July 04, 2026

Good morning! Today is Saturday, July 4th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. On the semiquincentennial, Reid Smith reflects on the surreal spectacle of American strikes on Iran during a World Cup it hosts, and asks whether a republic founded on self-government can still constrain its own power with prudence and wisdom. Smith traces restraint as a broken but enduring American promise, from Washington's Farewell to Eisenhower's warning, arguing that the 1947 National Security Act turned war from a state of exception into the routine province of the executive branch. Christopher Mott revisits Washington's Farewell Address as a second Declaration of Independence, drawing a pointed parallel between the young republic's refusal to be drawn into revolutionary France's quarrels and today's Middle East entanglements undertaken at the behest of a foreign country. and now for the details. On this Fourth of July, as Americans mark the semiquincentennial, The American Conservative opens with a meditation on the gap between our founding aspirations and our present conduct abroad. The occasion is striking. Hours before Iran's national soccer team took the pitch in Seattle for its World Cup match against Egypt, U.S. Central Command announced further strikes against the Islamic Republic. A host nation had never before bombed a participating country during the tournament, and this came just months after FIFA awarded President Donald Trump its Peace Prize. As Reid Smith writes, the scene is absurd, but the paradox is typically American. Smith argues that restraint has rarely been America's habit, but it has always been part of America's promise. He traces that thread from Washington's warning against permanent alliances, through John Quincy Adams's insistence that America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy, to Eisenhower on the military-industrial complex, and through generations who marched against war in Vietnam and Iraq. Smith notes that the National Security Act of 1947 routinized wartime mobilization and turned war, once conceived by the Founders as a state of exception requiring public deliberation and congressional consent, into the province of the executive branch and its classified bureaucracies. The result, he writes, is a republic that often uses force while rarely choosing war. His question for the holiday: can a nation founded on self-government constrain its own power with prudence, courage, and wisdom. In a companion piece for the anniversary, Christopher Mott revisits George Washington's Farewell Address and argues that, in the field of diplomacy, it deserves to be read as a kind of second Declaration of Independence. Mott sets the scene in the 1790s, when revolutionary France, having helped secure American independence at Saratoga, was pressing the young United States to serve as a base for privateering against Britain. The Washington administration instead issued a Proclamation of Neutrality and concluded the Jay Treaty of 1795. The treaty was so bitterly contested that John Jay was burned in effigy across the country, and Alexander Hamilton was struck by a stone while speaking in its defense. Mott writes that Washington, a former land surveyor, had a spatial rather than ideological conception of geopolitics. He saw the American experiment as dependent on distance from Europe's quarrels and on avoiding entangling alliances with friend and foe alike. Mott quotes Washington's warning that a passionate attachment of one nation for another dooms the smaller to be a satellite of the greater, and gives ambitious or deluded citizens the opportunity to betray their own country's interests under the appearance of virtue. Mott draws the parallel to the present Middle East, where, he writes, the U.S. government has conceded that its involvement occurred at the behest of a foreign country. The lesson he takes from Washington is strategic self-determination, avoiding the entanglements of both permanent enemies and permanent allies. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.