As we celebrate our 250th anniversary as a nation, it is worth reflecting on what got us here and has kept us going, living as we do under the longest-lasting constitution in world history.

From the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution, our country’s Framers set about establishing this most successful of political governing structures because they understood a few truths. Given low polling about American pride these days, they are truths about which we may need to ask: are they still self-evident?

We began this experiment declaring a recognition of something higher than man— “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and a Creator—endowing us with a right to self-government and a recognition that we human beings are all equal, especially in our inequality before God. Rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are not given or tolerated by government or man, but God.

Our founding authors all understood and enshrined this for us. But, too many here have forgotten or unlearned this. Sadly, just now, we need a great re-learning.

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“The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb” is a 2016 volume by Neal Bascomb. It tells the harrowing story of Norwegian commandos who attacked the German site at Vemork in World War II. It was the Nazis only plant for mass production of “heavy water,” on which they had placed their primary bet to produce atomic weapons during World War II.

I wish it had been converted to the film that it was optioned to be because it would be a short-cut for those who don’t understand why Donald Trump is singularly focused on ensuring the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot make or buy a nuclear weapon.

Trump is motivated by a conviction similar to that held by Churchill and FDR and knew Hitler would use any weapon he could obtain, even as Trump and Netanyahu know the fanatics in Iran would use any weapon they could build or buy.

Did we achieve enough to end the Iranian regime’s nuclear program?

Time will tell.

The threat has existed for two decades now.

Bravo to Trump for his orders to start destroying it.

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Both chambers of the New York state legislature have passed legislation replacing the word mother and father with ‘gestating parent’ and ‘non-gestating parent.

C.S. Lewis famously decried what he called “verbicide” or more technically, “the murder of a word.” We can only imagine what he would think of with this development in New York.

As the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal notes, the effort is part of legislation intended to “purge gendered language from state family law.”

Just ponder that for a moment.

The natural family is predicated upon the fundamental truth that God made human beings male and female, assigned marriage as the union of one man and one woman who would also be fruitful and multiply.

Hence, it’s easy, the male parent is the father and the female parent is the mother. This pattern has been assumed and unconfused throughout most of human history.

Until now. In New York.

The goal of this insanity is nothing less than the collapse of truth, creation order, marriage, morality, and civilization itself. That’s all.

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A new poll from NBC reveals another low percentage of Americans who feel proud of their country. One NBC reporter put it that we are seeing “a steady 21st century decline.” The disappointment in these and similar results is exacerbated by the timing of our birthday as a nation, when national affections should be at their height.

If only more Americans would listen to our foreign visitors. Ever since Marquis de Lafayette, many a foreigner has come here to show and remind us of our greatness. In fact, it was another Frenchman—Alexis de Tocqueville—whose two-volume book about us in the 19th Century, still taught today, gave us the best explanation of our politics and our culture.

Now, we’re seeing reminders from soccer fans coming here—with social media posts and titles like, “World Cup fans embrace American culture.”

They’re reminding us not least of Thomas Paine’s words, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.” Let us hope this sinks in. Too many here still have a lot to learn.

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Just recently, Ken Paxton secured the nomination for the GOP looking to represent Texas in the US Senate. Paxton will be facing a state senator and Presbyterian seminarian James Talarico. The question is, as the New York Times put it, are Texans ready for Talarico's kind of Christianity?

Ruth Graham and David Goodman begin by talking about Talarico's pastor, Jim Rigby at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin. The article begins, "Jim Rigby, a pastor who rarely uses the word God, is a key to understanding the Senate candidate trying to pull off something unusual in Texas."

Later, the reporters refer to a sermon where Pastor Rigby refers to "the creative impulse of the universe, which can be called God, but doesn't have to be called God." I do not think that the majority of people in Texas understand the Bible in those terms.

What we're talking about here is light years outside of biblical orthodoxy. So let's ask the question. Is Texas ready for that?

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The Iranian regime has waged war against the United States for nearly 47 years.

The president clearly thought that we had sufficiently weakened the regime—and he’d be able to strike a deal. Indeed, he spent 60 days trying.

But the shootdown of our Apache helicopter may have changed things.

The Iranian regime has given Trump plenty of reasons to walk away from the negotiating table, starting from the very first hours of the so-called ceasefire in the Persian Gulf. Vahidi violated the agreement from the very start, imposing an extortionate "fee" system for sailing through the international waters of the Strait of Hormuz and firing on commercial vessels that refused to comply.

Trump has invested a lot of his credibility and trust in the IRGC's negotiations. Now, however, Trump sounds as though he suddenly woke up to the Sunk Cost Fallacy, saying they’ve taken too long and “now they will have to pay the price!!!”

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: This war has to be fought to the finish.

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The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is approaching quickly.

The document—as I often point out to my listeners—is, to quote Abraham Lincoln, an “apple of gold” protected by the “frame of silver” that is the Constitution he borrowed from Psalms there.

All Americans—indeed all the free world—have a lot to celebrate in this our 250th year of independence.

The Declaration asserted the existence of "rights" of individuals that exist before any government — no matter the form of that government— comes into being:

“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.”

The great day of the fourth is, from beginning to end, about love of our country because our country defends our individual rights, rights derived—back to the Declaration— from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.”

It is quite a gift that we have been given—a gift that needs to be defended.

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Ronald Reagan used to ask: “if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” But to have self-government, we must depend on many things, foremost among them: Trust. Over the past decade, credibility in major institutions has plummeted.

Given the delays and changing results in the recent California elections, we have another exhibit of the growing distrust in our elections. Alleging fraud in seeing Spencer Pratt sink to third place after the now-second place finisher had previously conceded her loss is said to be paranoid. But here comes the New York Times, with a headline: there is “a lack of evidence of any widespread fraud.” The word “widespread” carries a lot of water in suggesting at least some fraud, no?

Voting day needs to be voting day, not month. ID must be required; ballot harvesting, stopped; mailed ballots, postmarked. Nothing could undermine our experiment in self-government more than distrust in the legitimacy of our elections.

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