I got off the plane in Grand Rapids, Michigan, took my bag from the carousel, exited the terminal through the sliding doors, and headed past the shuttle stop toward the parking garage. So far everything had gone as smoothly as modern air travel can.

Then I got to the Enterprise car rental desk.

If you can’t rely on a confirmed reservation for a car, what are we even doing here?

The young man at the desk was friendly, although he offered some surprising news concerning the transportation I’d reserved just the night before.

“We don’t have a car for you.”

Futile Enterprise

I asked him why, exactly, mentioning the confirmation email I had on my phone. He told me that they simply didn’t have any more cars and that the system was messed up and that he was sorry for the inconvenience and that the soonest I might — key word being might — be able to get one would be 10 p.m. the following evening.

Not great.

I left, pulled up Google on my phone, and found another Enterprise location in another part of the city. I made a reservation for a few hours later and received another confirmation email. Just to be thorough, I then called up the branch to make sure they did indeed have a car for me.

They didn’t.

It was the same conversation as before, but this time the worker told me they wouldn’t have a car for two days. He apologized for the inconvenience, a word I have to admit I peevishly found inadequate for my current dilemma. But then, I had just flown from Milan to Chicago and Chicago to Grand Rapids — after 23 hours without sleep — and so was uncommonly eager to get to my final destination. Which, even should I procure a car, would entail a good four hour’s drive.

What’s the deal?

There is a “Seinfeld” bit about this. What’s the point of the reservation if you can’t fulfill the reservation?

Seinfeld, of course, does the bit very funny. But it’s not really so funny, or at least it’s not so funny when you are the one in the midst of trying to claim a car reservation that apparently can’t be filled. Renting a car to get to the airport hadn’t been a problem; why was it impossible now that I wanted to go home?

I sat there wondering what I should do.

I thought, do I stay the night in a hotel in the hope of getting my hands on a car the next day? No, I don’t want to waste the money. Do I call my wife and ask her to pile all three kids in the car, drive four hours down to pick me up, and then drive four hours back home again? Absolutely not. That would be hell for her, and she does more than enough.

I sat there rather irritated at the situation I found myself in. I have had my fair share of detours when on the road, sure. Sometimes travel plans change and you have to adapt. But if you can’t rely on a confirmed reservation for a car, what are we even doing here?

RELATED: I want to like our Kindle, but I’m hopelessly addicted to real books

Jim Heimann Collection/Getty Images

Let it ride

So I thought and thought, and I remembered that buses exist.

I hadn’t taken one in years, but it turned out they hadn’t gone the way of free checked bags and wearing actual pants on flights. Sure, it’s worse than a rental car, but it might get the job done. So I checked the schedule, found my route, and bought a non-refundable ticket for $54.

The bus to St. Ignace wasn’t terribly full Tuesday afternoon. There were only a few of us riding the great steel chariot north. Some old people, a couple of guys in worn jeans and construction boots, and a young guy — a college student — heading back to school at Michigan Tech in Houghton.

He brought a heavy backpack, a suitcase, and a set of golf clubs. He told me that after getting to St. Ignace, he would transfer to another bus that would take him west across the Upper Peninsula and up into the Keweenaw toward Houghton. He said the bus would arrive in Houghton at 6:30 a.m., making his trip north more than 16 hours long.

While detailing his epic journey, he said, “It’s OK, it builds character.”

I said, “Yes, it does.”

He said, “Plus, I don’t have any money.”

I said, “Neither did I,” remembering the days I used to ride the bus.

Just the ticket

Sitting there on that stiff and uncomfortable seat I recalled those many trips. Coming back from college and going back again. Taking the Megabus when I had no money in my 20s. They always advertised it as having fares as low as $1. For some reason, I never found those tickets.

I thought of riding the bus to Granada in Spain with my wife. We brought egg salad sandwiches wrapped in tin foil. I remembered taking an overnight bus from Eilat to Haifa in Israel. It was so long, but it was so cheap, and I was too.

