07/03/2026
It's hard to quantify the distinction of one quarter of a millennium. To the cultures of antiquity, 250 years is nothing. To the great empires of the West, 250 years is much more relevant and sobering. It could be as simple as Eastern cultures having more patience and playing the long game against the rushed indulgence of the West with each generation chasing, more prematurely, the conveniences and circumstances witnessed in older generations.
In the sixth century since the Age of Discovery, the powers who dared - the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Italians are on the path to being but a footnote of history, their greatness referenced in the past tense. The European Union's flagship "democracies" The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, The Fifth French Republic and Germany, Europe’s largest economy, are none better as those individual governments are orchestrating their own su***de by absorbing millions of foreign aliens who will never assimilate into those nation’s cultural fabrics, most adhering to a religion which, at best, wants to subjugate non-believers or, at the worst, wants them annihilated. The foreigners are also bankrupting the host nation’s coffers by overwhelming the welfare state; the greatest experiments in self-destruction ever experienced in the West.
What of the American Empire?
Prior to the American Enterprise, the West's two great empires had multiple manifestations of power and influence. The British lost their empire but made London an international financial hub. The Roman Empire became the Catholic Church.
The American Experiment is and will always be exceptionally unique because unlike both the Roman and the British Empires, social class, as it related to upward mobility, did not matter. The starting point was a non-factor. The structural fabric of the American Experiment was England’s common law integrated with the political and intellectual theories brought about by the Enlightenment. The third element was the religious and spiritual revival precipitated by The Great Awakening.
The fortune and glory of the New World was driven, mainly, by Englishmen with destiny and ambition who would be boxed out of aristocratic high society. Their forefathers pushed King John to sign The Magna Carta. The future generations fought in the English Civil War. Those generations were able to limit power from absolute monarchy to a parliamentary government formed in the monarch’s name. In Britain’s American colonies, the Great Grandfathers of the Founders built upon the foundation of the Mayflower Compact to set up self-government in the New World.
Why the American Empire?
Put simply, the English possessed ambition and a culture of destiny unlike any of the European powers.
Spanish discovery and exploration in the Caribbean and Central America gave the Spanish the staging point to rule the West. They had a five-year head start on the English (Cabot), a seven-year head start on the Italians (Vespucci), nearly 30 years on the Portuguese (Magellan) and over 40 years on the French (Cartier). The masters of their fate, they turned their eyes south to colonize South America. Too many competing interests and hubris doomed the Spanish. Not 100 years after Columbus became the first European since the Vikings to set foot on the Americas, Lord Charles Howard and his better-known Vice-Admiral, Sir Francis Drake, sealed the fate of the Spanish with their brilliant defeat of King Phillip II's Invincible Armada.
The French monopolized logistics from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi Delta, throughout the Great Lakes, Ohio River Valley, and far into The Great Plains, but they were (and are still) rather apathetic and tried to use that supply chain to build the fur trade for the consumer markets back in the mother country rather than colonize the new. The English, driven by that destiny and ambition, started colonizing, and the population in Britian’s American colonies would double every 20 years. That rare breed would tame the wilderness. They built settlements that became towns and towns that would become cities. They moved west, crossed mountains, defended outposts that would become forts and held their own on the first frontier. They fought, they struggled, they experienced heartbreak and death, but they would flourish.
How did that lead to independence?
The Americans were the most driven, ambitious and destiny-chasing group of British subjects. And when they were tired of being subjects, those men, already some of the richest in Britain's American colonies decided they'd rather die on their feet than live on their knees.
Not one of them had anything to gain from independence. They would face years of hardships building a new nation and creating a new economy, forging alliances and conducting trade. The men who signed the Declaration of Independence would personally back loans or provide funds that would never be forgiven and never be repaid. Their homes would be burned and estates destroyed, they would be hunted; their wives and daughters ravaged and their sons killed. Jefferson's personal covenant states as much, "For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
George Washington, a man many would be surprised to have been absent from the signing, was on Long Island preparing the Continental Army for the British surge of New York City led by General William Howe. The Greatest American would not learn of the Declaration until the ninth day of July and the Continental Army would not taste victory until Christmas Night of 1776. One of Virginia's wealthiest men, Washington's convictions on the Revolution are best summed up from his words at Valley Forge: "If all else fails, I will retreat up the valley of [Virginia], plant my flag on the Blue Ridge, rally around the Scotch-Irish of that region, and make my last stand for liberty amongst a people who will never submit to tyranny whilst there is a man left to draw a trigger."
Those are just two testaments to courage and commitment, but it was the measure of their resolve.
Why does any of that matter now?
