The founders were young and so is America — really
Although America’s 250th birthday is still one year away, there is a fun, unique, and mathematical fact about this year's 249th birthday that will help illustrate just how young America is as a nation.
To do that, we can start with the age of President Thomas Jefferson on the day he died — significantly enough, on the day America was celebrating its 50th birthday: July 4, 1826. Jefferson was 83.
Just three 83-year-olds living back-to-back-to-back takes you to the year our nation was founded.
As an interesting aside, our third president was not the only commander in chief whose life was historically tied to America's birthday. President John Adams also died within five hours of Jefferson on July 4, 1826. Five years later, on July 4, 1831, our fifth president and founding father James Monroe also passed away.
Not to be too maudlin, one president was actually born on the Fourth of July. In 1872, Calvin Coolidge came into the world and would grow up to become America's 30th president.
RELATED: Yes, Ken Burns, the founding fathers believed in God — and His ‘divine Providence’
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So what does Jefferson’s age of 83 have to do with this year’s national birthday celebration? Well, if you find an 83-year-old person living in America and go all the way back to the year he was born, you would find yourself in 1942. Now, in 1942, find a person who was born 83 years in the past, back to 1859. Finally, find a person born 83 years before that, and you arrive at ... 1776!
Just three 83-year-olds living back-to-back-to-back takes you to the year our nation was founded.
And while we're pondering this age business, it's also fun to look at the relative youth of those who signed the Declaration of Independence, keeping in mind that 56 delegates representing the 13 original colonies actually put their very “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” on the line when they signed their John Hancock on the document (and, yes, one of them was indeed John Hancock).
Also, with present-day controversy in mind, it is worth noting that none of the representatives signed using an auto-quill.
The average age of the document’s signers was 44 years, which happened to be George Washington's age at the time. And Washington's nemesis across the pond, the other George, King George III of England? He was 38.
The oldest signer of the Declaration was (no surprise) Benjamin Franklin, age 70.
Finally, by now you have probably done the math to figure out the age of Thomas Jefferson — the document’s chief author — when he signed: 33.
Now, enjoy the celebrations and get ready for the biggest one of all, next year’s 250th!
Editor's note: A version of this article appeared originally at American Thinker.
The soul of the republic still belongs to Washington
As we celebrate Independence Day, it’s worth reflecting on America’s founding character — especially the man who defined it: George Washington.
Washington didn’t build his legacy on grand speeches. He led with silence, sacrifice, and restraint. He may not have written poetry, but he lived it — with grit in war, grace in peace, and great wisdom in his letters, journals, and Farewell Address.
This Fourth of July, as fireworks fill the night sky, let’s also make room for silence — for healing, for grief, for endurance.
He didn’t just fight for a nation — he helped shape its soul. Washington understood that a country isn’t defined only by its victories, but by how it makes meaning out of its wounds.
In our time of division and disillusionment, we would do well to reclaim the legacy Washington embodied. Resilience isn’t the denial of pain but rather transformation through it. And the only vision worth holding on to is the one that unites us in building our future as a nation.
Trauma doesn’t end the story. Often, it begins the most meaningful chapters. That’s true in my life — and in America’s. Growth has never come from comfort. It comes from hardship, from wounds we don’t hide from but confront. Psychologists call it “post-traumatic growth.” It’s the idea that suffering, when faced and integrated, can lead to deeper purpose, stronger relationships, and a more grounded sense of self.
I guess most Americans would just call it “history.”
I led soldiers into Iraq in 2003 and returned to a nation largely untouched by the war I had lived. But my reckoning came later — when a brief Wall Street career collapsed, when a home invasion shattered my sense of safety, and when therapy forced me to face what I had tried for years to outrun: trauma, guilt, grief.
What followed wasn’t just recovery. It was transformation — a quiet strength rooted in humility and meaning. Post-traumatic growth teaches that suffering, when faced honestly, can lead to deeper purpose, stronger relationships, and a more grounded self.
That truth doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to us all.
From Valley Forge to Gettysburg, from the Great Depression to Ground Zero, America has been forged in fire. Our greatest progress has rarely come in peacetime. Lincoln didn’t rise when things were easy. The Greatest Generation wasn’t shaped in comfort. Renewal always follows rupture.
We’re in such a moment again. Pressure is building — on our national identity, our personal stories, our sense of unity. But pressure can forge something stronger, if we let it.
We must reject the lie that trauma equals weakness. PTSD is real — often invisible, often devastating. But it’s not the end of the story. Alongside post-traumatic stress, we can teach post-traumatic strength. The kind Washington lived. The kind America has always needed.