Our bus finally pulled into the Walmart parking lot — the makeshift bus stop in our little town — at 8:41 p.m. Tuesday night. My wife and kids were there waiting for me in our gray Honda. The kids were wearing their pajamas and all ready for bed. The failure of the rental car companies to do their job was annoying. The bus ride wasn’t terribly comfortable. The final leg of my trip home took longer than I had anticipated. But I didn’t really care once I stepped off the bus and into the Walmart parking lot.

I made it home, and it’s a funny little story (maybe “Seinfeld” had the right idea), and what’s life without those?

​Lifestyle, Travel, Men’s style, Family, Rental cars, Buses, Michigan, The root of the matter 

With current events stirring up global energy prices, corn ethanol is once again being dressed up as if it is a domestic energy source and agent of energy security.

The truth is that it takes more fossil fuel energy to make a gallon of corn ethanol than a gallon of gasoline. It is time to face this unpleasant truth and the other perverse outcomes achieved by 20 years of misguided policy.

Biofuels in general are just a way to put a green fig leaf on petroleum by rerouting it through a farm field.

In 2005 and 2007, Congress passed the Energy Policy and Energy Independence and Security Acts that together created the Renewable Fuel Standard program. RFS had three stated objectives: to improve U.S. energy security, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to support rural economies and agricultural development.

Instead, RFS has increased motor fuel prices, increased food prices, put millions of carbon-sequestering acres of land into intensive cultivation, increased greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, and increased water consumption and pollution.

The gallons of U.S. gasoline displaced by federal ethanol blending mandates are being exported to Mexico and other nations. The great success of RFS has been the hand of the government transferring wealth from motorists to big agriculture corporations.

The government wanted biofuels bad, and it got them bad. Under Corn Belt lobbying pressure, Congress waived the need for RFS to achieve actual greenhouse gas reductions for all existing corn ethanol biorefineries, plus all that could be built by the end of 2010.

The bulk of the corn ethanol produced over the past 20 years and today comes from these waivered plants. The EPA’s specious 2010 prediction that corn ethanol would achieve a 21% greenhouse gas reduction by 2022 was immediately challenged by the National Research Council for not properly counting land-use change and not realistically treating food competition and water use.

This panel of experts from the National Academy of Sciences even questioned the viability of the entire concept of reducing greenhouse gas with biofuels. The most rigorous and honest estimate by a third party in testimony before Congress used the EPA’s own methodology to show that adding corn ethanol to gasoline has increased greenhouse emissions by 28% over the pure gasoline baseline, with no trajectory to ever recover.

As for energy security, the goal was noble, but the method was irrational. Corn ethanol is critically dependent upon fossil fuels at every stage of production — tractor and truck fuel, fertilizer and pesticides, biorefinery energy and chemicals. Biofuels in general are just a way to put a green fig leaf on petroleum by rerouting it through a farm field.

RELATED: How the Union Pacific merger could revitalize America’s rail industry

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

While corn ethanol production has plateaued at 15-16 billion gallons for the past 10 years — not coincidentally matching the federal subsidy limit — domestic crude oil production has skyrocketed due to technological innovations.

The U.S. is once again energy self-sufficient and the world’s largest producer of crude oil and natural gas. In 2024, the U.S. exported 100 billion gallons of refined petroleum. Other countries are burning U.S. gasoline in their cars and producing the same CO2 emissions as Americans would be if they were allowed to use it.

One of the great ironies is that RFS was authorized under the Clean Air Act. The EPA’s own 2010 regulatory impact analysis showed it would increase net air pollution and cause up to 245 more U.S. deaths per year. The EPA also granted corn ethanol a perpetual vapor pressure waiver for smog-causing emissions that it has denied to petroleum.

Perhaps worse, ethanol in gasoline enables the hydrocarbons to mix with water and thereby increase ground water and surface water contamination from fuel leaks to a far greater degree than the demonized MTBE it replaced.

