July 4, 2026
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to dissolve the structures of government which have, until now, represented them, and to reclaim the sovereign station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind at home and abroad requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to revolution.
We hold that the equality of all people and the rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are and shall ever be inviolable. Equally sacrosanct to us are natural rights, and those not granted by, but enshrined in our Constitution. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among mankind, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is not only the right, but the responsibility of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to protect those rights, their safety, and their happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. Accordingly, all experience shows today just as it did two and a half centuries ago, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are suffeable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, subverting a constitution conceived in the genius of our forefathers, has rendered our government a servant not of the governed, but of political parties, those in power, and those from whom they derive wealth and influence, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
Such has been the suffering of the people of this nation, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their institutions. The recent history of government in The United States of America is one of repeated injuries, derelictions of duty, and bare-faced malfeasance, all culminating in a government of, by, and for the very people we elect to it. Our present crisis is not the tyranny of a sovereign beyond the sea, but one of a government and its institutions beset by decay and by office-holders unmotivated to serve us effectively. The machinery of our republic still stands, yet too often fails to perform the work for which it was built. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
A duopoly of political parties has split us neighbor from neighbor, sown discord, and poured accelerant on the issues that most reliably divide us. Their entrenched hold on power has left little room for independent voices, centrists, and new parties to flourish. They now treat their opposition as the enemy, and decades of such rhetoric have taught voters to do the same. Compromise, the very art by which a free people govern themselves, is commonly condemned as betrayal. Most dangerous of all, they have corroded our ability to discern what is true. The conflict between Americans is no longer merely that we disagree on issues, but increasingly that we cannot agree upon the facts from which those issues proceed. When citizens cannot rely upon their leaders to speak with candor, and when common sense realities become matters of partisan dispute, many conclude that politics is no longer a means of solving problems, but merely a contest for power. No party should have power over a people they can no longer persuade. We must embrace a system that rewards new voices, new parties, and new ideas rather than smothering them.
Such domination and decay has stripped many well-intentioned leaders entering public service of fidelity to their conscience and the people. It has rewarded unyielding party loyalty and punished independence of thought. It has chained public service to never-ending fundraising. It has placed not only their votes, but often their convictions under the thumb of party leadership, leaving constituents unheard and rewarding conformity over truthfulness. It is no wonder our two parties are not brimming with office-holders decrying abuses, and more importantly, voting to correct them; the system has stripped away incentives for such courage. Elections must belong more to voters and less to donors; elected officials must belong more to their constituents and less to their parties.
Those in power in our present system, though their direct compensation is modest, quickly find themselves in positions of substantial wealth. Connections and fortunate circumstances account for some of this wealth, but the financial temptations our public servants face go far beyond that. The opportunities for brazen self-dealing are not subtle; they are constant, and they are corrosive. Our Congress has utterly failed to stamp out insider trading, outright corruption, and the elected-official-to-lobbyist pipeline. Service in our government was never meant to be enriching, but enrichment has become routine. The close relationship between holding public office and the rapid accumulation of wealth is a great danger to the freedom of every person in this country. We must demand fidelity from our elected leaders, strengthen ethical requirements, and make oversight of our representatives independent of them. Leadership in our government must again be a service, not self-interest; a stewardship, not self-enrichment. We must restore public service as an honorable profession held under a sacred trust.
