As much as I enjoy finding more obscure or little known events, sometimes you just have to return to the foundational events that shaped everything else.
Jason, your columns are always well done, but this one tops them all! A masterful blending of history and faith . . . Thank you, and Happy Independence Day!
Fantastic writing and insight! Because I read this after Rich Bitterman’s “The Quiet Power of the Seed,” I could not help but see the parallel’s in the spiritual and ideological worlds. God knew that Marx and Lenin would weaponize the human sin of envy (communism) and that Russia would fall under its spell in 1917, and Russia would make a claim for Godless global domination. So he planted a seed in what would become America, with the spiritual revivals that led to the Declaration of Independence. That seed grew over the next 150 years so that it could resist the Soviet Union. May this devotion inspire greater courage and conviction in declaring God’s word.
This is an insightful perspective! You're right about God's providence working across generations - planting seeds of truth in one era so they can stand strong against darkness in another.
The connection between those early revivals and America's later role in resisting godless ideologies is profound. I've written about that sort of connection in the past though not on this particular subject.
It's a great reminder that our bold declarations today may be preparing ground for battles we can't yet see. Thanks for sharing that insight!
Good and evil is absolutely black and white with no ambiguity.
Thus you cannot limit rights, in fear of the masses, to land-owning white men.
You cant say "All men are created equal (except for Native Americans; women; and slaves.)"
You cant say people have God-given rights, while using your power to have sex with slaves, as Jefferson and many others did. It would be the equivalent of a 5 star general approaching 19 year old Privates for sex, then calling it consensual.
And finally, though lauded ad nauseam, the so-called amazing documents havent prevented a dictator from seizing control of a hapless republic: dismantling it; hounding its citizens; and wreaking havoc.
Laws based on John Locke; Kant; Adam Smith; Descartes; & Rousseau have resulted in nothing but debacles.
First the US scorched America's earth purging it of Natives.
Then they reneged on the loans France had supplied and turned on her: igniting a war.
Then it centralized power and within a few years the government suppressed the Whiskey rebellion & Shays Rebellion with troops.
By 1789 there was a Sedition Act.
By 1846 Jackson had pillaged and raped his way across the South, using ethnic cleansing to seize the land.
By 1848 a vast swathe of land was annexed from Mexico.
Slavers & white supremacists tortured and lynched their Blacks.
By 1929 the US had invaded and seized Hawaii; the Philippines; vast swathes of the Caribbean and Latin America.
Then the 40s: with Japanese internment; nukes; firebombings; and collusion with both Nazis and Stalinists.
From 1946-1991 the US wasted close to a million lives competing with the Soviets.
There have been coups; human experimentation; war profiteering; arms dealing; toxic waste; and germ warfare. Killer cops and private prisons. And now, a dictator.
It was a shitty foundation and the sooner the structure burns to the ground, the better.
It’s always interesting to me when someone takes the time to comment on a post they clearly detest. That level of energy deserves at least a moment of honest engagement.
Let’s start here: no serious student of history pretends the founding of America was without sin. Slavery, genocide, and greed are real stains. No argument there. But acknowledging those failures doesn’t erase the undeniable fact that something radically new was birthed in 1776—an experiment in liberty that, for all its early hypocrisies, created the conditions for more freedom, prosperity, and justice than the world had ever seen.
The men who drafted the Declaration of Independence were flawed. Some were hypocrites. Some were outright sinners. But the idea they set in motion—that rights come from God, not government, and that no man is born to rule over another—was not only revolutionary, it was morally superior to the monarchies, empires, and tyrannies that dominated the world stage at the time.
Did they get it all right? No. But they got something started that could be corrected over time. That’s why Frederick Douglass could call out the contradiction of slavery while still praising the Constitution. It’s why Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t call for the burning of America but instead held it accountable to its own promissory note. That’s what mature moral reasoning does. It can hold complexity. It sees that sometimes justice is forged in stages.
