Living former presidents share birthday messages for USpublished at 21:46 BST
Image source, Poll/Getty ImagesLiving former presidents at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center last month
All four living former US presidents have shared messages as the nation marks its 250th anniversary.
President Joe Biden, the immediate past president, recalls the premise of the Declaration of Independence that all people are created equal.
“We chose that path 250 years ago but that’s where the work began, not where it ended,” he says before warning that the nation’s promise of equality for all was still a work in progress.
“We still haven’t fully lived up to those words in the Declaration. But we’ve never walked away from them, and this July 4, I hope all of us can commit to one thing: that we never will.”
The country’s first Black president, Barack Obama, has reshared excerpts of a recent speech he made at the opening of his presidential museum last month in which he talks about the nation’s founding and shared values.
“There’s more to do to fulfil the nation’s founding ideals,” he says, adding that “every generation must take up the unfinished work of the last and carry it further – protecting what’s right, fixing what’s wrong, and making our union a little more perfect.”
The 43rd president George W. Bush says that “the next 250 years require Americans to be citizens, not spectators”. Americans need to “take an active interest in the health and welfare of our country and the communities in which they live”, he adds.
His predecessor Bill Clinton used his congratulatory anniversary message to also comment on the state of US politics today.
“Today, we celebrate this milestone amid another period of deep division, renewed questions about America’s future and role in the world, and serious threats to our own institutions and to our democracy itself,” the 42nd president said.