A government program that has strayed so far from its objectives should be terminated. The federal agency in charge of protecting the nation’s environment should not be allowed to administer a program that increases air pollution and stresses on water, land, and climate. Fuel should be fuel and food should be food.

Surely Congress can find a better way to promote U.S. energy security and boost rural economies without imposing the highly regressive tax of increased fuel prices, inflicting such harm to the nation’s air and water resources, and promoting global food insecurity.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

​Co2 emissions, Energy policy, Ethanol, Fossil fuel energy, Fuel prices, Gasoline, Motor fuel, Natural gas, Petroleum, Crude oil, Gas prices, Opinion & analysis 

It is rare that mayoral campaigns receive national attention, but Spencer Pratt’s bid for mayor of Los Angeles is an exception.

Since his initial campaign announcement in January, Pratt has been gaining momentum and is now polling in second place behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass (D). His campaign has primarily focused on restoring the city to its former glory, particularly in the wake of the damage from the horrific Palisades fires of 2025.

If politicians want to connect with voters, especially the next generation of voters, they will have to become good communicators online.

Two weeks ago, he uploaded his now-viral campaign ad featuring the hit song “Not Like Us,” showing the untouched properties of Mayor Bass and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman. The video then showcases the charred ruins where Pratt’s home previously stood, along with the trailer he now resides in.

Whatever the fate of Pratt’s campaign, he has hit on a messaging strategy that right-wing candidates would do well to emulate going forward if they want to be successful in the digital age.

Conservatives have had trouble breaking out of their image as out-of-touch intellectuals. Pratt’s message has more emotional impact. And his language is assertive. In the past, Republican leaders like George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and Mike Pence had a cultural reputation for being passive. Pratt’s ad makes him look like something out of the “John Wick” action series.

In the late 2000s, Pratt rose to fame on the reality television series “The Hills.” At the time, he was known as something of an antagonist, not unlike Trump when the latter appeared on his own television series, “The Apprentice.”

Pratt is using the skills he developed in Hollywood to focus on the problems regular Angelenos suffer under liberal leadership — ballooning homeless encampments, family-destroying traffic in lethal drugs, and mismanaged animal shelters. Each of his main issues is effectively communicated in an emotionally compelling way.

Pratt’s campaign is the kind that could emerge only in the post-Trump era. In each of President Trump’s campaigns, he used his skills as an entertainer to communicate his agenda. “Make America Great Again” became a resonating success because it quickly and clearly explained his ideology.

Photos of Trump driving a garbage truck and working at a McDonald’s were used to convey his affection for hard work. And just as Pratt used the high-energy song “Not Like Us,” Trump commandeered the anthem “YMCA,” turning it into a MAGA staple.

RELATED: Master of the medium: The key to Trump’s success

Mandel NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Traditional communications methods like yard signs and mailers are still important in politics, but there is a growing requirement for candidates to have a strong social media presence. About 51% of Gen Z teenagers get their news primarily from social media, and the consumption rates of adults who get their news from social media platforms are consistently growing.

If politicians want to connect with voters, especially the next generation of voters, they will have to become good communicators online.

If conservatives don’t internalize this message, liberals certainly will. Many already have. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a radical socialist, won a resounding victory thanks in part to his social media skills.

He did a good job talking to residents, explaining perceived problems, and appearing to be a good-natured provider. He leaned into showing emotion, such as when he tearfully told the story of his aunt who couldn’t ride the subway after 9/11 — even though he didn’t actually have an aunt living in New York in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

He has tried to appear friendly, singing songs and dancing for preschoolers alongside former President Obama. He has even managed to tell a few jokes, such as when he appeared on “The Tonight Show.”

Mamdani’s charm won him the election in New York, and Pratt’s charm could do the same in Los Angeles. Conservatives shouldn’t mimic Mamdani’s dishonesty, but they need to be prepared to lean into their own distinctive charisma. Regardless of the outcome in his election, Pratt can help show the way. Conservatives who want to keep winning in the next few years need to pay attention.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.