You write that “good and evil is absolutely black and white.” That’s a bold claim. But if that’s true, then so is this: intentionally burning down a nation that has lifted billions out of poverty, defended the powerless, advanced science and medicine, and enshrined religious liberty would be a morally indefensible act. That’s not righteous indignation. That’s destruction disguised as virtue.
There’s a difference between righteous reform and nihilism. The former rebuilds. The latter just wants to watch the house burn.
You don’t have to like the Founders. But you should at least reckon with the fruit of their work. You benefit from it. You live in a world made freer, more prosperous, and more just because a group of flawed men had the courage to defy tyranny and build something new. They didn’t finish the job. They couldn’t. But they laid a foundation that gave others a fighting chance to carry it forward.
That’s not a “shitty foundation.” That’s grace at work through broken people. And if God can do that with them, maybe He’s not done with us either.
You mentioned Switzerland. Great country. Beautiful mountains. Small, homogenous, and with fewer people than most U.S. metro areas. Direct democracy works there because it’s not trying to govern 330 million people across 50 wildly different states. In a nation our size, it would be mob rule. Every national decision would be a viral panic or a Twitter poll away from disaster. That’s why we have a constitutional republic. It’s not perfect, but it keeps both the mob and the tyrant in check.
As for “free” healthcare and college—come on. Nothing is free. You’re just paying for it in other ways: through high taxes, lower innovation, and a system where the government decides what you’re allowed to get and when. I’m not saying ours is ideal, but pretending there’s some utopian setup where everyone gets everything and nobody pays is childish. The bill always comes.
Happiness rankings? Please. They’re based on how people say they feel when surveyed, not how free or fulfilled they are. Countries that rank highest tend to have low expectations and a cultural disdain for standing out. If you're content to let the state define your limits and keep everything level, maybe that feels “happier.” But it’s not freer. It’s not more just. And it’s not something most people risk their lives trying to get into.
And on the dictator line, I can see why you might think that way. He used executive orders he knew to be illegal to bypass Congress, labeled political opponents as “threats to democracy,” and weaponized federal agencies against parents, churches, and journalists. He forced mandates, censored speech, and ran the country like dissent was a crime. But here’s the good news: the system still worked. We got rid of Biden—peacefully—and replaced him with someone who actually loves this country, defends our freedoms, and respects the Constitution. That’s not dictatorship. That’s the power of a resilient republic.
You say it’s a “shitty foundation.” But the fact that you can say that publicly, without being jailed or disappeared, kind of proves otherwise. Our house isn’t perfect, but it still stands—for now—because it was built to survive storms. Including bad leaders. Including people who want to tear it down without offering anything better.
i'd rather be happy than "free and fulfilled". 🤣🤣🤣 What good is any ideal if youre discontent?
This is turning out to be an exercise in philosophy...and not political science.
Rationality and optimization will NEVER win out against sentiment because people do what feels good at the moment: not what has optimized consequences.
What does homogeneity have to do with -anything-?
CH is most certainly NOT ethnically or culturally homogeneous: each village has its own dialect: plus theres 4 separate cultural zones: French, German, Italian, and Romanisch.
i think what you mean is racial homogeneity. But CH has tons of immigrants.
The only commonality they have is: their socioeconomic level is far beyond any region, anywhere in the world.
In the end: what sorts of problems are you willing to tolerate? And to what severity level?
The crime rates in Dallas, St Louis, LA, or any US city would give Europeans heart attacks.
The poverty, homelessness, prison populations, sickness, addictions, and wars are unknown anywhere else.
Thank you for doubling back to 1776. It shows a foundational concept that some have forgotten.
As much as I enjoy finding more obscure or little known events, sometimes you just have to return to the foundational events that shaped everything else.
Jason, your columns are always well done, but this one tops them all! A masterful blending of history and faith . . . Thank you, and Happy Independence Day!
I’d like to print it and proclaim its truths, like they did the rough draft that night.
