Two hundred and fifty years ago, a new nation was born, based not on blood-and-soil, but on the aspirational belief that all persons are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights. These rights were not initially extended to all —slaves, indigenous peoples, and women were excluded from the start. In important ways, our history for the past 250 years has been a history of struggles to extend the full rights of citizenship to all Americans.
The abolitionist and suffrage movements were important milestones in this project of widening inclusion. So were the fierce battles fought over immigration as Irish Catholics fled the potato famine, Chinese laborers built the railroads, and Jews and Italians arrived in large numbers at the turn of the twentieth century. Indigenous Americans weren’t granted citizenship until 1924, and Chinese-Americans couldn’t become citizens until 1943, South Asian Americans until 1946, and Japanese-Americans until 1952. Post-Reconstruction Southern Blacks lived under the bootheel of Jim Crow for almost a century.
So this is a very old American story—the story of wrongs corrected over the long arc of history, and periods of retrenchment when gains are lost or new ones fiercely resisted.
Over the last eight decades I’ve witnessed periods of progress and regress, but this is the first time the very idea of democracy itself has been called into question—and the first time the liberal dream of an inclusive multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural America has come under attack from a major political party. Today an authoritarian clique steeped in insatiable greed and waving the banner of white Christian nationalism occupies the White House along with the avid support of one-third of the nation. Their blood-and-soil philosophy strikes at the heart of the American dream and we must resist it, fight it, and defeat it so that America can once again strive to fulfill its founding ideals.
Today we rededicate ourselves to those ideals as we assess how far we, as a nation, have failed, fallen or strayed. As Buddhists, we aspire to redeem the American dream through right speech, nonviolence, discerning wisdom, and compassion for all. We aspire not to hate those with a different vision, but to resist and oppose the harm they cause, tell truth to power, support friends and allies, and hold out hope for the eventual enlightenment of all.
May all beings listen deeply to one another.
My all beings respect one another.
May all beings care for one another.
May all beings protect each other.
And may we work together for the benefit of all.
This was an on-line talk I gave at the First Sunday Independence Day Democracy Observance on July 5, 2026 organized by Morris Doshin Sullivan and co-sponsored by the Buddhist Coalition for Democracy