Read it all.

ACNA news: Abp Wood's parish states they have continuously cooperated with the prosecution & defense, they haven't threatened the jobs of employees who may testify, & the court should issue a "corrective public statement" to their document that said the parish was uncooperative. pic.twitter.com/mTBXIWNMXL

— Arlie Coles (@ArlieColes) July 8, 2026

From the start, 250 years ago, America’s founders believed that their republic would shine out as an example to all humanity. But the republic was also an experiment, and they feared that it could soon collapse into disorder or tyranny. Such has been the dance throughout America’s extraordinary history. Slavery and xenophobia, corruption and robber barons, civil war and world war have all jostled the republic even as America rose to become the beacon of the free world.

On July 4th Americans are celebrating their semiquincentennial. All those syllables rebut the founders’ gloom. Far from succumbing to tyranny, America saved the world from tyrants three times over. Glorious disorder created a dynamism that has long sustained America as a superpower. Dominance comes with temptations, but the United States has by and large held out republican virtues as the salvation of people everywhere.

Yet this birthday comes at another anxious moment in America’s story. Virtue is under threat and talk of decline is in the air. Even as citizens celebrate together, public life is scarred by division. America is demolishing the world order that it created after the defeat of fascism in 1945. The restless republic is opening a new chapter, but does that signal retreat, as some Americans worry, or instead herald a renewal?

Read it all.

America saved the world from tyrants three times over. Its economic dynamism has long sustained it as a superpower. By and large it has held out republican virtues as the salvation of people everywhere https://t.co/19Rn9DI67F

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) July 6, 2026

During his 1984 trip to China, President Ronald Reagan spoke to Chinese college students of America’s commitment to the “self-evident truths” of its founding. Reading from the Declaration of Independence, he affirmed America’s foundational moral principles: All humans are created equal, and valued equally, by God. God grants every person on earth certain inalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  

President Reagan emphasized the importance of religion in living out these truths: “[Our faith is] why we wish well for others. It’s why it grieves us when we hear of people who cannot live up to their full potential.” Americans, he said, have even used their freedom to fight and die while protecting the freedom of others. 

He told the students that their American peers had “committed to memory” the self-evident truths of the Declaration. His implicit message was that America’s students know that human equality, freedom, and dignity are given by God and not by the state. The state’s duty is to secure the inalienable rights of its citizens, especially religious freedom.  

No American president could truthfully make such a statement today. Two hundred and fifty years since our nation’s founding, the public conscience has begun to replace its fidelity to inalienable rights and religious freedom with a state-enforced commitment to radical human autonomy. The reasons for this authoritarian shift are not new, but its emergence in the mainstream is led by the Democratic Party and our elite educational institutions.  

Read it all.

https://t.co/4E3naneYGj Two hundred and fifty years since our nation’s founding, the public conscience has begun to replace its fidelity to inalienable rights and religious freedom with a state-enforced commitment to radical human autonomy.

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) July 1, 2026

In the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln said America was “conceived in liberty.” Today we might call that our country’s unique selling proposition. While other nations emphasized biological unity, America in the 20th century finally became a liberty theme park where people of all skin colors and ethnicities could together enjoy the thrill rides of building families and careers. 

On our national roller coaster, we’ve had the right to wave hands as long as we do not hit the noses of our neighbors. George Washington defined this liberty theme park well in a Bible-oriented letter to a Jewish synagogue in 1790: “Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid” (an allusion to Micah 4:4).

Legal racial segregation has disappeared, but on our 250th anniversary tomorrow, we should remember a roadblock that appeared shortly before our 200th: In 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled that unborn children had no right to life. A redefinition of liberty followed in Justice Anthony Kennedy’s 1992 defense of abortion: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” 

Earlier, liberty meant “live and let live”—but live within a common reality that does not include file cabinets marked “my facts” and “your facts.” That’s not true now. Post-Kennedy and within postmodernism, we feel entitled to live with internet algorithms that feed us only the news we feel fit to imprint on our brains.

Read it all.

https://t.co/AKOUNAujbW Still a Restless Nation, Unless We Rest in God

— Ken Ragsdale (@ken_ragsdale) July 4, 2026

This wasn’t enough. Not nearly. Not even close.

It might feel harsh to boil down a month of excitement and exhilaration to something as simple as that, but for all of the pageantry and majesty of high-level sports, the scoreboard always tells the tale. The United States men’s national team gave this country everything it could have wanted from a home team in a World Cup: beauty and belief, passion and grit, a buzzing, rising feeling that this was a moment we would always remember.

Everything, except another game.

Is it a failure? It doesn’t matter. There will be plenty of focus on that word and whether it applies, but the honest truth is this: It makes no difference what you call it because it’s clear what this was not — a success.

The players know. Mauricio Pochettino was brought here to elevate the talent pool, sure, and to enhance the program’s tactical acumen, absolutely. But mostly he was recruited — with dollars kicked in by high-value U.S. Soccer donors — to deliver a different ending to these summers.

Read it all.

USMNT will look back at 2026 World Cup as a missed opportunity. Unfortunately the US soccer team was definitely out played outsmarted both on offense and defense. https://t.co/E7esLw7XRx

— Thomas Reilly (@ThomasR84194144) July 7, 2026

O God, renew our spirits by thy Holy Spirit, and draw our hearts this morning unto thyself, that our work may not be a burden, but a delight; and give us such a mighty love to thee as may sweeten all our obedience.  Let us not serve with the spirit of bondage as slaves, but with cheerfulness and gladness, as children, delighting ourselves in thee and rejoicing in thy wishes for the sake of Jesus Christ.

–Robert W. Rodenmayer, ed., The Pastor’s Prayerbook: Selected and arranged for various occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)

Morning everyone I hope you are well. Crossing the River Brathay in Langdale built in the early 18 hundreds with the Pikes as the backdrop. Have a great day. pic.twitter.com/DMeMAdKHXF

— Rod Hutchinson (@lakesrhino) July 7, 2026

What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,

“For thy sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

–Romans 8:31-39

Good morning and happy Tuesday from my forest in Northern Maine.
2 for Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/sG1G7BBejE

— Dogman (@Dogman1013) July 7, 2026