Mamdani gives a Fourth of July speech Washington, Lincoln and even Reagan would have loved

I told you I was going to take the day off (and I am!) but I wanted to share this Fourth of July speech by Hizzoner Zohran Mamdani of New York City delivered an hour and a half ago. You can watch the whole thing here, but for those with short attention spans, here are some clips posted by the one and only Aaron Rupar.

Mamdani: "At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another ... today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted, but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum."

Mamdani: "As we mark 250 years, what do we see? ... we see the wealthiest country in the history of the world – one where children go to sleep hungry while the world's first trillionaire hungers for more ... we see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans."

Mamdani: "Therein lies the work of America – a striving, a bettering, the reaching toward perfection. What a privilege each of us has to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before."

More choice quotes:

We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt streaked hands, those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone, and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.

Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick, but that is not all we see when we look for America. We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighbor. Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work and still believes his country can do better by his family.

Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder, yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we the people. We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors without asking how long they have lived here or what papers they have as ICE invades our neighborhoods. We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots. We see America each time working people demand more, not just for themselves but for their fellow Americans.

There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain "Love it or leave it," they say. But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent. It is every march led under the heavy sun. It is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free?

I'll leave you with the impression this left on me, which is that Mamdani, despite his reputation for being a democratic socialist, is expressing the principles, values and tropes of another kind of school of political thought, which is republican liberalism. That's republicanism with a small r. That's important, because the republicanism that Mamdani is channeling in this speech is not what you will find in today's Republican Party. It was found in the GOP of Lincoln and (somewhat) in the GOP of Reagan. But mainly, it would be found among the founding fathers.

I'm in a hurry, so I'm gonna use Gemini to summarize republican liberalism. "Republican liberalism is a political philosophy that weds liberal rights — such as individual liberties and the rule of law — with the republican tradition of civic virtue and participatory democracy. It seeks to protect citizens not just from government interference, but also from systemic domination by private or public powers."

Major tenets include (and I am literally copying and pasting this):

Freedom as non-domination

Unlike classical liberalism, which focuses primarily on freedom from direct interference, republican liberalism is defined by freedom from domination. You are only truly free if no individual, corporation, or government holds arbitrary power over you — even if they choose not to exercise that power.

Civil liberties and checks and balances

It upholds constitutional guarantees like freedom of speech, assembly, and conscience. To prevent tyranny, it requires strict checks and balances, the separation of powers, and robust institutional independence rather than relying solely on the whims of a democratic majority.

Civic virtue and the common good

Borrowing from classical (small-r) republicanism, it asserts that a free society relies on active, educated citizen participation. Government isn't merely a referee managing individual interests, but an active institution capable of fostering a genuinely "common good" through democratic discourse.

My point is there's nothing exotic about what Mamdani is saying here. It's not even that democratic socialist, from what I can tell, though there are many ways each school of thought overlaps. Ronald Reagan would not have made the same speech, but there are passages he definitely would have endorsed. And it is exactly the kind of speech we need to hear during a time in which one political party has turned civic virtue into a vice and made itself the enemy of the common good.