That’s part of why I wrote “Downriver: Memoir of a Warrior Poet.” Yes, it tells a story of trauma — from childhood instability to the battlefields of Iraq, from Wall Street collapse to personal unraveling. But more importantly, it traces the long road of healing — not as a tidy comeback story, but as a messy, hard-earned path toward growth and integration.
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The journey is not reserved for veterans alone. It belongs to survivors of addiction, loss, illness, injustice, and personal collapse. It belongs to first responders, caregivers, and ordinary Americans living through extraordinary hardship.
But growth isn’t guaranteed. It requires honesty. It requires community. It demands a culture willing to honor both the warrior and the poet — the one who endures and the one who reflects, the one who fights and the one who heals.
Too often, we swing between denial and despair. But what if we told a different story? What if we treated our national wounds not as signs of weakness but as calls to deepen our roots?
We’ve done it before. The post-9/11 generation gave us new models of service and empathy. The scars of the COVID-19 pandemic will never fully heal, but they can teach us lessons about connection, community, and what really matters.
The question isn’t whether we’ve been wounded. We have. The real question is what kind of country we’ll become in response. Will we let trauma divide us further — or use it to rediscover what binds us together?
This Fourth of July, as fireworks fill the night sky, let’s also make room for silence — for healing, for grief, for endurance. Let’s honor not only what we’ve won but how we’ve grown.
That’s the path of the warrior poet. That’s Washington’s legacy. And it can be ours, too.
The crown laughed at our Declaration — but America got the last word
John Adams believed America’s independence should be marked with “pomp, shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations.” He got his wish. Within a year of the Declaration’s signing on July 4, 1776, celebrations had become a colonies-wide tradition.
The reaction across the Atlantic, however, struck a very different tone.
This wasn’t just about taxes or trade policy. It was about the belief that free men could govern themselves.
The British response was not stunned disbelief or deep introspection. It was mockery — and, ultimately, a grave miscalculation.
The war didn’t begin with the Declaration. A year earlier, in August 1775, King George III had already issued a Proclamation of Rebellion. The crown had stopped viewing the dispute as a matter of political redress. It now saw open revolt.
But the Declaration shifted the terms. What landed in London by mid-August 1776 wasn’t a petition or compromise. It was a bold, philosophical argument for national divorce. In British eyes, it was treason.
A declaration dismissed
British newspapers published the Declaration widely. The London Chronicle printed it, along with other major papers. But few took it seriously. To them, it was just another provocation from unruly colonials.
The elite mocked Thomas Jefferson’s talk of “unalienable rights.” Gen. William Howe, sent to crush the rebellion, called the Declaration “extravagant and inadmissible.” The British state responded accordingly.
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Within weeks, more than 32,000 British troops — including 8,000 German mercenaries — sailed into New York Harbor. It was the largest overseas force Britain had ever fielded. Howe aimed to stamp out the uprising before year’s end.
The campaign nearly succeeded.
George Washington’s army suffered defeat after defeat, narrowly escaping destruction on Long Island. By autumn, the American position looked hopeless.
France’s revenge
But while Britain saw a dying rebellion, France saw a chance to strike.
Even before 1776, French agents had begun quietly arming the colonists. The Declaration gave them a pretext to go farther. Though Louis XVI had no love for democracy, he did have a long memory — and Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War had come at France’s expense.
With the Declaration in hand, France could cloak strategic revenge in the language of liberty.
Formal recognition wouldn’t come until 1778, but the shift had begun. French arms, cash, and eventually troops transformed the conflict. What began as a colonial revolt became an international war.
Back in London, the American cause began to attract sympathy in Parliament.
In 1777, future British Prime Minister William Pitt took to the House of Lords to warn his colleagues: “You cannot conquer" America.
He was right.
Not just a rebellion — a revolution
What Britain failed to grasp was that America hadn’t simply declared independence. It had declared a new theory of government: one grounded in consent, not inheritance.
The crown mistook revolutionary conviction for rhetorical flourish. Britain's government believed the colonists would fold in the face of overwhelming force. But this wasn’t just about taxes or trade policy. It was about the belief that free men could govern themselves.
Ideas like that can stand up to empires — even the most powerful in the world.
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Yes, Ken Burns, the Founding Fathers believed in God — and His 'divine Providence'
Ken Burns has built his career as America's memory keeper. For decades, he's positioned himself as the guardian against historical revisionism, the man who rescues truth from the dustbin of academic fashion. His camera doesn't just record past events — it sanctifies them.