​Spencer pratt, Los angeles, La mayor race, Karen bass, Conservatives, Social media campaign, Zohran mamdani, Palisade fires, Democrats, Opinion & analysis 

On May 12, Pope Leo XIV awarded Iran’s ambassador to the Holy See, Mohammad Hossein Mokhtari, the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX — one of the Vatican’s highest diplomatic honors.

The move sparked significant backlash and outrage, especially on social media and among Iranian exiles, conservatives, and critics of Iran’s regime, with widespread claims that the Vatican was legitimizing a repressive government.

BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler, who describes herself as a devout Catholic, had a similar reaction.

“This is the Iranian regime — a fanatical, Islamist, theocratic regime,” she says. “Why on earth would the leader of the universal Christian church be awarding any kind of diplomatic honor to these killers, these anti-Christian killers?”

But some research revealed the answer, leading Liz to argue that Pope Leo isn’t the villain he’s being made out to be.

“This award is not something that is handed out based on individual merit. It is a recognition that is essentially standard practice for ambassadors who have been in residence at the Vatican for two years or more to receive this award,” she explains, noting that several other qualifying individuals also received the award at the same time as Mokhtari.

Liz equates the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX to a “participation trophy.”

“The only qualification for this participation trophy trophy is, oh, you’ve been here as an envoy to the Vatican for two years, therefore you get this ribbon, you get this trophy,” she says, concluding that the incident “is not as bad as it originally sounded.”

Liz acknowledges, however, that “perception on the outside matters” and that the optics of this situation are less than ideal.

“To many people, perception is reality, and … it looks like Pope Leo just gave the ambassador from the fanatical, Islamist, theocratic regime in Iran an approving pat on the back,” she says, highlighting Iran’s slaughtering of thousands of its own protesters and brutal persecution of Christians.

To hear more of Liz’s analysis and commentary, watch the video above.

Want more from Liz Wheeler?

To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Blaze media, Blazetv, Iranian regime, Irans ambassador, Liz wheeler, Mohammad hossein mokhtari, Pope leo xiv, The grand cross of the order of pius ix, Vatican, The liz wheeler show 

Since first garnering national attention with his 2011 biography “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy,” author, radio host, and cultural commentator Eric Metaxas has become one of the most prominent Christian public intellectuals in American conservative life. A best-selling author whose books include “Martin Luther,” “If You Can Keep It,” and “Letter to the American Church,” Metaxas is now about to release “Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World.” Weeks ahead of publication, he sat down with John Zmirak to discuss the American founding, the spiritual roots of the Revolution, and the modern crisis of civic memory.

John Zmirak: For the past 10 years or so, you and I have had a tradition: You write a deeply serious book on a very important topic, and I ask you impertinent, frivolous questions about it, which you answer with exasperated reluctance. Since “Revolution” is the biggest book you’ve published in some years, I thought we should do the same thing, but perhaps at greater length, if only to test the reader’s patience. Are you agreeable?

‘Perhaps the central idea is that apart from Christian faith, there would never have come into existence the nation called the United States of America.’

Eric Metaxas: More than agreeable! Fire away, sir!

John Zmirak: As you were writing the book, you were worried about the length. You forced yourself to leave out some offbeat, outrageous incidents and spurn some avenues of inquiry. First, can you tell us what you wish you had had room to cover? Second, did you consider other means of shortening the book — for instance, by leaving out all the verbs? I find that in most books, they just clutter things up. In many academic books published recently, authors largely eschew them, albeit to the detriment of readability …

Eric Metaxas: Yes, I wanted this to be a definite and comprehensive telling of the epic tale of America’s birth 250 years ago. So there’s a lot in it! Every famous story and every amazing hero and a few despicable villains. But for the record, I did not leave out any of the offbeat and outrageous incidents, simply because I couldn’t help myself and because they’re so wildly entertaining. For example, I had to include the scene at the Hellfire Club in which the maniacal, cross-eyed John Wilkes contrives to have a garishly costumed baboon leap onto the back of his archnemesis John Montague, the earl of Sandwich. Such scenes seem to me central to the wider story, somehow, because they give it the color we need to understand the period.