Yes!!
Thank you for this, Jason! Thank God we prevailed. Salute! Happy Independence Day 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲
Happy Independence Day!
Fantastic writing and insight! Because I read this after Rich Bitterman’s “The Quiet Power of the Seed,” I could not help but see the parallel’s in the spiritual and ideological worlds. God knew that Marx and Lenin would weaponize the human sin of envy (communism) and that Russia would fall under its spell in 1917, and Russia would make a claim for Godless global domination. So he planted a seed in what would become America, with the spiritual revivals that led to the Declaration of Independence. That seed grew over the next 150 years so that it could resist the Soviet Union. May this devotion inspire greater courage and conviction in declaring God’s word.
This is an insightful perspective! You're right about God's providence working across generations - planting seeds of truth in one era so they can stand strong against darkness in another.
The connection between those early revivals and America's later role in resisting godless ideologies is profound. I've written about that sort of connection in the past though not on this particular subject.
It's a great reminder that our bold declarations today may be preparing ground for battles we can't yet see. Thanks for sharing that insight!
Lord, let it be so 🙌🙏
The Final Thoughts are epic!
i dislike the founders and their documents.
Good and evil is absolutely black and white with no ambiguity.
Thus you cannot limit rights, in fear of the masses, to land-owning white men.
You cant say "All men are created equal (except for Native Americans; women; and slaves.)"
You cant say people have God-given rights, while using your power to have sex with slaves, as Jefferson and many others did. It would be the equivalent of a 5 star general approaching 19 year old Privates for sex, then calling it consensual.
And finally, though lauded ad nauseam, the so-called amazing documents havent prevented a dictator from seizing control of a hapless republic: dismantling it; hounding its citizens; and wreaking havoc.
Laws based on John Locke; Kant; Adam Smith; Descartes; & Rousseau have resulted in nothing but debacles.
First the US scorched America's earth purging it of Natives.
Then they reneged on the loans France had supplied and turned on her: igniting a war.
Then it centralized power and within a few years the government suppressed the Whiskey rebellion & Shays Rebellion with troops.
By 1789 there was a Sedition Act.
By 1846 Jackson had pillaged and raped his way across the South, using ethnic cleansing to seize the land.
By 1848 a vast swathe of land was annexed from Mexico.
Slavers & white supremacists tortured and lynched their Blacks.
By 1929 the US had invaded and seized Hawaii; the Philippines; vast swathes of the Caribbean and Latin America.
Then the 40s: with Japanese internment; nukes; firebombings; and collusion with both Nazis and Stalinists.
From 1946-1991 the US wasted close to a million lives competing with the Soviets.
There have been coups; human experimentation; war profiteering; arms dealing; toxic waste; and germ warfare. Killer cops and private prisons. And now, a dictator.
It was a shitty foundation and the sooner the structure burns to the ground, the better.
It’s always interesting to me when someone takes the time to comment on a post they clearly detest. That level of energy deserves at least a moment of honest engagement.
Let’s start here: no serious student of history pretends the founding of America was without sin. Slavery, genocide, and greed are real stains. No argument there. But acknowledging those failures doesn’t erase the undeniable fact that something radically new was birthed in 1776—an experiment in liberty that, for all its early hypocrisies, created the conditions for more freedom, prosperity, and justice than the world had ever seen.
The men who drafted the Declaration of Independence were flawed. Some were hypocrites. Some were outright sinners. But the idea they set in motion—that rights come from God, not government, and that no man is born to rule over another—was not only revolutionary, it was morally superior to the monarchies, empires, and tyrannies that dominated the world stage at the time.
Did they get it all right? No. But they got something started that could be corrected over time. That’s why Frederick Douglass could call out the contradiction of slavery while still praising the Constitution. It’s why Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t call for the burning of America but instead held it accountable to its own promissory note. That’s what mature moral reasoning does. It can hold complexity. It sees that sometimes justice is forged in stages.
