Days before the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—and Pope Leo XIV’s July 3 reception of the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal in Philadelphia—independent U.S. presidential candidate Diane Sare issued the following statement, linking the first American pope’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, to the anti-colonial “Spirit of 1776.” Sare speaks in Philadelphia on July 5. Her statement follows in full:
The American Pope and the Spirit of 1776: America’s Next 250 Years
This message is for all Americans regardless of religious persuasion. I am writing to you as a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America and as an American citizen who has been anguished by the turn of our nation over the last decades to embody the policies of the very British Empire which we had intended to defeat for all mankind 250 years ago. Whether humanity can avert a plunge into the nuclear Armageddon warned of by General MacArthur in 1945 depends very much on the actions of our nation today and whether we can revive the anti-colonial “Spirit of 1776” that inspired people the world over and created the potential for the liberation of mankind from oppression and darkness.
The Evil British Empire
On July 4th, 1821, then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams delivered a remarkable address to the Congress in which he read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety. He opened with a sharp polemic against the murderous barbarism of the British Empire, carried out “in the name of the meek and humble Jesus.” Adams wrote that the British, “from a small Island in the Atlantic Ocean, had extended their dominion over considerable parts of every quarter of the Globe… In the theories of the Crown and the Mitre man had no rights. Neither the body nor the soul of the individual was his own.”
What could have been further from the message of Jesus Christ than to burn at the stake those who refused to recognize the arbitrary right of a king to rule his subjects? What could be further from the message of Jesus Christ than the genocidal ideology of Parson Thomas Malthus and his British East India Company, which caused the death by starvation of eighty million people in India?
The American colonists declared their independence from that system and from that ideology and insisted that there were principles of Truth, or natural law, which any legitimate government must uphold. Imagine how the words of that Declaration sounded to the kings and high priests of the Old World: “We declare these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”
My fellow Americans, consider how far we have fallen from upholding the principles of our revolution. “Might makes right” (or “Peace through Strength") is incompatible in every way with the conception that every human being has been created equal. This ugly outlook asserts that those with more power, more money, and more influence will decide the fate of those who have less. Now the Epstein Files have revealed to those who wished to deny it, that this moneyed class believes that the weakest members of society are merely the playthings of the stronger, to be used for pleasure and tossed aside.
This is why, despite the mountains of evidence of hideous war crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people, the Congress of the United States of America has been incapable of taking action to stop the slaughter and instead has become complicit in genocide.
This is why senators like Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer are more than happy to see the Ukraine-Russia war drag on and on until no Ukrainian men are left to fight. These senators are making money on the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and are proud to do so.
On the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, our nation seems to have arrived at a new level of depravity which could not have been imagined by our founders.
In this dark moment when the world wondered whether anything good might again come from the United States, a new pope, Leo XIV, was elected at the Vatican, and he is an American—the first American pope in history.
Pope Leo XIV has written an encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, that is far more in keeping with the principles of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution than any of the utterances that have come forth from the current president, the previous president, or any president of the United States in the last six decades. He writes, “Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted, and fraternity is made possible.”
Does that not resonate with the words of the Preamble of the United States Constitution?
On July 3, Pope Leo XIV will be presented the 38th Annual Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center and will deliver remarks from the Vatican via video to thousands of Americans gathered in Philadelphia for the occasion and for the 250th anniversary of our nation’s pledge to uphold the inalienable rights of all mankind. I do not doubt that his remarks will capture the intention of those founding patriots who sacrificed all for the good of “ourselves and our posterity.”
A rededication to the truths upon which our nation was founded, the inalienable right of every human being to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” will allow us to reverse every evil policy that we have tolerated over the last 60 years.
In a Vatican pre-ceremony where Pope Leo received the Liberty Medal in person, he said, “I would just like to recall the words signed by the founding fathers of the nation 250 years ago in Philadelphia in the Declaration of Independence when they said, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident’ that all men have received fundamental rights from our Creator, and they include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
“May those values continue to inspire all of us in the United States and throughout the world, and together, hopefully, we can all work so that those freedoms will indeed be a part of the lives of all people everywhere.”
The Pope expressed exactly what John Quincy Adams said in his 1821 address: the principles upon which the United States was founded were to be the “cornerstone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe.”
To make that real, we also need physical economic policies that allow people to live in peace and security. That is why I’m running for President of the United States on the program developed by the late American genius Lyndon LaRouche.
We haven’t had a president in a long time that understands these matters, but we now have an American pope who does.