Americans said that faith in God has been an important part of the nation’s strength and success. That belief crosses nearly every line we are told divides us, with majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents agreeing.

Faith has been the nation’s ballast, the weight set deep in a ship’s hull that keeps it upright when the seas turn rough. Nearly all fifty-six signers of the Declaration belonged to Christian churches, and when they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, they meant the word sacred.

In 1630, John Winthrop told the English settlers bound for Massachusetts that they would be “as a city upon a hill,” with the eyes of all people upon them. The phrase outlived him by four centuries. Ronald Reagan made it his own, calling America a shining city in his farewell to the nation.

If faith is the ballast, strength is the shield. In global reach, in military spending, and in the power to project force, the American military is the finest in the world. For eighty years, the order it has defended has preserved a general peace among great powers that had every historical reason to go to war.

Americans rarely stop to thank the young men and women who make that possible. We simply assume the shield will always be there. It is there because, in every generation, someone has been willing to carry it.

Innovation is one of liberty’s greatest gifts. On a cold morning in December 1903, two brothers from Ohio lifted a flying machine off the sands of Kitty Hawk and gave the world the airplane. That same restless spirit carried into the century that followed, from the laboratories and operating rooms where American medicine remains among the world’s best to the companies and engineers leading the race to build the thinking machines of the coming age. None of it would exist without the freedom beneath it.

The surest measure of a country is not what its own people tell a pollster, but the direction people around the world choose to go. And they choose America. The United States is home to more international migrants than any other nation on earth, more than the next four countries combined. No one crosses a desert or an ocean to reach a country they believe is in decline. The city upon a hill still draws the eyes of the world, just as John Winthrop said it would.

So where is the real threat at 250? Not from any foreign army. During the Statue of Liberty’s centennial celebrations in 1986, Ronald Reagan answered plainly in an address Issues & Insights republished yesterday: the only permanent danger to America has always come from within.

He knew his history. Adams and Jefferson wrote the Declaration together, then let partisan bitterness drive them apart for years, and later found their way back to each other as older men through their letters. Both died on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after the nation they helped create came into being.

What unites us, Reagan said, far outweighs the little that divides us. Our own poll proved him right this spring: Republicans and Democrats alike agreed that faith helped build this nation.

America stands tall at 250. May her children learn again to lift their eyes and perceive her greatness.

U.S. Endures Searing Heat Over Fourth Of July Weekend

Two-thirds of Americans are facing moderate to extreme heat risk over the Fourth of July 250th anniversary weekend, as the nation’s capital swelters in temperatures pushing past 40°C.

A severe heatwave is gripping the northeastern U.S., disrupting travel and prompting emergency measures during the holiday weekend.

Temperatures are breaking records, many set nearly 60 years ago, with Washington DC expected to reach 44°C on Friday, according to the National Weather Service.

NOAA forecasts that more than 230 million Americans will experience moderate to extreme heat on Saturday, July 4, including 66 million facing hazardous conditions.

Iran Stages Khamenei Funeral To Project Strength

Long-delayed funeral ceremonies for late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes at the start of the war, are set to become a show of the regime's enduring revolutionary zeal.

The ceremonies and processions take place between July 4 and July 9 across several cities in Iran and Iraq, before his burial in Mashhad.

Officials say between 12 and 20 million people are expected to attend what they are calling the “funeral of the century”.

Khamenei’s death, and the succession of his son Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s third supreme leader, mark a major turning point in the Islamic Republic’s 47-year history.

Security is tight, with temporary airspace restrictions over Tehran and other cities, amid warnings of a strong response if the U.S. or Israel resume strikes.

Taking place during a 60-day ceasefire with the U.S. aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz and enabling talks, the event is intended by organisers to project national unity behind Iran’s new leadership as it seeks leverage in negotiations with Washington.