While corporations are a necessary and valuable part of any modern capitalist society and can fairly compete to provide a wide variety of goods and services, some have begun to turn the most basic human needs into a means of accumulating wealth. They do not merely participate in these markets; they dominate them. In health care, meaningful competition has all but vanished, and the corporations running it have radically driven up costs for both patients and the people who care for them. Insurance is increasingly cost-prohibitive, yet families can scarcely risk doing without it as private-pay costs and medical debt threaten their financial security. Corporations are also buying up housing in this country, including single-family homes, treating them more as a speculative asset than as the roof over the head of a family. These markets were once expected to serve the people who depended upon them. In these sectors, both competition and the simple morality of doing right by people have largely disappeared. The rent is indeed too damn high in too many places, and corporate buyers paying cash routinely out-compete ordinary American families seeking to buy a home the only way most can: with a mortgage and years of savings. They have rendered the ordinary, modest stability of working life increasingly unaffordable. These conditions did not arise spontaneously. They are a consequence of laws, regulations, and policies that our elected officials have enacted, tolerated, or neglected. Politicians have permitted monopolistic concentration, left health insurance tied to our employers, and too often favored powerful interests over the public good. Government must demand that commerce be the servant of the people, not the reverse. We live in a regulated capitalist society, and such regulation must favor the people over the frequent campaign donor. A free people should never find their access to shelter, health, or dignity contingent on the relentless pursuit of profit by others.
Elected officials from both parties have for decades beguiled the people of this country into believing that we could indefinitely sustain more government, costing more money than we collect in taxes, without consequence. Powerful and moneyed interests pressure Congress continuously to spend more on more things, but not to raise taxes. We have lived under this system for so long that we the voters are often applying that pressure. This practice that we have allowed, no, encouraged, has run up a debt in this country that now consumes sixteen percent of all taxation just to pay the interest. This debt must be paid, and politicians today will do anything they can to convince you it need not be, or at least not anytime soon. We must get our house in order once and for all. To get there, elected officials at all levels and citizens alike must speak plainly and honestly with one another about how much government we want, who shall be responsible for what, and how to pay for it. The situation is already well beyond the oft-quoted “our grandchildren will be paying it off.” Indeed, should we go on like this another ten years, making any appreciable payment beyond interest toward principal would involve a level of austerity unimaginable in this country. We can charge fair and reasonable taxes, pay our bills, protect ourselves in a dangerous world, and provide for the least among us. These choices are not beyond our capacity. They have gone unmade because our government has too often found advantage in neglecting them.
A voting system repugnant to our sacred maxim that one person equals one vote has failed to provide fair and transparent representation. Americans possess the right to cast a ballot, yet lack any meaningful voice in the government thereby formed. Minority views are swallowed whole by majorities, and millions find themselves unrepresented. Many voters live in districts so aligned to their preferred party that their vote is surplus, and wasted. Many others live in districts so aligned to the opposite party that their vote can never hope to help seat an opponent of that party. A republic cannot endure when millions believe their voice carries no consequence. Among the most insidious of mechanisms contributing to the failure of our present system are first-past-the-post elections and an electoral college that fails to equally represent voters at a national level. The upper house of our Congress is apportioned through districts of vastly unequal population. The lower house is apportioned through districts gerrymandered by the very parties that benefit from it. These flaws erode the people’s faith that government truly represents them. The two parties have a stranglehold on the primary process, producing candidates more loyal to them than to any ideal or to their constituents, robbing us of consequential choices at general elections. These powers, in the hands of the parties, have been repeatedly used to serve the interests of politicians instead of the people. Nations do not decay when they disagree; they decay when their citizens stop feeling ownership of their government. American government must truly represent all voters, not simply sort their ballots into one of two buckets.
Fair elections alone cannot save a legislature incapable of governing effectively. Our Congress has become a mire from which quality legislation reflecting the will of the people seldom crawls out. We ask the electorate to speak, then divide its voice among institutions elected at different times, under different circumstances, and often to different purposes. Our voice is then filtered through parties that reflect our will less and less, so it is unsurprising that agreement between parties and houses is unlikely. Committee structure, governmental oversight, the budget process, and confirmation of nominees have all been fundamentally broken by partisan forces, and no longer work for us. Our once proud and learned Senate was intended to serve as the sober voice of second thought, revising legislation and tempering momentary passions. It has instead become the place where bills frequently go to die. When responsibility is divided among so many actors, accountability becomes easy to evade and difficult to assign. We can have a legislature that cannot be so easily co-opted by the parties inside it, and whose incentives keep them working for us. Congress is the branch that was designed to most closely reflect the will of the people, and the time has come for them to turn from the mirror and return both their gaze and their fidelity to us.
