The following is an edited transcript of remarks delivered via live video by Anton Chaitkin to the July 5, 2026 U.S. presidential campaign event near Philadelphia held by independent LaRouche candidate Diane Sare, titled “America 250—A Rededication.” Mr. Chaitkin, a noted historian, is an author of numerous historical studies, including the books, Treason in America: From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman, Who We Are: America’s Fight for Universal Progress—From Franklin to Kennedy, Vols. I & II, and co-author of the book, The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush.

Good afternoon, everybody. It’s nice to talk to you. I’m going to give you some highlights from the third volume of Who We Are that I’m writing now. I’ve already published two volumes of this trilogy. The topic here is the Theodore Roosevelt regime change, or coup d’état.

To introduce this, you have to look back at what was overthrown. There was a tradition of economic nationalists from the 19th Century, coming out of the Revolution, of each generation trying to renew the principles of the American Revolution.

In the late 1880s and 1890s, even though they weren’t Lincoln’s philosophical equals, a new generation of leadership—starting with James Blaine and continuing through William McKinley—took up that challenge, the challenge of universal progress. By the 1890s, what they had accomplished amounted to a realization of Benjamin Franklin’s dream; that with new powers over nature, and new forms of cooperation among developed countries, humanity could be uplifted in ways that had never before been physically or culturally possible.

America 250

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by what would soon become the United States of America. That instrumental document laid down the principles of an anti-oligarchic republican form of government, and would go on to be the inspiration for countless other peoples around the world, forever changing the shape of history. Today, this history is either misunderstood or intentionally misconstrued, and the U.S. has nearly abandoned the outlook of its Founding Fathers. Over the course of this year, EIR will be publishing key articles on the true anti-oligarchic history of the United States in the hopes of contributing to the widest possible discussion of these principles, the rediscovery of which has enormous implications for whether the world can get out of its current state of turmoil today.