The greater West is crumbling. Political correctness has created a one-way street to cultural su***de and nations are lining up to succumb. America still has a chance, but the American Experiment is reaching a saturation point. The gates of America have been blown open by politicians seeking votes and big business seeking cheap labor. Illegal aliens have been encouraged, welcomed and provided for in the names of guilt and revenge. The Founding Fathers understood one reason Rome fell was because it reached a point when it was inhabited by people who did not want to be Roman. Subsequently, they established a system of government, the freest and most prosperous the world would ever know, and they expected their posterity, the following generations, to uphold the values and safeguard the virtues of this sweet and blessed land.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are still relevant though the world and the country look nothing like they did when each were signed. The general prosperity of the last 250 years and the dominance of American hegemony after World War II have created a standard for all Americans the Founders could not have possibly fathomed.
Though they could have never known the world in its current state, none of this was done on accident. The Founders were men whose experience came on the tail end of 150 plus years of colonial rule. They fought a seven-year war to evict the French from Britain's American soil. They then experienced 25 years of revolution from the start of the Stamp Act to the swearing in of George Washington as the nation's first Chief Executive. In those 25 years, there were 13 years of Britain's Intolerable Acts and colonial rebellion including the First and Second Continental Congresses, seven years of war and the subsequent six years after victory of the failed Articles of Confederation leading to the Constitutional Convention and ratification of the Constitution. The first Americans were coming up on two centuries removed from the founding of Jamestown.
And yet? The problems of this nation could be doubled, and it would still be the leader among nations. That is the beauty in what those men created. Jefferson expected that revolution and rebellion would be a generational necessity to preserve the American Experiment. The age has presented the situation where revolution or rebellion do not always take place on a field of battle and artillery is not always the weapon of choice. As a (small r) republican (form of) government progresses, the internal and external forces who work so tirelessly to bring about radical change use the liberties recognized by the government as the boring machine to gut the soul of the nation.
Make no mistake, the men who rebelled against King George created a beacon of hope and opportunity the world had never known. The people who protest “No Kings” want the American Experiment to lower its status and adopt the form of government that killed 100,000,000 people in the 20th century. They are not the same. The protestors who cry “democracy,” probably don’t know the difference between a democracy and a republic and why it matters. Words have meaning.
The Founders intended to establish a nation with a standard that would be the envy of the rest of the world. The people who seek to fundamentally change the United States seek to weaken or eradicate Christianity and decrease standards of wealth, consumption, prosperity and private endeavor and investment so that it mirrors the rest of the world. One group sought to build. Another seeks to destroy. They are not the same.
The men who established this “shining city on a hill” wanted to create a nation where people who yearned to be free could have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, limited only by their ability to dream and work. They never intended for it to be a dumping ground of people from Third World nations whose greatest exports are poverty, chaos and corruption. They wanted people willing to risk everything to become Americans, not people who would enter illegally, have no plans to assimilate, wreak havoc on the taxpayer dole, be the first to get offended, but the last to be ashamed.
The men who instituted this great experiment wanted love of country, patriotism, national pride and expectation of the coming generations to be high. They did not want a soulless, defeated citizenry, uneducated, disengaged, and apathetic. Such a group could never preserve, protect or defend the bedrock of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
“…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed.” The Founding Document lays out quite clearly that God not man or government is the sole source of rights and government is in place to ensure those rights are defended. Progressivism directly opposes this as its cornerstone is that all rights come from the state.
The people enduring to take down this nation will never stop. So the battle will never end.
No ground can be given. Tolerance leads to destruction; therefore, we cannot be tolerant as tolerance is the virtue of people who stand for nothing. We stand on the shoulders of giants. We are the greatest promise of the Promised Land. We are the heirs of victors – men and women who crossed oceans, subdued continents, and manifested destiny. We are the descendants of planners, doers, builders, dreamers, and liberators. Men with brilliance: brilliance in thought, brilliance in action, brilliance in the value of failure, battlefield brilliance, oratory brilliance, brilliance in courage, brilliance in determination, brilliance in enduring. Brilliance in creating this great trial in self-government.
One of my countless prayers is that in 250 years, my great, great, great ……….. grandchildren are as excited and thankful and in awe of celebrating 500 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence as I am about the 250th anniversary.
John Adams was one of the most aware Founders. The Massachusetts attorney, nearly on his own merit, ensured declaring independence was unanimous amongst the 13 colonies during the Second Continental Congress. No small feat. Adams was notorious for his own self-criticism. He was a quick-tempered firebrand with onion-thin skin, not the best combination. He was vain and confided that he was obnoxious, unpopular and suspected. He also had a moral constitution necessary for what he would help achieve.
In the opinion of one, his greatest gift might not be what he gave the present generation, but how he wanted them to enjoy their blessings. So, on this 250th Independence Day, be sure to celebrate the “Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. Solemnize it with pomp and parade, shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.” FOREVERMORE!