Our executive branch has devolved into an imperial Presidency whose powers have become so unclearly defined that it is a great challenge for any court, our Congress, or indeed, a President to say with any certainty or authority what a President can and cannot lawfully do. We have had Presidents both ignore a ruling of the judiciary and exercise a power clearly given to the legislature. The separation of powers is fundamentally broken, and the danger to our freedoms and the very sanctity of constitutional government could not be more dire. Over time, Congress has found it easier to surrender difficult decisions than to make them. Presidents, in turn, have found it easier to exercise power than to seek its formal delegation. Thus power has flowed steadily toward the executive, not by constitutional design, but by institutional neglect. Where powers are unclearly defined, every incentive favors their expansion. Authority once assumed is rarely surrendered, and any acceptance of it becomes precedent for future exercise of it. Checks and balances will not function when the party in power decides they need not. We must have an executive with more clearly defined and limited powers, and one more subject to the consent of the other branches. We must restore the checks and balances that keep the co-equal branches accountable to one another, and ultimately, to us. In doing so, America can again have Presidents we are proud of, whether we voted for them or not.
We have failed to establish an apolitical senior power to prevent abuses by those who have control over our political institutions. The Supreme Court took this power to itself, and while it has saved us from a great many threats to both our freedoms and good government, most of this noble and critical work was done in the last century or before. The Court has become increasingly politicized, unable to effectively respond to what has become a status quo of bad government, and more than we would like to admit, tied to and controlled by the two parties. Lower courts suffer from an obscene number of unfilled vacancies, and litigants openly maneuver not only to seek justice, but to find the judge most likely to deliver their preferred outcome. It can be no surprise then that the fairness and impartiality we expect from our courts is too often absent when it is needed most. Lower courts have been stripped of broad injunctive relief powers to restrain unlawful exercises of power. Without that ability to halt illegal actions when they are challenged, rights may be violated long before justice can arrive. Their decisions are increasingly overturned with an unconsidered swiftness unbecoming of a democratic judiciary. Such limits on the power of judges have dismantled a critical link in our checks and balances. Whether by design or indifference, those who hold power benefit more and more from institutions unwilling or unable to restrain them. The judiciary does not have unlimited power or resources to protect us from abuses of power, so we cannot be shocked to have arrived at this moment when our institutions can no longer reliably correct themselves. We must have a judiciary that can be counted upon to impartially bring about justice, and we must give it the resources to protect both people and republic from abuses of the other branches. The Supreme Court was not long ago the most respected and admired institution in our government, and it can be again.
Our troubles with the executive branch do not lie solely in Washington, but also at home. Policing in this country, though dominated by dedicated and heroic public servants taking risks most of us would reject, has significant cultural patterns and practices that stand at times in direct opposition to the rights, safety, and dignity of the people they are sworn to protect. While there are undoubtedly a number of officers drawn to the authority of the badge as a license to rule others rather than a responsibility to serve, the failures of American law enforcement cannot be explained away as the misconduct of a few bad apples. The problem is structural, cultural, and systemic. Too many law enforcement agencies have failed to instill a culture of service, de-escalation, judiciousness, humility, restraint, and Constitutional fidelity. Police incentives and publicly funded training too often instead emphasize unyielding situational control, rights as obstacles to be managed, and deceit and coercion as acceptable tools for producing obedience. These tenets cannot be taught as doctrine in a free society. Excessive force, sometimes reaching inhuman brutality, still stains American law enforcement, and less-than-lethal weapons have gone from a means of keeping subjects from serious harm to everyday tools for obtaining immediate compliance, even in low-stakes situations. The law itself compounds each of these failures. It is dangerously unclear what constitutes a lawful order of a police officer, while broad and vague catch-all laws like disorderly conduct, resisting, obstructing, disturbing the peace, and loitering grant authorities wide discretion to act where no true crime exists. Such ambiguity invites bias and abuse, and too often shields them. Where rights are unclear, they are easily denied. Appallingly, redress of grievances for victims of police mistreatment is slow or nonexistent. Where accountability is weak, misconduct is easily repeated, and rights that exist only after litigation are already diminished. We count on law enforcement to keep us safe, but authority without restraint is not safety, it is danger. Rights must live not only in the courtroom, but in our homes, in public, and by the side of the road. The authority of the badge should command respect because it has earned trust, not merely because it can compel obedience. We must require from law enforcement a level of professionalism and respect for civilians and their rights that we and they can be proud of.