For nearly five decades, Burns has reminded Americans that memory matters and that history shapes how a nation sees itself.
Jefferson's 'Nature’s God' wasn’t a placeholder. It was a real presence. He sliced up the Gospels but still bowed to the idea of eternal moral law.
Which makes his recent performance on Joe Rogan's podcast all the more stunning in its brazen historical malpractice.
At the 1-hour, 17-minute mark, Burns delivered his verdict on the Founding Fathers with the confidence of a man who's never been wrong about anything.
They were deists, he declared. Believers in a distant, disinterested God, a cosmic clockmaker who wound up the universe and wandered off to tend other galaxies. Cold, clinical, and entirely absent from human affairs.
It's a tidy narrative. One small problem: It's so very wrong.
The irony cuts so deep it draws blood. The man who made his reputation fighting historical revisionism has become its most prominent practitioner. Burns, the supposed guardian of American memory, has developed a curious case of selective amnesia, and Americans are supposed to pretend not to notice.
The deist delusion
Now, some might ask: Who cares? What difference does it make whether Washington believed in an active God or a divine absentee landlord? The answer is everything, and the fact that it's Burns making this claim makes it infinitely worse.
This isn't some graduate student getting his dissertation wrong. This is America's most trusted historical documentarian, the man whose work shapes how millions understand their past. When Burns speaks, the nation listens.
When he gets it wrong, the mistake seeps like an oil spill across the national story, quietly coating textbooks, classrooms, and documentaries for decades.
Burns is often treated as an apolitical narrator of history, but there’s a soft ideological current running through much of his work: reverence for progressive causes, selective moral framing, and a tendency to recast American complexity through a modern liberal lens.
Burns isn't stupid. One assumes he knows exactly what he's saying. If he doesn't — if his remarks on Rogan's podcast represent genuine ignorance rather than deliberate distortion — then we have serious questions about the depth of his actual knowledge. How does someone spend decades documenting American history while missing something this fundamental?
The truth is that Americans have been lied to about the Founders' faith for so long that Burns' deist mythology sounds plausible. The secular academy has been rewriting these men for decades, stripping away their religious convictions, sanding down their theological edges, making them safe for modern consumption. Burns isn't breaking new ground. He's perpetuating a familiar falsehood.
Taking a knee
Let's start with George Washington, the supposed deist in chief. Burns would have us believe the general bowed not to God, but to a kind of cosmic CEO who delegated all earthly duties to middle management. But at least one contemporary account attests that Washington knelt in the snow at Valley Forge — not once, but repeatedly.
He called for the national day of "prayer and thanksgiving" that eventually became the November federal holiday we know today. He invoked divine Providence so frequently you’d think he was writing sermons, not military orders.
His Farewell Address reads more like a theological tract than a retirement speech, warning that “religion and morality are indispensable supports” of political prosperity. Does that sound like a man who thought God had checked out?
John Adams, another Founder often branded a deist, wrote bluntly that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.”
Adams saw the American Revolution as the outgrowth of divine intervention. As he wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1813, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were ... the general principles of Christianity.”
And what of Jefferson? By far the most heterodox, even he never denied divine order. His “Nature’s God” wasn’t a placeholder. It was a real presence. He sliced up the Gospels but still bowed to the idea of eternal moral law. Whatever his quarrels with organized religion, he did not believe in a silent universe.
Some of these men were, philosophically at least, frustrated Catholics. They couldn’t fully accept Protestantism, but they had no access to the Church’s intellectual infrastructure. The natural law reasoning that permeates their political thought — Jefferson’s “self-evident truths,” Madison’s checks and balances born of man’s fallen nature — comes straight from Aquinas, filtered through Locke, Montesquieu, and centuries of Christian jurisprudence.
The Founders weren’t Enlightenment nihilists. They weren’t secular technocrats. And they certainly weren’t deists. They were men steeped in a moral framework older than the American experiment itself.
Burns, for all his sepia-toned genius, has a blind spot you could drive a colonial wagon through. His documentaries glow with progressive reverence — plenty of civil rights and moral reckoning, but the Almighty gets the silent treatment. God may have guided the Founders, but in Ken’s cut, he barely makes the final edit.
The sacred and the sanitized
I mentioned irony at the start, but it deserves more than a passing nod. That's because the septuagenarian's own cinematic legacy contradicts the very theology he now peddles on podcasts.
His brilliant nine-part series "The Civil War" captured the moral agony of a nation tearing itself apart, and it did so in unmistakably religious terms. Here Burns treats Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address — haunted, prophetic, bathed in biblical cadence — with reverence, not revisionism.
