I had been giving the American miracle some significant amount of thought over the past few weeks, as the 250th Anniversary of America’s Independence loomed closer, and I wanted to provide and entirely upbeat, positive view for America’s future, as I wrote the following essay. But we must acknowledge all the bad and those matters and people dragging Her under today, in order to be able to present any truthful assessment for what Her future may hold.

I love America more than anything in the world, except for my daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – and perhaps Hershey Chocolate Bars – and all Her fauna, the woods and the wilds with the babbling brooks, flowing streams and raging rivers, from Percy Priest Lake to the New River and on through the Appalachian Mountains across the Mississippi and the Wide Missouri on to the Continental Divide, Rocky Mountains, Wind River and all the way out to the Columbia River Gorge, Whidby Island and Deception Pass and back down to the surf at Laguna Bay.

And let’s not forget all those fantastic, beautiful American women – okay – we can also acknowledge the ruggedly handsome men, those American patriots. There’s never been a country or a nation that has held so much potential and offered so much to the people who inhabit Her as this America I love so well.

I woke with dust heavy on my mind, troubles standing in line like uninvited guests at the republic’s table. Hands pressed in prayer, not raised as if in surrender, the old pressure bore down – until Mercy called my name, quiet and steady, breaking the chain. A still small voice cut through the storm: “Hold your ground; you have been here before.” And God reached down and thundered, “No. Not today.”

As one considers the future in the light of America’s 250th Anniversary, it is impossible not to worry about what kind of country is currently being shaped by Her people and the political dynamics, and what it all holds for those people we love. It’s impossible not to see our children struggling today just to get by and ignore the fact that our grandchildren are quite likely preparing to face some of the most difficult times in American history. And so, one must wonder, if American can or will survive much past 2050, much less another 250 years.

I wish the following were true, and if wishes were horses, we all would ride. Unfortunately today, not everyone desires to see an America where we all stand together in American Pride, for they say they are ashamed of Her, as they deny all the exceptional things She has made possible across the span of history, helping millions find true freedom and human liberty across the ages, so often at immense cost to Herself, paid in blood with the lives of Her wonderful men and women.

And now, with the 250th Anniversary of America soon to be celebrated, we find America cut in half along some of the deepest, widest divides unseen since the times of our country’s first civil war, and it pains me to my core, to my very heart and soul, that so many millions of Americans could have matters of fact so twisted and so wrong residing in their minds – inverting plain Truth – that they could hate America so much as they do today – so much in fact, that they actively seek to destroy Her and this republic for which so much has been given and sacrificed across the ages. From the Declaration’s immortal assertion of inalienable rights endowed by the Creator, to the countless hands that cleared wilderness, built farms and factories, and raised the standard of ordered liberty, America has offered refuge and opportunity to millions who carried nothing but hope, rifles and dreams.

Thomas Jefferson reminded us that governments are instituted to secure these God-given rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Lysander Spooner warned that the state too often becomes the instrument of plunder, violating natural law under color of legislation. Albert Jay Nock discerned the difference between the voluntary social power of a free people and the coercive political power that expands at liberty’s expense. In the spirit of rugged defiance and unyielding individualism echoed in the tales of John Ringo’s heroes, we see the American character: men and women who refuse chains, whether forged by tyrants or by their own vices.

Today that character is tested. Ideologies foreign to our soil – Marxist collectivism in its various guises, Maoist cultural destruction, and Islamist theocracy – stand antithetical to the Anglo-American tradition of limited government, individual responsibility, and Biblical moral order. A republic cannot long endure half slave and half free, nor can it survive when a critical mass rejects the moral foundations the Founders deemed essential. As Jefferson and the architects of our Constitution repeatedly observed, the document was made for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate for any other. When secular humanism, the erosion of the family, the denial of biological reality under the banner of “transgenderism,” and an “anything goes” ethic supplant virtue, the republic frays.

Can we ever be a truly unified people and nation again, one nation under God. I’d love to answer “Yes” – But the answer is “NO“, not as matters stand today – Not when so many millions of our people hold to a Marxist-Maoist or a Muslim ideology that stands diametrically opposed to everything America was built upon, not when these ideologies are totally antithetical to the virtues and principles upon which America was built.

Maybe there’s a way back to better days and real prosperity, freedom and individual liberty, under limited government that actually stands and defends our Inalienable God-given Rights and the Constitution’s Bill of Rights – days where our people finally learn to leave well enough alone and really live and let live so long as a person’s actions harm no one else or do any real harm – days where no one is seeking handouts from the government and passing illegitimate “laws” imposing themselves upon all in order to steal away our accumulated wealth to give away to others who do not wish to work.

