Like a herd of American buffalo, joy and high spirits have stampeded across America since January 20, 2025—Liberation Day! The country has been liberated from the bleak, suffocating prison of woke tyranny—and we will need all the determination we can muster if we are going to finally put an end to it. The spirit of Making America Great Again is once more at large in the land, stronger, more inspired, and more determined than ever.
It is hard to keep up with the astounding multitude of executive orders President Trump is signing in his first weeks in office. One deserves more attention than we might be inclined to give it: “Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday.” It is focused on preparing “a grand celebration” of America on July 4, 2026, among “other actions to honor the history of our great Nation.” This includes the construction of the monument garden Trump tried to launch during his first term, now to contain 250 statues in honor of our nation’s birth.
This sounds like feel-good fluff or Trumpian grandiosity compared with the momentous, world-historical actions the administration is taking to recover self-government from the iron grip of the deep administrative state. But the goal of this EO celebrating America’s 250th anniversary is even more important. It concerns what made America great, and will make America great again—what makes America worthy of love and, in Lincoln’s words, worthy of “the last full measure of devotion.”
As a force for good, Donald Trump’s love of America ranks high among the qualities that will make him one of America’s greatest presidents. This most vividly distinguishes him from the self-loathing hatred of America that has guided Democratic politics for half a century, and went far toward destroying the country in just the past four years.
A picture of the MAGA movement is a stadium full of patriots standing with hats off, hands over their hearts, looking up proudly to the star-spangled banner, singing the national anthem with pride and love, often with tears. A picture of the tyrannical woke regime is a room full of Democratic officials, kneeling for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in self-loathing, wrapped in Kente cloth to affirm, by strange voodoo, their devotion to their highest “value”—diversity: everything that is “other” than America or the West.
So for this first celebration of Lincoln’s birthday in America’s Golden Age, I invite you to read (or re-read) an unprepared short speech Lincoln gave while traveling to our nation’s capital to be inaugurated president on the brink of the Civil War. In it, Lincoln expresses in unadorned, spontaneous language the reason for his love of America.
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On February 11, 1861, a day before his 52nd birthday, Lincoln left his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, on a historic train trip to Washington, D.C., where he would be sworn in on March 4. Seven states had seceded from the Union since Lincoln’s election in November, and while Lincoln was traveling to Washington, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
Lincoln’s journey meandered through many cities and towns and several states for 1,900 miles over 12 days. On the way, he made many stops, and throngs of people came out to greet him and see their new president for the first time. Because he had been warned of an assassination plot in Baltimore, Lincoln ended his trip by traveling through the city overnight, and in disguise, to get to Washington early in the morning on February 23.
On Washington’s birthday on February 22, Lincoln visited Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed. He was asked to join in a ceremony raising a new flag of 34 stars over Independence Hall in honor of the admission of Kansas to the Union just a few weeks earlier.
Before the flag-raising ceremony, Mr. Theodore Cuyler, president of Philadelphia’s Select Council, welcomed the president-elect, and Lincoln responded to his welcome with these simple, heartfelt words:
Mr. CUYLER: I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing here, in this place, where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live. You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task of restoring peace to the present distracted condition of the country. I can say in return, Sir, that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. If it can’t be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But, if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle—I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it. Now, in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the Government. The Government will not use force unless force is used against it. My friends, this is a wholly unprepared speech. I did not expect to be called upon to say a word when I came here—I supposed I was merely to do something towards raising a flag. I may, therefore, have said something indiscreet, but I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, in the pleasure of Almighty God, die by.
In his fine biography of Lincoln, Lord Charnwood tells how “the life-story of Abraham Lincoln became one with the life-story of the American people.” Surely, since he first famously came down the escalator, the same can be said of the life-story of Donald Trump. Has he not shown us and the world that he is willing to live by and, in the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by his commitment to Make America Great Again?
May the spirit of Lincoln guide President Trump in all he does.