BREAKING: shocking July 4 poll that should alarm every American

Nearly half of Americans don't know what our 250th anniversary celebrates

Before the fireworks fade into memory and the bunting is folded away, America should ask itself a simple question: what exactly are we celebrating?

It’s a stunning question to ask on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but it’s a necessary one because it reveals the depth of our civic amnesia. According to a Cato Institute poll, nearly half of Americans can’t identify what the nation’s 250th anniversary commemorates. That isn’t merely an embarrassing statistic. It’s a warning flare. It tells us that something foundational has slipped away. The inheritance has become detached from the heirs. The meaning of the day has become obscured by spectacle, commerce and politics.

The Fourth of July isn’t the anniversary of a military victory. It isn’t the anniversary of a Constitution. It isn’t the anniversary of George Washington taking command.

It’s the anniversary of an idea. It’s the anniversary of a declaration. It’s the birthday of the United States of America.

Two hundred and fifty years ago today, representatives of 13 colonies placed before humanity the most revolutionary political proposition ever committed to paper. The words didn’t merely justify separation from a king. They redefined the relationship between human beings and power forever.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

No sentence written by the hand of man has transformed the world more profoundly.

Those words have liberated nations. They have inspired revolutions. They have toppled empires. They have animated abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights marchers, labor organizers, immigrants, dissidents and freedom fighters across every continent.

America has often failed to live up to them. It has betrayed them. It has postponed them. It has stained them with hypocrisy.

However, generation after generation has fought not to abandon them, but to fulfill them. That’s the miracle.

The American story has never been perfection. It’s always been aspiration.

Today also marks another extraordinary anniversary in our national life.

Two hundred years ago today, on July 4, 1826, within hours of one another, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died — 50 years to the day after they signed the Declaration.

The rivals had become friends. The combatants had become correspondents.

The architects of American independence departed the world together, reconciled to one another, and conscious of the significance of the day. It remains among the most astonishing coincidences in history. It was as though Providence itself paused to remind the republic that its founders belonged not to themselves, but to posterity.

Their work had become ours. Their arguments had become our inheritance. Their unfinished revolution had become our responsibility.

Thirty-seven years later, in the midst of the bloodiest war Americans have ever fought against one another, Abraham Lincoln stood before a jubilant crowd outside the White House.

The victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had arrived almost simultaneously. The Confederacy had suffered devastating defeats. The tide of the Civil War had turned.

Lincoln didn’t celebrate merely military success. He celebrated the vindication of an idea. He reminded the crowd what had happened “eighty odd years” earlier:

That was the birthday of the United States of America.

He reflected on Jefferson and Adams dying together 50 years after signing the Declaration.

He remembered another president, James Monroe, who had also died on the Fourth of July.

Then he described the Civil War with perfect clarity.

It was, he said, “an effort to overthrow the principle that all men are created equal.”

Nothing more needed to be said. Everything else followed.

The battlefields of Gettysburg weren’t simply about territory. Vicksburg wasn’t merely about controlling the Mississippi River. The war was about whether the Declaration would survive. Whether equality was real or a lie. Whether America would continue to exist as a proposition, or collapse into oligarchy sustained by human bondage.

Lincoln understood something that every generation must learn anew.

There are moments when history tests a people. Not for their comfort or prosperity, but for their character.

This is such a moment.

The test before us isn’t identical to the one Lincoln faced, but the essential question remains the same: will Americans defend the principles that gave birth to the republic? Or, will we surrender them through exhaustion, indifference and fear?

No republic dies all at once. It decays. Its institutions are bent. Its laws become selective. Its courts are intimidated. Its public treasury becomes private loot. Its citizens become spectators. Its patriotism becomes performance instead of duty. Its history becomes something to market rather than something to understand.

The danger descending upon America is neither novel nor harmless. Every generation has confronted some version of it. The names change. The ambitions don’t. Power always seeks fewer restraints. Corruption always seeks legitimacy. Authoritarians always demand loyalty instead of citizenship.

The Declaration remains the answer — not because it is old — but because it’s eternally new.

Every generation must decide whether those words remain true. Every generation must decide whether equality is merely decorative language, or the organizing principle of American life. Every generation must decide whether liberty belongs to everyone, or only to those who hold power.

That’s the test before us — whether Americans remember why this country exists at all.

The republic has survived invasion. It has survived civil war, depression, world wars, assassinations and demagogues.

Its future has never depended upon the greatness of a single leader.

It has always depended upon the courage of ordinary Americans willing to stand up when standing up became difficult.

Lincoln concluded his brief remarks with extraordinary humility.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “this is a glorious theme.”

It still is.

Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, the glorious theme remains unfinished.

The work, the promise and the republic itself remain unfinished.

The question before us today is the same one that has confronted every generation since Jefferson first put pen to paper: will we prove worthy of what was entrusted to us? Or, will future Americans remember this generation as the one that inherited the greatest experiment in human liberty ever devised — and lacked the courage to defend it?

On this Fourth of July, the answer belongs to us.

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