Your Ancestors Were Not Villains

“We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government… to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” - James Madison

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I love this country, even if I often hate what is done in her name. I was blessed to grow up in the heart of America, in a town where children ran free, men removed their hats for the anthem, and Main Street was decked out in American flags not just on holidays, but every day of the year; the highest of high-trust societies.

For people like us, American virtues are not talking points to be deployed as political capital during election year Twitter fights. They’re in our DNA. We have skin in the game; our fathers, and their fathers, are buried here, in American dirt.

I vividly remember my Dad driving me to hockey practice in south Florida, late ‘90s, and pulling his 1993 Mazda B3000 (Ford Ranger body) to the side of the road to pick up an American flag on a post that had fallen over and was laying on the ground. He didn’t give us a long speech about flag etiquette; he didn’t say a word. He just did it. This is who we are. We are Americans.

Well-funded forces remain hard at work to obscure our national legacy, to paint our ancestors as villains, and to besmirch the men who gave everything to form this more perfect Union, even as they benefit from a political environment only made possible when hard men decide to draw hard lines.

What’s worse, many actively seek to degrade and destroy the very aspects of our country that make it the foremost beacon of freedom and prosperity in the world, a place so great that even those who hate it refuse to leave. Every statue, every biography, every plaque, every remnant of the old world must be pulled down and desecrated, for they are constant reminders to the doomer/consumer class that they are not half the men their fathers were.

The founding of the United States of America was, and is, a gracious gift of God, which enabled the free exercise of true, albeit imperfect, religion. We live as no men in history have lived, and we owe everything to God for His mercy and kindness.

And yet we must not deny the national sins of our past. No decent person would. Against those who hold our forefathers to unrealistic standards of perfection for the purpose of writing off the entire system as illegitimate and corrupt, we can, and must say, “Lord, have mercy on us, and forgive us of our sins,” even as we acknowledge the universal presence of these same sins in every people group, throughout every era, for all of human history. The only difference is that we fought to put an end to it.

I have no interest in partaking in the chronological snobbery which says that everyone who came before me was a brute, and only now has society finally reached enlightenment, even as the blood of 60 million unborn babies remains fresh on our hands. Like us, like Abraham, Moses, Joseph, and Jacob, like King David, Solomon, Peter, and Paul, the men who built our nation were great sinners in need of redemption. But compared to modern men, they were giants, in almost every respect. And you’ve been taught to hate them.

Do not let anyone tell you that this country was not built on the backs of God-fearing soldiers, fathers, ministers, and sons. They differed by denomination and creed, but they were united in their desire to secure for themselves and their posterity the liberty to worship God without state coercion or persecution. And they knew that this would be impossible apart from a religious people, or at the very least, a morally upright one who attributed every blessing to God’s loving hand.

Colonial history from the Revolutionary era reads much like a theological lexicon thanks to the strong influence of migrant Quakers and Puritans, who founded places like Salem, MA, Bethlehem, PA, Providence, RI, New Canaan, CT, Hebron, CT, and more. I don’t live anywhere near the original colonies, and yet I can’t drive for five minutes without seeing a Paschal Road, or a Smyrna Avenue, or an Antioch Way. The echoes of the old world are all around us, and no amount of secularist mumbo jumbo can ever fully snuff it out.

Their founding documents were even more explicitly Christian. Consider this from the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780:

It is “…the right and duty of all men publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe…” and therefore all men should be encouraged to “the knowledge and belief of the Christian religion.”

The Delaware Constitution, drafted in 1776, required public officials to declare belief in “God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son,” and to affirm the inspiration of Scripture.

The 1777 Articles of Confederation refer to God as the “Great Governor of the World,” and the Declaration of Independence itself speaks to “laws of nature and nature’s God,” asserts that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” appeals “to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,” doing all “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”

Those who tell you the Founders envisioned an American public square entirely devoid of religion refuse to reckon with the reality that eight of the thirteen colonies had official religions and established churches. It was not pluralism they sought, but the freedom to engage in what they considered true Christian religion apart from the tyrannical Church of England which sought to fine, imprison, censor, stigmatize, and even execute its denominational rivals. And yet many would still have you believe that these men would’ve held up paganism, Islam, and Christianity as valid ideological equals, equally deserving of our attention, reverence, and respect. Nonsense; utter nonsense. We are the beneficiaries of an explicitly Christian heritage.

And yet we can see clearly how this fact has been bastardized in recent years. Dudes will look at you with a straight face and say the Founders would’ve fought to the death to protect your right to construct a 20-foot-tall-demon-statue in downtown Houston, TX, as if they risked life and limb if only just to preserve one man’s right to worship Baal and invite great curses upon their new homeland. Absolute lunacy, yet treated as modern dogma.

Modern bad actors shamefully ascribe their own ideological rootlessness to the great men who came before them in order to promote their own degenerate worldviews. They’d have you believe John Jay’s foremost priority was protecting LGBTQ+ rights and combating Islamophobia, and that if you oppose Drag Queens reading at the local library’s children’s hour, then you actually hate American principles.

