On September 23, 2019, President Donald Trump spoke at the United Nations about his government’s plans to dedicate 25 million US dollars to support religious freedom around the world. He illustrated the need for this initiative by pointing out that “the United States is founded on the principle that our rights do not come from government, they come from God. This immortal truth is proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and enshrined in our First Amendment to our Constitution, Bill of Rights. Our Founders”, so Trump, “understood that no right is more fundamental to a peaceful and prosperous and virtuous society, than the right to follow one’s religious convictions.” [i] No need to say that the right to follow one’s own religious convictions is commonly known as the freedom of religion.
Saved by God
On January 20, 2025, the same President said in his Inaugural Address: “Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.” [ii] If America’s greatness culminates in a “peaceful, prosperous and virtuous society”, and, if no right is more fundamental to such a society than the right to follow one’s religious convictions, then the most fundamental and most urgent task for which President Trump believes he was destined by God is the protection and defense of religious freedom.
The most exceptional nation
On the 4th of July of 2019, speaking at Lincoln Memorial, President Trump opened his Salute to America speech by stating: “On this day, 243 years ago, our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to declare independence and defend our God-given rights. […] That same American spirit that emboldened our founders,” the President said, “has kept us strong throughout our history. To this day, that spirit runs through the veins of every American patriot. It lives on in each and every one of you here today. It is the spirit of daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love that built this country into the most exceptional nation in the history of the world, and our nation is stronger today than it ever was before.” [iii]
The rights of all Men
In their Declaration of Independence, the 13 brandnew Free and Independent American States declared that they held as self-evident truths that in order to secure the unalienable rights endowed to Man by his Creator, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”, and that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” This, and nothing other than this, is what defined the united States’ “exceptionality”. To be sure, the Founders were referring to the unalienable rights of Man, i.e. of all Men. So, when President Trump said that the United States “is founded on the principle that our rights do not come from government, they come from God”, the word “our” doesn’t mean that Americans are unique in having been endowed with these rights by the Creator of Man.
Independence and immortal truths
What makes Americans unique and exceptional is that, of all Men, they were the ones who proclaimed this immortal truth in their Founding Document. They were the ones who declared that Governments are instituted among Men to secure these rights and that Governments may be abolished and replaced by new ones when they become destructive of these ends. While the Declaration exclusively pertains to the united States of America where it specifically concerns declaring their independence, its Preamble’s immortal and self-evident truths do pertain to all men. In other words, it is not its political and military independence and strength that makes America great and exceptional, but its openly declared adherence to immortal truths.
Foreign affairs
Yet, nowhere in the Declaration did the young united States declare that their Governments ‒ i.e. the Governments of the States ‒ would or should involve themselves in struggles between foreign peoples and their governments in case the latter would become destructive to these universal ends or miserably fail to secure them. When it comes to foreign affairs, all that the Declaration could possibly imply is that when foreign governments or peoples intentionally interfere with American (State) Governments’ independence or impede, weaken or threaten the latters’ capacity or determination to secure the God-given rights ‒ in casu the religious freedom ‒ of their governed, American governments might decide to take defensive actions. If they fail to do so, it is the right of the People to abolish them and institute new ones. When it comes to America’s Federal Government, if the Declaration of Independence is indeed the manifestation of the “American spirit that emboldened our founders” and which “to this day … runs through the veins of every American patriot”, that Federal Government is also bound not to interfere with the affairs of foreign countries and peoples unless it could be proven that the latter were intentionally and actively impeding, weakening or threatening its independence and/or capacity or readiness to secure the God-given rights ‒ in casu the religious freedom ‒ of American citizens.
Fly-over and Battle Hymn
In 2019, President Trump ended his Salute to America by framing America’s exceptionality in terms of its military strength. While the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was played with a “fly-over”, he said “God bless you. God bless the military. And God bless America. Happy Fourth of July.” If, 249 years ago, the united States of America firmly secured their independence from the British Empire and all other “powers of the earth” to defend their citizens’ God-given rights, one wonders why, today, in a blatant showing of rabid “exceptionality”, the “most exceptional nation in the history of the world” spends ‒ “spends” as in deficit spending ‒ an exceptional amount of money to maintain its “stronger than ever before” military operations around the globe. Currently, the costs of keeping up and exporting America’s “exceptionality” by military means far exceeds 1 trillion US dollars per year.
The most fundamenta;l right
President Trump’s first administration vowed to spend 25 million US dollars on the protection of religious freedom, religious sites and relics. In addition, it would form “a coalition of US businesses for the protection of religious freedom”. Laudable as this initiative may have been, this amount is a negligible fraction (0,000024 %) of the one trillion dollars the U.S.A. spends on offensive warfare, “colour revolutions”, counterterror operations and associated overt and covert practices outside its own jurisdiction. If it isn’t political, military and constitutional independence but religious freedom that is the most fundamental right to establish and maintain a peaceful, prosperous and virtuous society, and, if this is what defines a sovereign and independent country’s greatnes and exceptionality, then wouldn’t it be a great idea if the U.S.A. would stop interfering militarily with foreign nations’ independence, drastically reduce its defense budget and use the freed up dollars to promote and support worldwide recognition and defense of the self-evident truths enshrined in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence ?!
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[i] https://ml.usembassy.gov/remarks-by-president-trump-at-the-united-nations-event-on-religious-freedom-new-york-ny/
[ii] https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025/01/the-inaugural-address/
[iii] https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-salute-america/