Maybe we’ll see a day when our people just know it is right to care for the elderly, the informed and those who are truly incapable of caring properly for themselves, because it is the right thing to do. And then perhaps we will once again see a rise in private charities which work to see to these things to fruition, without a Big Brother-styled central government forcing everybody to do so, by way of theft through taxes and illegitimate legislation that demands it of us, like we were children, simply because too many are too willing to stand by and watch the truly needy die unnecessarily – having lost all sense of empathy and understanding and human compassion for others.

Let the people reclaim their wealth, their decisions, and their consciences. True justice flows from voluntary association, not from the ballot’s perpetual plunder.

Our nation now stands at Her most defining juncture in history. To put it bluntly, if there is to ever be any real hope for a better future for America’s children and their children’s children and generations beyond, conservative, independent liberty-minded Americans are going to have to get serious about defending America. We aren’t going to defeat our country’s intransigent anti-American communists, Muslims and radicals by talking them to death and trying to convince them to live peacefully under Constitutional law and the principles and virtues of traditional America. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty and force them from the country, along with millions of illegal alien invaders, or kill them where they stand, if we wish for America to remain a free and sovereign nation for another 250 years.

Still, there is so much to love about Her and so many excellent reasons to fight for Her today.

Some came to America in all the years past with nothing but hope. Some carried rifles. Some carried dreams. All carried the weight of freedom. They arrived from East and West, North and South, fire in their chests, chasing a spark across a brand-new land. Every mile walked, every tear shed, every field cleared and city raised built the bones of this nation. From dust to stars they rose with a single cry: This is America – where the brave learn to fly, where the dream burns bright in the heart of the night, where the lost find home and the weary can rise, where freedom’s fire never dies.

This is America – built on courage and light, where the flag waves strong in the darkest fight. From mountains high to oceans wide, where every single one of us used to stand as one in American Pride.

The voices of the fallen still echo: “Hold the line.” Farmers and founders, steelworkers and settlers, soldiers and shopkeepers – each heartbeat carried the weight of home. Their torch still burns in our chests – we, however few or many, who still love this America of ours ever so much. Every storm faced, every mountain climbed, transmits their spirit through time. Raise that flag to the open sky. Let the colors roar as jets climb high and the combat soldiers on parade march by. Every sacrifice built this land where freedom flies, because America’s fine, good and decent men fought, lived and died.

America is in the deepest trouble I have ever seen Her fall into in my lifetime, and without a real miracle from God and our people returning wholesale to our truly American ways and traditions, however it may be brought about, however it occurs, this nation will not see another 250 years, not as a free and sovereign nation, because as so many of America’s founders noted, our Constitution was written for a moral people. Without a moral people, America does not survive, and that does not bode well for our future, being that immoral secular humanism, transgenderism and an “anything goes” attitude seems to be the prevailing path America has chosen today.

Perhaps that miracle will arrive. I don’t know what form it may take, but it must be powerful enough to smack these communists, radicals and Muslims right between the eyes in a manner that sinks to the very core of their hearts and minds and shakes and rattles them to the very depths of their souls, making them rise up and shout “Hallelujah … I see the light. Praise God Almighty, I see the light“.

And so, this Fourth of July I hope and pray my words reach the Good Lord’s ears, and one day soon we all see a great awakening in this country that takes us back to the times we were all truly proud to be Americans and there wasn’t anything any of us wouldn’t have done in order to save our families and America, standing in the Glory of God and the knowledge that we all are created in His image – created equal in His eyes ….. and FREE.

Maybe better than going back in time, to recover lost ground, we look and work into the future towards something higher – the moral clarity that leads us to understand we can end government, because we do not need any masters to tell us how to live and conduct our lives – when we respect private property and life and each other so much that murders, robberies and serious confrontations and conflicts become rare and a hard policing and surveillance of society unnecessary. Nock’s vision of social power eclipsing political power; Spooner’s natural rights unmolested; Jefferson’s empire of liberty sustained by vigilant, self-governing citizens.

America, this country I love so well, has seen dark hours before. She has emerged stronger when her people remembered their inheritance. On this 250th anniversary, let us recommit to the principles that made her exceptional: faith in God, fidelity to the Original Constitution, fierce defense of individual liberty, and unapologetic pride in the unmatched achievements of her people. One nation under God, where the weary rise, the brave fly, and freedom’s fire never dies.

America was built on hopes, rifles and dreams. She may have to be rebuilt the same way tomorrow.

May all America’s people stand again as one, perhaps one day soon — in American Pride.

By the grace of God and the resolve of free men and women, may the next 250 years witness not decline, but a renewed covenant with the eternal truths that birthed this shining city upon a hill. Not today will she fall. Not ever, if we hold the line, for this America we love so well.

July 1, 2026

~ the Author ~
Justin O. Smith Has Lived in Tennessee Off and on Most of His Adult Life, and Graduated From Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, With a B.S. And a Double Major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – Minors in Military Science and English, for What Its Worth. His Real Education Started From That Point on. Smith Is a Frequent Contributor to the Family of Kettle Moraine Publications.