They’ve lost the plot, to say the least, because they fail to realize what the Founders knew full well, that, as the great Uncle Ben once said (RIP), with great power comes great responsibility. Freedom is unsustainable apart from a corresponding social contract rooted in some type of common belief system. For America’s Founders, it was an unwavering belief in God-given liberty and all the duties it entailed. This was their why. Remove God from that equation, and the whole thing caves in on itself.

John Adams famously said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Ben Franklin agreed: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

They recognized that real freedom, true self-rule, is only possible in a society of men capable of ruling themselves. Without this self-discipline, rigid morality, and accountability to God, freedom simply becomes a license for sin and depravity. Compromise the home’s foundation, and the whole thing topples.

Paul discusses the very same thing in his letters to the Galatians:

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

We have been set free, not to sin with impunity, but to fulfill our duties to God, ourselves, and our fellow men.

We are living in the aftermath, and in some cases, the ruins, of that great liberty secured for us centuries ago by men who were prepared to die for it. Most Americans don’t know three of their names, nor do they understand what it cost. They love the historical architecture, but mock the faith that created it. They love the freedom afforded to them by our system of government, but despise the discipline, and conviction, and sacrifice required to obtain and sustain it. They love the fruit, but curse and despise the root.

And thanks to the decline of civic education, they couldn’t replicate it even if they wanted to. They scoff at the notion of American exceptionalism, list a dozen European countries that are far superior, and yet never get around to explaining why they haven’t moved. It’s en vogue to bash America; it makes you the “right type of person,” on “the right side of history.”

As for me, I’m not ashamed to say that I love this country.

I don’t love all of our foreign policy. I don’t love all (or most) of the people that we elect. And I don’t love the majority of the laws and regulations which the bureaucratic nanny state jams through in the middle of the night to enrich their corporate buddies and suffocate the average American trying to make a decent living.

I hate the endless wars, the political pandering, and the widespread corruption and fraud amongst our public officials. I think our government is overwhelmingly run by degenerate fools.

All of these things are the result of sin, which man, in his fallenness, is unable to fully escape.

But that’s not what makes a country, and it’s not why I love mine.

Like many of you, I raised my right hand and swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States of America, not any one politician, political party, or administration.

With all of these issues, why would anyone take such an oath? And why do we still love this country when all it does is break our hearts and keep us up at night?

Because it’s our home. And because I know what it can be, because I tasted it in my childhood years. The way things are now is not the way they always were; and I have great hope that this is not the way things always will be.

We let our kids watch The Sandlot tonight, primarily for the nostalgic Fourth of July fireworks scene which will bring tears to any Heritage American’s eyes. Small-town glory; families living in clean and safe neighborhoods, young kids roaming the town without supervision, massive cookouts in the middle of the street, and neighbors looking out for one another. Many of you can’t fathom a society like this. But I lived it. Many of us did.

This was possible only because we shared a commitment to God and country which transcended economic class, occupational specialty, and cultural background. There was a mutual understanding of the way things worked, the social contract which we had all subconsciously agreed to, and the duties required of us, as outlined in our founding documents, and more importantly, as found in the Scriptures.

As religion has declined in America, and subjective morality and antinomianism have taken its place, this level of social cohesion has all but disappeared, though it still exists in small pockets of the country. Everyone now goes his own way, worships his own god, and abides by his own moral code. The consequences of such moral disorder are evident. Violence; corruption; hatred; division; strife. We have nothing in common anymore.

But the truth is, there are a million things I can’t control, from who we bomb to how many foreigners we let in each year. These things matter, but they’re far outside of my sphere of influence.

Whether this American experiment lasts another 10,000 years or goes out with a bang next week, the reality is that thanks to a few great men who sacrificed their jobs, reputations, families, and lives 250 years ago, I am now able to live, work, and worship in a country that is predominantly free, and to live as few men throughout history have ever lived. She’s imperfect, but she beats the alternative. Real men, who shed real blood, sweat, and tears, made all of this possible, and they deserve our thanks.

I don’t know what the future holds for our nation, but one thing is for certain: our prosperity will be directly correlated to our obedience to God, who promises that, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

The hour is late, and judgment is imminent. Repentance is the only option.

In the coming years, America will have to decide who her god is, for a house divided against itself cannot stand, no matter how many Coexist stickers we slap on it and how many billionaire-funded advertising campaigns tell us diversity is our strength.

In the meantime, we can begin to restore our national ethos in small ways:

• We can teach our children about the men who crossed land and sea to do the unthinkable, before automobiles or cell phones or the internet, all to the glory of God. These must become household names again.

• We can form and/or support those institutions which still uphold values fundamental to the American way of life. Incentivize patriotism. Conversely, we can remove or withhold our support from those institutions which seek to exchange our birthright and heritage for a higher GDP.

• And we can work to build real life community and local trust so that we might begin to break down those digital barriers which atomize our communities and separate us from our neighbors.

As for me, today, I will thank God for the blessings of liberty, and for His providing such men of action.

I am proud to be an American.

May God bless you. Happy Independence Day.

T