The series understood something essential: Americans have always been a biblical people. They see their history not just in terms of dates and treaties, but in terms of sin, sacrifice, and redemption. Sacred story, divine purpose — this was the language of American reckoning.
The Founders weren’t saints, and they weren’t simple. They read Greek, spoke Latin, studied Scripture, and debated philosophy with a seriousness that puts modern politicians to shame. But they weren’t spiritual agnostics, either.
They were men of imperfect but active faith, shaped by the Bible, steeped in Christian moral tradition, and convinced that human rights came not from government but from God.
They didn’t build a republic of personal preference. They built one grounded in enduring truths that predated the Constitution, anchored to the idea that law and liberty meant nothing without a higher law above them.
Burns may deal in memory, but his treatment of religion reveals something else entirely. He doesn’t misremember. He reorders. He filters faith through a modern lens until it becomes unrecognizable.
Memory isn’t just about what’s preserved — it’s about what’s permitted. And when the sacred gets cast aside, what’s left isn’t history. It’s propaganda with better lighting.
The prayers that shaped a nation can save it again
I’ve often wondered what our Founding Fathers would think of their great American experiment. Imagine George Washington strolling down the Las Vegas Strip, Thomas Jefferson riding the Tennessee Tornado at Dollywood, or John Adams catching a “throwed roll” at Lamberts in Missouri.
Would they be awestruck by the Independence Day fireworks in New York City? Or cheer at the Super Bowl? Would they marvel at the soaring Gateway Arch in St. Louis? Or the majesty of the Rocky Mountains? Would Betsy Ross wash down a Moon Pie with an R.C. Cola?
‘The greatness of America doesn’t begin in Washington,’ Ronald Reagan said. ‘It begins with each of you — in the mighty spirit of free people under God.’
On the last day of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked if we had a republic or a monarchy?
“A republic, if you can keep it,” he was said to reply.
Without a doubt, America is the most exceptional nation in the world. In the face of great adversity and insurmountable odds, we have overcome. And we have been blessed.
And that’s why I set out on a mission with my friend Michelle Cox to write “Star-Spangled Blessings: Devotions for Patriots.”
It’s a collection of stories about how God has lavished our country with a bounty of star-spangled blessings.
That’s not to say that our great nation has not been through some squabbles. We’ve had more than a few — and some were doozies. We’ve made lots of mistakes, but we’ve also righted many wrongs.
Perseverance is a word that has defined us over the years. Franklin Roosevelt announcing to the nation about a date that would live in infamy. Walter Cronkite relaying to the nation a shocking bulletin from Dallas. President George W. Bush standing on a pile of rubble at Ground Zero with a bullhorn.
Yet, amid great tragedy, our nation has always found strength in almighty God — our defender and our protector.
President Trump knows of that strength, that divine intervention. He survived not one but two assassination attempts.
“Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness, and now we are going to fulfill that mission together,” he said during a speech in 2024.
I vividly recall watching as the shots rang out in Butler County, Pennsylvania. My heart stopped as Trump dropped to the stage. But then, he rose up, and with blood streaming down his face, he thrust his fist into the air and shouted, “Fight, fight, fight!”
President Trump would then urge Americans to read their Bibles, to get back to church, and to pray.
“Let’s make America pray again,” he said.
The president caught quite a bit of grief from the atheists and the Democrats for that altar call.
“Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country, and I truly believe that we need to bring them back, and we have to bring them back fast,” the president said at the time. “I think it's one of the biggest problems we have. That’s why our country is going haywire. We've lost religion in our country. All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It's my favorite book. It's a lot of people's favorite book.”
Now, that’ll preach, as we say back home in Tennessee.
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Sure, we have lost our way in this country. We’ve been so focused on taking back Congress and the White House that we forgot to take care of our homes and our communities.
Ronald Reagan said it best in 1984 when he told the nation that “the greatness of America doesn’t begin in Washington. It begins with each of you — in the mighty spirit of free people under God, in the bedrock values you live by each day in your families, neighborhoods, and workplaces.”
As I write in “Star-Spangled Blessings,” we must return to the faith of our founders. A faith that compelled George Washington to pray on bended knee at Valley Forge.
A faith that compelled John Adams to petition the almighty to bless those who resided in the White House. A faith that compelled Franklin Roosevelt to ask Americans to pray for a spiritual awakening.
It’s that sort of American spirit that has resonated with people across the fruited plain. These are moments that define us as a nation.
