On the Fourth of July, 1821, the 45th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams stood before his fellow citizens in the House of Representatives. Rather than flatter them, Adams warned them.
America, he said, “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” Were she ever to do so, the fundamental maxims of her policy “would insensibly change from liberty to force… and she might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
He chose the anniversary deliberately, treating the country’s birthday as a day not only to celebrate America but to warn it. As we mark 250 years of American independence, that habit of self-examination is worth recovering, because Adams described the country we have become. Läs artikel