You write that “good and evil is absolutely black and white.” That’s a bold claim. But if that’s true, then so is this: intentionally burning down a nation that has lifted billions out of poverty, defended the powerless, advanced science and medicine, and enshrined religious liberty would be a morally indefensible act. That’s not righteous indignation. That’s destruction disguised as virtue.
There’s a difference between righteous reform and nihilism. The former rebuilds. The latter just wants to watch the house burn.
You don’t have to like the Founders. But you should at least reckon with the fruit of their work. You benefit from it. You live in a world made freer, more prosperous, and more just because a group of flawed men had the courage to defy tyranny and build something new. They didn’t finish the job. They couldn’t. But they laid a foundation that gave others a fighting chance to carry it forward.
That’s not a “shitty foundation.” That’s grace at work through broken people. And if God can do that with them, maybe He’s not done with us either.
theres nothing americans have that freer countries dont.
besides a dictator, that is
and mass shootings
and a new war every 6 months
Which countries?
switzerland has direct democracy
and free healthcare/college
Denmark, Finland rank happiest countries: US 78th.
Plus, no dictator!
Need i go on?
You mentioned Switzerland. Great country. Beautiful mountains. Small, homogenous, and with fewer people than most U.S. metro areas. Direct democracy works there because it’s not trying to govern 330 million people across 50 wildly different states. In a nation our size, it would be mob rule. Every national decision would be a viral panic or a Twitter poll away from disaster. That’s why we have a constitutional republic. It’s not perfect, but it keeps both the mob and the tyrant in check.
As for “free” healthcare and college—come on. Nothing is free. You’re just paying for it in other ways: through high taxes, lower innovation, and a system where the government decides what you’re allowed to get and when. I’m not saying ours is ideal, but pretending there’s some utopian setup where everyone gets everything and nobody pays is childish. The bill always comes.
Happiness rankings? Please. They’re based on how people say they feel when surveyed, not how free or fulfilled they are. Countries that rank highest tend to have low expectations and a cultural disdain for standing out. If you're content to let the state define your limits and keep everything level, maybe that feels “happier.” But it’s not freer. It’s not more just. And it’s not something most people risk their lives trying to get into.
And on the dictator line, I can see why you might think that way. He used executive orders he knew to be illegal to bypass Congress, labeled political opponents as “threats to democracy,” and weaponized federal agencies against parents, churches, and journalists. He forced mandates, censored speech, and ran the country like dissent was a crime. But here’s the good news: the system still worked. We got rid of Biden—peacefully—and replaced him with someone who actually loves this country, defends our freedoms, and respects the Constitution. That’s not dictatorship. That’s the power of a resilient republic.
You say it’s a “shitty foundation.” But the fact that you can say that publicly, without being jailed or disappeared, kind of proves otherwise. Our house isn’t perfect, but it still stands—for now—because it was built to survive storms. Including bad leaders. Including people who want to tear it down without offering anything better.
i'd rather be happy than "free and fulfilled". 🤣🤣🤣 What good is any ideal if youre discontent?
This is turning out to be an exercise in philosophy...and not political science.
Rationality and optimization will NEVER win out against sentiment because people do what feels good at the moment: not what has optimized consequences.
What does homogeneity have to do with -anything-?
CH is most certainly NOT ethnically or culturally homogeneous: each village has its own dialect: plus theres 4 separate cultural zones: French, German, Italian, and Romanisch.
i think what you mean is racial homogeneity. But CH has tons of immigrants.
The only commonality they have is: their socioeconomic level is far beyond any region, anywhere in the world.
In the end: what sorts of problems are you willing to tolerate? And to what severity level?
The crime rates in Dallas, St Louis, LA, or any US city would give Europeans heart attacks.
The poverty, homelessness, prison populations, sickness, addictions, and wars are unknown anywhere else.
Ive surveyed the world, on foot, for 25 years.