These failures, though varied in form, arise from the same underlying decay. Across our government, institutions increasingly fail to perform the duties for which they were created, to correct their own mistakes, and to remain accountable to the people. No people blessed with so much should ever have accepted so little from their government. The reforms we seek are not ends in themselves. They are the means by which free people reclaim ownership of their institutions. Government exists to serve the people, not itself; to safeguard liberty, not power; to faithfully execute the duties entrusted to it; and to remain accountable to those from whom its authority was derived. America must do all these things and be all these things because we are more than a Constitution, a people, or a land. America is a promise made to each and every one of us, a dream toward which generations have labored, and a legacy we don’t just inherit, but actively shape for those who will come after us. We have, for far too long, sat idly by, having been masterfully refocused away from the principles and issues that matter most to us, and onto the never-ending battle of blue versus red, a contest that promises victory while delivering virtually nothing. Meanwhile, our promise was broken, our dream corrupted, and our legacy taken from us and given to the two political parties. We shall tolerate this no longer. Not for one more election. We, the governed, revoke our consent to a system that long ago stopped serving us.
Resolved, then, that the time for incrementalism is long past, and that our great nation needs sweeping and immediate structural change toward a government befitting its glory and its people. We are resolved that our nation’s two parties have lost not just the will, but the ability to serve us. We are resolved that America needs not a great new party, but instead a new commitment to a great and righteous purpose: building a government capable of enduring even when those entrusted with power are ruled by something less than their better angels. We therefore, the people of The United States of America, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do solemnly publish and declare that all allegiance to a government that places parties and politicians above ourselves is and ought to be totally dissolved. We hereby withdraw our consent from a failed political order and dedicate ourselves to the creation of one worthy of a free people. By striving ardently toward that goal, we are certain of leaving as a legacy to all future generations a renewed American Dream and renewed promise of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
This is not a revolution of blood and struggle, but one of minds and purpose. Not of chaos, but of design. We act not in rage, but with resolve. We do not abandon our founding; we fulfill it. We do not cast aside our Constitution; we reclaim it. We are not reckless for demanding change; we are responsible. We seek not a government uniform in thought, but one capable of governing despite disagreement. Our Constitution, after all, is not weakened when we demand better of our public servants; it is vindicated. This is a revolution that will happen only by and with the consent of the governed. The tree of liberty needs desperately to be refreshed, but not with the blood of tyrants and patriots. Instead, renewal must come from recovering our ability as a people to speak through representative institutions about what matters most. America must again be the shining beacon on a hill proclaiming democracy to all the world.
The United States of America was founded on the idea that we are a perpetually unfinished nation, one that has not only accepted the idea of becoming a more perfect union, but was indeed designed for it. We are a plural society; we accept more than one idea. With that concept firmly in our hearts, this is not a conservative movement, nor is it a liberal one. We welcome citizens of both political persuasions, those who find themselves in the middle, and all who feel disillusioned with our present politics. Our revolution is not for or against most political issues; it is for a rational, functional, fairly elected government. Through such a government we can both progress toward a future we seek with opportunity and dignity for all, and conserve the liberties that have long sustained us, the strength of family, and values we hold most dear. Not left. Not right. Forward.