I hope people enjoy my chapter on the “Mischianza” celebration in Philadelphia, for example. Nor could I refrain from mentioning the “gastric lusts” of the stout and haughty imbecile that was General James Grant. And of course on the first page of the first chapter, I mention Sir Thomas Crapper in a footnote. I really do think including some of the stranger and more interesting details makes the book more fun to read, generally. That’s the hope!

But I genuinely wish I could have gone on for another 200 pages. Perhaps in a second edition I will do that. Depending on how the current edition is received, of course. But there really are so many stories I wanted to include but simply didn’t have room for. I was dying to include the story of the burning of my hometown, Danbury, Connecticut, by the monstrous British General Tryon, in which Benedict Arnold figures prominently, several years before his name literally became synonymous with traitor. Perhaps in the second edition, as I say.

’50-year drift’

John Zmirak: You’re publishing this book to mark the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, which pedants refer to as the “Septuagesima” or something. But you prevailed upon President Trump to start calling it by your own pet name, the “Supercentennial,” which is at once both less confusing and sillier. My first question: Given your close access to President Trump, do you think you could start feeding him my policy ideas? For instance, I want him to start a RICO investigation of the U.S. Catholic bishops for smuggling immigrants into the country and getting $5 billion in federal contracts over 15 years as their reward. Could you make that happen?

Second question: How would you compare the state of the country with its condition during the Bicentennial, which, given our ages, each of us remembers as a time of widespread patriotism, economic crisis, and acne? Are American elites promoting national pride, gratitude, and civic literacy the way they once did through the “Bicentennial Minutes” that used to show between episodes of “Felix the Cat” and “Huckleberry Hound”? Or are our elites doing something else entirely? And if so, why?

Eric Metaxas: I hesitate to point out that these are not really questions per se, but will overlook that detail and try to “answer” them. I also hesitate to point out that your numerals are a Potemkin village, only there to hide the fact that a host of actual questions lurk behind the papier-mâché numbers. But I will try to answer at least some of your many wonderful questions!

Yes, of course, I certainly can importune the president with any policy proposals you want to get in front of him, especially the brilliant one about the Catholic bishops! Consider it done. Or maybe I can just give you Susie Wiles’ private email address and you can pitch her on these ideas yourself. I’ll do that privately, of course, since Susie has asked me never to give out her personal email to people of your particular “ilk,” and when she said that, she mentioned you specifically and made a ghastly face.

Regarding the differences between the Bicentennial — which we both remember — and the Supercentennial we are currently experiencing, I think that yes, more Americans knew more about American history in 1976 than today, but I also think that the 50-year drift away from teaching American history and the subsequent drift away from our founding ideals has caused more Americans to wake up and become more patriotic than ever. The madness of what we’ve been through as a nation has caused many to realize we desperately need to know our history, which is precisely why I wrote the book. Let’s just say Ken Burns’ PBS homage to the Native Americans disguised as a series on the American Revolution doesn’t exactly help things, and I thought someone should step up.

‘A grand pair of tusks’

John Zmirak: As I mentioned when we talked about “Revolution” on your radio show, this is the first book that convinced me that the patriots were right, that the British abuses of colonists’ rights met the exacting criteria for just war, and that the American founders were actually the conservatives resisting a new ideology imposed by godless, arrogant elites. In that sense, the Boston Tea Party was a forerunner of the election integrity protests on January 6, 2021. Were there issues on which your research for this book made you change your mind? What did you learn that most surprised you?

Eric Metaxas: The most surprising thing I learned was that George Washington made many of his own dentures and at one point — on a lathe operated with a foot pedal in the basement at Mount Vernon — he fashioned for himself a grand pair of tusks that he thought “properly fitting to the august office of the nation’s chief executive,” which were of such size as “inspired the deepest reverence” in those in his company and which he more than once used to intimidate Jefferson and Hamilton into silence. Most biographies leave such tidbits out of the story, but I simply refuse to!

