Who Will Win the Battle for America's Future?

Victor Joecks on Jul 13, 2026

President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani each gave a speech in honor of America's 250th birthday. If you removed the name, it'd have been difficult to guess they were talking about the same country.

Start with this. Trump celebrated America's history. He praised America's military heroes and iconic figures like Davy Crockett, Wyatt Earp and Teddy Roosevelt. He applauded America's innovators, like the Wright brothers. He celebrated those who settled the frontier and built the country.

"Americans must never forget that we are a historic and heroic people, with a heroic spirit and a heroic purpose on this beautiful earth of ours," Trump said.

Mamdani took a much dimmer view of the country's past. He repeatedly highlighted some of the country's lowest points.

New immigrants "could not yet see the nativism they would face, the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand," Mamdani said.

Life advice: The next time you go to a birthday party, don't act like Mamdani. Listing off a person's faults when you're supposed to be celebrating them makes you a jerk, not a brave truth teller. Every person and every country has sinned.

Trump credited Americans for America's success.

"No people have done more good, shown more courage, made more progress, righted more injustice, or achieved more greatness than you, the American people," said Trump.

Mamdani made the case that Americans should be grateful for people who weren't from America. After talking about "our newest Americans," Mamdani said, "You each hold a special power: the power to determine what America means."

Notice the difference in emphasis. Trump's praise of the American people can include people from other countries. But it requires that immigrants put aside old loyalties and assimilate into an already existing society, culture and political tradition.

Mamdani believes America needed immigrants to "determine" what America is. But if that were true, immigrants didn't need to come here. They could have created America in their original homelands. That they chose to come here shows Trump is right.

Trump praised our Founders and founding documents as essential to America's greatness.

"Our founders not only won our liberty; they secured it with the most righteous political document ever conceived," he said. "It's called the Constitution of the United States. Very special. And it's because of their genius that we remain the finest people on the planet after 250 years."

Mamdani couldn't have disagreed more.

"We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger and more powerful than everyone else," he said. "The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place."

Note first how Mamdani skews what makes America exceptional. It's not wealth. It's liberty. We were exceptional even as 13 struggling colonies. Americans grew wealthy because we had freedom, not the other way around. That freedom was maintained by people who were proud of their country -- its past, its ideas and its founding documents. They passed this through their children and those immigrants willing to adapt their ways to ours.

The claim that "nothing is fixed in place" isn't a throw-away line. It's a call for upheaval -- to tear down the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Those bedrocks of American government protect individual liberty and check the expansion of government power that socialists crave. No wonder Mamdani doesn't want them to endure.

This is why leftists rewrite America's history, tear down statues and disrespect the American flag. The revolution they seek won't happen if Americans are proud to be Americans.

The battle for America's future will be won by whoever defines her past.

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Victor Joecks is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and host of the Sharpening Arrows podcast. Email him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or follow @victorjoecks on X. To find out more about Victor Joecks and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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