What kind of world do you want? We stand now at the crossroads of history. America faces a crisis that puts at risk the values that many generations of our nation’s citizens have fought and even died for. In our current course of human events, we wait for leaders who will offer us an inspiring vision for the future of our country and for the fate of humanity. We Americans must manage a situation much like what the Founding Fathers confronted in Philadelphia during the summer of 1776. In the document we celebrate with parades, pageantry and patriotism every Fourth of July, they described the kind of world they wished to give to posterity as their legacy. The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence expressed their vision for a world where “all men are created equal,” a place where people are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among them “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” At the end of that revolutionary document, they placed a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence and pledged a sacrifice of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in the improbable undertaking to free themselves and fellow Americans from British tyranny.
What kind of world do you want? That may very well be the question the Founding Fathers would ask of us here and now 243 years after their courageous stand for liberty. The crisis of confidence in democracy that the world faces in our present day will no doubt create a new and dysfunctional world. If the cancer of doubt in democracy continues to control, it will very well bring an end to our civilization and even our species. The clock to our potential but not inevitable extinction keeps ticking. We have yet to take a stand and make a choice for the continued existence of our human family. Will we take the path to our ultimate demise as our global industrial civilization collapses from the neglect of our environment and decline of our political, economic, cultural and social institutions? Or will we make a better world for ourselves and our posterity. Will we as a humanity not only survive but thrive?