Unfortunately, the Smithsonian has the tusks hidden away in storage in an annex in Maryland. It is my belief that their absence from the actual exhibit in the museum on our national mall marks a monumental ellipsis in the great story of Washington’s presidency. Of course I might be making this up, but who will ever know? You’ll just have to read the book, I suppose.

‘Decadence of British elites’

John Zmirak: How aggressively secular had British elites become by 1763, when the conflict with the colonies began? How fervently Christian had Americans become in the meantime, under the influence of Second Great Awakening preachers such as George Whitefield? Would you compare the growing schism between the two groups to the divide in America today between post-Christian elites and institutions and the scrappy, Bible-reading subculture of serious believers? Was there a real threat, as many colonists saw, of the British authorities interfering with religious freedom in America — as we’ve just learned the Biden administration was doing, thanks to the Trump administration’s report on anti-Christian bias?

Eric Metaxas: Can we be serious for a moment? Honestly, I had zero idea of any of this when I began my research, but this contrast became very clear almost immediately. It really is shocking that this is not more widely known, and I sincerely hope my book will help people see that this yawning cultural divide was at the heart of the matter. The British elites were as mocking of the simple evangelical culture of the colonies — especially in Massachusetts — as the secular elites are today. I simply had never known this. And yes, the threat the colonists saw was very real. Just as it was under the Biden administration.

John Zmirak: While we might find founders such as John Adams or Samuel Adams more admirable — more suitable candidates for roles such as “civic leader” or “son-in-law” — on the British side, we encounter Falstaffian wonders such as Lord Charles Townshend, aka “Champagne Charley,” who arguably did more to alienate the colonies than any other single man. Can you please tell us about “Champagne Charley” and his infamous speech in Parliament? Candidly, tell us with whom you’d rather have dinner: Sam Adams or “Champagne Charley”?

Eric Metaxas: This is a monstrously unfair question! There is simply no way to choose! It’s more cruel than the choice Meryl Streep had to make in “Sophie’s Choice”! Ich kann nicht wählen! It’s like asking whether I’d prefer to have dinner with St. Paul or Paul Lynde! Or Charlemagne or Charles Nelson Reilly! It’s simply not right to put me on the spot in this way, and I demand that you edit this question out before this is published. When people read about “Champagne Charley” in my book, they will of course know that not to wish to dine with him under any circumstances would be a kind of willful madness.

But I really do think that by painting the pictures of these characters, we get a better idea of the era and of what the Americans were dealing with. The decadence of the British elites is hard to exaggerate, and it ends up being central to the larger story. Of course I’m being deadly serious about that. The contrast between the British elites and the leaders on the American side could not be starker and says everything about what the conflict was really about. Most on our side really believed in such things as character and virtue and “honoring God” in how we fought. But the British openly mocked such ideas, as I have mentioned. I was amazed to discover this over and over in my research.

RELATED: Does ‘Bonhoeffer’ promote Christian nationalism? The truth behind the controversy

Image source: Angel Studios

‘Curdled into malice’

John Zmirak: Another change of mind you’ve provoked in me with this book is to drain away the sympathy I once had for Benedict Arnold, whom many historians have portrayed as the victim of an ungrateful Continental Congress, backstabbing colleagues such as Horatio Gates, and the quasi-Jacobin leaders of the Pennsylvania legislature. Instead, you portray him as a peevish Achilles skulking in his tent, being moved by spite and later greed to commit the ultimate betrayal — trying to surrender not just West Point to the British, but consigning the men under his command to miserable incarceration in the Brits’ deadly prison ships and even trying to arrange for his friend George Washington to be captured and likely hanged. Now, were you telling the story straight, or was this all just an allegory for Tucker Carlson turning on President Trump?

