Happy Birthday to the Greatest Nation. A deep dive into the timeless truths that made us great.

What makes America great?

This week, as we celebrate 248 years of independence, and as we near a monumental presidential election, it is incumbent upon us—inheritors and guardians of the sacred flame of American liberty—to consider the origins of our national greatness.

Great nations are not born by mere happenstance. Moreover, as President Calvin Coolidge declared in his 1926 Independence Day address, “Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence.”

America, in other words, is no accident. She is the byproduct of decades of cultivation of uniquely colonial thought and self-government, the crowning jewel of Western civilization, and the offspring of the Age of Enlightenment and the First Great Awakening, Athens and Jerusalem. More than that, Benjamin Franklin wondered aloud at the Constitutional Convention, “If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without [God’s] notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?” Evidently, the Founders did not believe so. God Himself, our forebears maintained, intervened on this nation’s behalf.

For all that, who are we to disregard first principles? Who are we simply to bask in the blessings of liberty without also contemplating the precious, delicate, and sometimes costly underpinnings behind those blessings? Dozens, if not hundreds, of factors—the defeat of the Spanish Armada, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and the religious fervor of protestant revivalism, Adam Smith’s burgeoning ideas about wealth and moral sentiments, and John Locke’s influential premises about government—miraculously combined to form our nation, which could not have existed at any other point in history. Considering, then, the uniqueness of our situation, ought we not to concern ourselves with the all-important matter of why and how we, against all odds, exist?

Borrowing again from Coolidge, we learn that, not only were the 1700s uniquely situated to host the greatest single national revolution for liberty in history, but so, too, was the New World uniquely situated. This Revolution could not have occurred in England, France, or Spain—only America.

“Of course,” Coolidge opined, “the world is always influenced by all the experience and all the thought of the past. But when we come to a contemplation of the immediate conception of the principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence we are not required to extend our search beyond our own shores. They are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live,” he said. “They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit.”

“Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him,” the 30th president continued, “he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the Colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American” [emphasis added].

So, the times were right, the venue was set, and the people were primed. But, again we must ask, Why? Why us? Many of the Enlightenment ideals that germinated in America, leading to our Revolution, originated in Europe. Why is it that these ideas worked here but not across the pond? Why did our people engender the movement that procured the long and lasting Republic, whereas similar attempts failed? Here, I identify two potential causes:
 
1. The colonists did not merely believe in rights — they had grown accustomed to exercising them

“The American Revolution,” described Coolidge, “represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.” This, of course, is true. But there’s more to the story than that.

Indeed, the Americans affirmed divine rights. But so too (at least theoretically) did the British and the French. The Americans, however, had something else going for them—a decades-long history of exercising those rights, largely free from expansive government oversight, via self-governance. The Pilgrims first arrived in Massachusetts in 1620; war with Britain broke out in 1775. We often overlook the interim. But during those 150 years, the Americans did more than just pontificate about newfangled philosophies; they learned what it meant to govern themselves. This meant that, when they finally obtained their independence, the citizenry already knew how to conduct itself.

Coolidge underscored this point throughout his speech, leaving no doubt in his reader’s mind as to the people-centric success of the American Revolution. These were not ideals confined to smoke-filled rooms to the exclusion of the masses. Ergo, “We are obliged to conclude that the Declaration of Independence represented the movement of a people. It was not, of course, a movement from the top. Revolutions do not come from that direction.”

“The Continental Congress was not only composed of great men, but it represented a great people,” he added. “This obedience of the delegates to the wishes of their constituents, which in some cases caused them to modify their previous positions, is a matter of great significance. It reveals an orderly process of government in the first place; but more than that, it demonstrates that the Declaration of Independence was the result of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies. Adopted after long discussion and as the result of the duly authorized expression of the preponderance of public opinion, it did not partake of dark intrigue or hidden conspiracy. It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion. It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations. It was conservative and represented the action of the colonists to maintain their constitutional rights which from time immemorial had been guaranteed to them under the law of the land” [empahsis added].

So, the masses—not just the “Founders”—were behind the movement, and they were well acquainted with governing themselves. The ordinary plagues of post-revolution anarchy would not inflict the Americans.

2. The colonists were guided by timeless truths before, during, and after the Revolution

Lo, how often revolutions burn out in impermanent flames of idealism and passion! Tyranny, elitism, and control are reintroduced in (temporarily) milder tones (think: the Russian Revolution or “Animal Farm”), the cycle repeats, “and the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.” Often much worse.

One can rashly abolish the government in a fit of populist rage. One can justifiably abolish the government but with no clear plan for a substitute, and no values upon which to build its successor. Historically, revolutions tend to devolve in that direction. How, then, did the Americans manage to defy this trend?

For one, they based their revolt on timeless truths. In order to succeed in their precarious task, revolutionaries must be influenced by timeless truths before, during, and after their rebellions. Remove any single component from the equation, and the entire experiment is destined to fail. If, for instance, revolution is not grounded in truth, it may topple institutions and society unjustly; if not steered by truth, it may slide into anarchy; if not concluded in truth, the rebels may themselves become worse than the enemy they fought to overcome. 

Upon pronouncing their independence from Great Britain, the Founders—and, as Coolidge would remind us, the American people at large—understood they were venturing into risky territory. Much was at stake, and they were not necessarily eager to defy. “Prudence, indeed,” they wrote in the Declaration, “will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” But, they stood upon a bedrock of invariable truths, and, laying out the Crown’s “long train of abuses and usurpations,” they felt confident that their bid for freedom was justified. Because of this, as we previously quoted from Coolidge, “[The American Revolution] had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion.”

That plane, paved by timeless truths and self-government, led the colonists to do more than just overthrow the British; it spurred them to form a more perfect union, a stable, liberty-oriented government in its place. “The expression of that principle [‘Liberty to all’], in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy, and fortunate,” Abraham Lincoln expressed in 1861. “Without this, as well as with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity.” In other words, it was not the revolution that secured a free American government; it was the timeless truth that undergirded the movement.

These are the enduring factors, the principal seeds of our national greatness, that we ought to acquaint ourselves with. “A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if it roots be destroyed,” Coolidge warned. “In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man - these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”

We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect . . . the cause.

Is that not exactly what we’ve done? We want and expect the end result of Lincoln’s equation (the “prosperity”) without the proper first step (the “principle”). We seek the material benefits of liberty without the “indispensable supports,” which George Washington identified as “religion and morality.” Moreover, how many of us are perfectly content to “pursue happiness” while reducing first principles to meaningless platitudes or rejecting them outright?

That’s why I choose to celebrate America not merely by donning an American flag shirt but by diving deep into the ideas that made us the freest, most prosperous nation in history.

“Today,” President John F Kennedy cautioned 78 Independence Days ago, “these basic religious ideas,” which he posited “inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence, “are challenged by atheism and materialism: at home in the cynical philosophy of many of our intellectuals, abroad in the doctrine of collectivism, which sets up the twin pillars of atheism and materialism as the official philosophical establishment of the State.”

“How well, then,” he continued, “has de Tocqueville said: “‘You may talk of the people and their majesty, but where there is no respect for God can there be much for man? You may talk of the supremacy of the ballot, respect for order, denounce riot, secession – unless religion is the first link, all is vain.’”

Our nation’s future is in jeopardy because we have forgotten our heritage, because we have rejected our God. If there is—as I verily believe to be the case—a path forward for America, it begins with a return to the Declaration and the “Supreme Judge of the world,” upon whom the signers cast themselves. Two hundred forty-eight years may mark the prologue to this epic tale, or, perhaps, it signals its finale. What matters is where we go from here.