Lee Greenwood, the singer-songwriter who penned “God Bless the USA,” is a friend of mine, and his anthem to the land of the free and the home of the brave still brings a tear to my eye as I write these words from the hills of Tennessee.
And I suspect that if America’s founders were here today, they would love this land from sea to shining sea. And they would join their fellow countrymen in asking God to bless the USA.
'The American Miracle' reveals God's hand in nation's founding
Less grievance. More gratitude.
That was the motto guiding film scholar and talk show host Michael Medved as he wrote “The American Miracle," his 2016 tome exploring the providential moments that helped create the freest country in human history. The subject proved so vast that the author penned a companion book, “God's Hand on America: Divine Providence in the Modern Era.”
'One of the very few things they agreed on completely … was divine providence, the invisible hand. Washington used that phrase in the first inaugural address.'
Almost a decade later, we're drowning in grievance, while gratitude remains in short supply. A perfect time for Medved's book to reach the big screen.
No accident
“The American Miracle” hits theaters June 9-11, courtesy of Fathom Entertainment. The docudrama features recognizable names like Kevin Sorbo and Pat Boone, but the true stars are Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin.
The movie, subtitled, “Our Nation Is No Accident,” argues that God’s hand worked in mysterious ways to boost the country’s creation.
“I’ve been living with this idea of divine providence,” Medved tells Align, recalling pre-recorded history segments on his long-running radio program. “The most popular episode, ‘God’s Hand on America,’ gave rise to the book.”
Years later, it seemed like the right moment to bring its message to theaters nationwide.
The movie shares amazing stories tied to the country’s birth, including the many near-death experiences George Washington survived before becoming the nation’s first president.
Early in Washington’s life, he fought alongside the British and was the only horseback officer to survive a harrowing battle. “His hat was shot through with bullets, and two horses were shot out from under him. He was unscathed,” Medved shared.
No sugarcoating
The film doesn’t sugarcoat the Founding Fathers but puts them in spiritual context.
“At no point do we suggest the people you meet in the film are perfect human beings. … They were a remarkable group of human beings,” he says. “One of the very few things they agreed on completely … was divine providence, the invisible hand. Washington used that phrase in the first inaugural address.”
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Medved recalls a sermon from Presbyterian Minister Samuel Davies that echoed that sentiment.
“I cannot but hope Providence has hitherto preserved [him] in so signal a manner for some important service to his country.”
“The American Miracle” blends re-enactments with historical experts to buttress Medved’s arguments.
“Some of the leading historians in the country take the idea of divine providence very seriously,” he says.
Avoiding polarization
Medved’s conservative thinking is part of his brand, along with an extensive career as a film critic. He worked alongside fellow critic Jeffrey Lyons on the 1980s PBS show “Sneak Previews,” taking over for original hosts Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.
His personal politics aside, Medved still didn’t want “The American Miracle” to embrace a partisan ethos. The film’s array of experts, including Robert P. George, Joseph Ellis, and Jana Novak, offer some ideological diversity. That includes contributions from Oscar winner Richard Dreyfuss.
The Hollywood icon is no rock-ribbed conservative. He’s left-leaning but a patriot who promotes a better understanding of the country’s founding principles via his Dreyfuss Civics Initiative.
“We tried to avoid some of the polarization that has been poisoning our politics,” Medved says of the film. “[Dreyfuss] has been a friend of mine for many years, since high school. He has made a passionate cause of civics and teaching civics.”
Part of “The American Miracle” explores the role black soldiers played in the American Revolution, fighting on behalf of the patriots. It’s hardly the kind of material one expects in a 21st-century film. Hollywood narratives wouldn’t allow it, but the historical facts remain.
Medved called their contributions “indispensable."
Spotlight on the founding
Medved’s decades-long media career allowed him to watch the pop-culture transformation up close. He hails the new wave of choice in media circles, be it podcasts or new media platforms offering something different from what legacy media outlets provide.
“Today, depending on what your own obsession or interest is, there’s something there for you. Generally, we all spend too much time on mass media,” he says. “However, the advantage today is that there is a great deal of choice.”
That also holds for the pop-culture realm. Medved brings up the crush of stories tied to the American Civil War, from feature films to the celebrated “Civil War” docuseries from PBS mainstay Ken Burns.
What’s missing? More cinematic takes on the country’s Revolutionary War and astounding origins. That’s where “The American Miracle” comes in.
“It hasn’t gotten the same kind of attention. There’s no equivalent of ‘Birth of a Nation’ or ‘Gone with the Wind’ or ‘Glory,’” he says.
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