Eric Metaxas: I’m afraid the parallels to Tucker are all too apt. Yikes. But it’s horrifying to see how someone could do what Benedict Arnold did. That’s why I tell so much of his story, because it’s almost unimaginable until you hear all the details. And honestly, it’s kind of a cautionary tale for all of us. He was the bravest and most consequential figure in the whole war until Saratoga, and he was treated horribly. But then he let his gargantuan sense of self-regard lead him into something like a demonic and self-righteous bitterness that some historian said eventually “curdled into malice.” It’s awful. Hideous even. And yet we can’t look away.

John Zmirak: Who was the most admirable historical figure about whom you learned while writing this book? What misconceptions did the writing process banish from your thinking? What’s the most important lesson you hope young readers take away from “Revolution”?

Eric Metaxas: Er, that was three questions. Did you think you could so easily bamboozle me? And yet I shall endeavor to answer them, of course. The answer to the first question is John Adams. He should be a hundred times more famous than Thomas Jefferson. In a way the whole book ends up being his story somehow, although that was not my intention. But he is so compelling and so funny and acerbic and yet a man of the deepest integrity and Christian faith. I was amazed by him and by how central he was to bringing this nation into being, compared to what I had known.

One of the main misconceptions writing this book banished from my thinking was the idea that Adams was somehow peripheral, when he is infinitely more central to the story than Jefferson, as I mentioned, who really had almost no role in the Revolution itself and is mostly famous based on writing a single sentence — which was not his original idea, of course, and which was actually edited by Ben Franklin. Most of what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration had already been established over and over in the previous decade and had been said and written many times by many others. But when we declared independence, we needed someone to put it all down in a single document, and so Adams picked Jefferson to write the first draft. But we should not pretend that Jefferson was the author of the Declaration in the standard sense of the word “author,” as so many erroneously say. He brilliantly took these pre-established ideas and wove them into some beautiful sentences. But it’s not as if he came up with them. That would be like saying that Jerome wrote the Bible. Or like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the parables of Jesus and the Lord’s Prayer. History needs at least to be honest.

As for the most important idea I think young people should take away, that’s impossible to say. There are many. But perhaps the central idea is that apart from Christian faith, there would never have come into existence the nation called the United States of America. That’s simply not debatable, but it’s very, very important, and very few people know it or want to know it. But we must know it, not just because it’s true, but because we cannot remain a free people without understanding where our freedom comes from.

‘Our glorious story’

John Zmirak: In your previous book on the founding, “If You Can Keep It,” you show how the American experiment of ordered liberty could only succeed — as all our founders agreed — if the population displayed the virtues that emerge from a lively Christian faith. You just mentioned that. Do you honestly think a sufficient percentage of Americans today have either such virtues or the faith that sustains them? If not, and in the absence of another Great Awakening, what non-democratic system of government would you recommend we adopt? Given your Greek/German heritage, perhaps you have a Byzantine or Hohenzollern alternative you could offer? Or is there some other option that occurs to you?

Eric Metaxas: Yes, if all else fails, I think a Hohenzollern-style monarchy is the way to go. But before that happens, I would earnestly advocate for us as Americans to reacquaint ourselves with our glorious story — which is precisely why I wrote this book — and try to do some justice to the great men who risked everything in living out that story. We absolutely and unequivocally owe them that, as I say in the epilogue. And I do hope that in reading my book, people will come away genuinely inspired. I think it’s almost inevitable in a way. When you see who these men were and what they did, you want to be a part of it yourself, and that’s precisely the idea. We are to continue the Revolution, as I say. That’s our job, and we must do it.

So I do believe there are enough Americans willing to do that, and it is my hope that those that aren’t yet willing will become more willing when they read the book and see what a great story they have the opportunity to become a part of.

“Revolution” will be available for purchase on June 2.

​American founding, American history, American revolution, Books, Christian faith, Civic memory, Culture, Eric metaxas, George washington, Interview, Lifestyle, Revolution: the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world’, Faith