Some movies impress you, and some entertain you. A very small number remind you why you are proud to be an American. They celebrate courage and patriotism and the undying frontier spirit of the American people. They understand that patriotism is not propaganda. It is affection for a place, gratitude for those who built it, and admiration for ordinary people who rise to extraordinary moments.

These 10 films span 50 years and many genres: Westerns, war epics, historical dramas, science fiction, aviation adventures, and action thrillers. They understand that patriotism is strongest when expressed through individuals who quietly do difficult things.

That may explain why audiences continue returning to them. They do not merely entertain. They remind us of the people we hope we would become when history asks something difficult of us.

This is not a list of the greatest American films ever made. It is a list of 10 movies that understand the American character better than almost any others.

10. ‘Independence Day’ (1996)

Directed by Roland Emmerich

Few blockbusters have ever embraced unabashed American optimism with such infectious fun. The premise is straightforward: Humanity faces annihilation by an alien invasion, and the United States ends up leading the resistance, because of course we would. Together with a ragtag group of scientists, fighter pilots, immigrants, drunks, and the president, they all find common cause. Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith turn in incredibly charismatic performances.

The film’s famous presidential speech has become part of American popular culture because it appeals to something larger than nationalism. It celebrates the belief that free people, when cornered, refuse to surrender. It is loud, funny, unapologetically sentimental, and surprisingly sincere.

9. ‘Air Force One’ (1997)

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen

Harrison Ford understood something many action stars forgot: A hero becomes interesting only when he is willing to sacrifice something.

As President James Marshall, Ford gives us an American commander in chief who is less politician than a reluctant cowboy. Terrorists seize the presidential aircraft, and rather than escape to safety, he stays behind to rescue his family, his staff, and his country.

The movie is gloriously implausible. That hardly matters. Petersen directs with absolute confidence, and Ford’s quiet determination grounds every impossible moment. When the terrorists seize Air Force One remains one of the best staged action scenes ever filmed. The result is one of Hollywood’s great star vehicles.

8. ‘The Patriot’ (2000)

Directed by Roland Emmerich

History professors have spent years debating the liberties this film takes with the American Revolution. Fair enough. But movies are not textbooks.

Mel Gibson plays Benjamin Martin as a man who desperately wants peace but discovers that peace sometimes requires terrible violence. The film captures something timeless about the Revolution: ordinary farmers becoming soldiers because they decide some principles cannot be negotiated away.

Its emotional center is family and what men are willing to do to save the ones they love. Just don’t come between Mel Gibson wielding an axe and his son.

7. ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ (1972)

Directed by Sydney Pollack

Some movies whisper instead of shout.

Sydney Pollack’s mountain epic is among the finest American Westerns ever made because it kicks melodrama to the curb in exchange for raw. Robert Redford disappears into the Rockies, learning that nature rewards patience while punishing arrogance.

The landscape becomes another character. Mountains are magnificent but indifferent. Civilization feels impossibly distant. Johnson survives through competence, resilience, and quiet determination.

Few films understand self-reliance so completely.

6. ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (2022)

Directed by Joseph Kosinski

Sequels rarely are worth your time. This one is the rare one that is better than the original.

Tom Cruise returned not to relive the 1980s but to remind audiences why practical filmmaking still matters. The flying sequences possess genuine weight because real aircraft performed real maneuvers. Every dive and climb has physical consequence, and you can see it in every frame.

More importantly, “Maverick” celebrates American excellence. It argues that mastery comes only from discipline, repetition, and experience. In an era fascinated with irony, the film believes competence is heroic. Audiences responded by making it one of the defining theatrical experiences of its generation.

5. ‘Gettysburg’ (1993)

Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell

Four and a half hours can feel intimidating until you realize this film never wastes your attention.

Based on Michael Shaara’s “The Killer Angels,” “Gettysburg” treats both Union and Confederate soldiers as complicated human beings trapped inside history’s greatest American tragedy. The performances possess uncommon dignity, particularly those of Tom Berenger as James Longstreet and Jeff Daniels as Joshua Chamberlain.

Rather than glorifying battle, Maxwell reveals its terrible cost. Heroism exists alongside exhaustion, confusion, and grief. The result remains perhaps the finest Civil War film ever made.

4. ‘Apollo 13’ (1995)

Directed by Ron Howard

The most exciting lines in the movie are not shouted. They are spoken calmly by engineers surrounded by coffee cups, slide rules, and impossible deadlines.

“Apollo 13” is a celebration of these brilliant men.

Ron Howard understands that intelligence can be cinematic. Watching engineers solve one impossible problem after another becomes more thrilling than almost any gunfight. Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Ed Harris, and Gary Sinise create an ensemble defined by professionalism.

The movie reminds us that America once solved enormous problems because thousands of ordinary experts quietly refused to fail.

3. ‘True Grit’ (2010)

Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

The Coen brothers respected Charles Portis enough to trust his words. What results is a superior movie to the previous John Wayne version.

Jeff Bridges gives Rooster Cogburn tremendous personality, but the film truly belongs to Hailee Steinfeld’s Mattie Ross. Her determination never feels modern or revisionist. It feels timeless. She believes promises matter. Justice matters. Character matters.

Roger Deakins photographs the frontier as both beautiful and unforgiving, while Carter Burwell’s score lends every scene a mournful grandeur.

This is less a Western than an American morality play.

2. ‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

The Omaha Beach sequence changed war movies forever.

Spielberg strips combat of glamour without stripping soldiers of honor. Every explosion is awful because every death belongs to someone. Tom Hanks gives perhaps the defining performance of his career as Captain Miller, a schoolteacher tasked with an almost impossible mission.

The film asks what one human life is worth. It never fully answers the question, because perhaps no answer exists. Instead, it argues that sacrifice creates obligations for those who survive.

Few films have honored the generation that fought the Second World War with such honesty.

1. ‘Red Dawn’ (1984)

Directed by John Milius

John Milius understood myth better than almost anyone working in Hollywood.

“Red Dawn” imagines an occupied America where high school students become guerrilla fighters. The premise is fantastical. The emotions are not.

The Wolverines are frightened kids forced into adulthood overnight. They fight because their homes have been taken from them. They lose friends, family, and eventually themselves. Milius never suggests war is glamorous. He suggests freedom is expensive.

The film became a cultural touchstone because it speaks to something deeply American: the conviction that liberty belongs to ordinary citizens as much as to armies or governments. Patrick Swayze gives the performance that anchors the entire story, balancing youthful confidence with quiet despair.

Viewed today, “Red Dawn” feels almost old-fashioned in the best possible sense. It assumes courage exists. It assumes sacrifice matters. It assumes some causes are worth defending even when victory seems impossible. WOLVERINES. WOLVERINES.

​Best movies, Lifestyle, Culture, Entertainment, July 4th 

The most remarkable aspect of the American Revolution is how ordinary — even mundane — the initial grievances were that drove our founders to rebel and form a new government.

The level of government control over our lives today, even in the freest parts of the country, is tyrannically officious compared with the reach King George III wielded over the colonists in the early 1770s. That solemn thought should infuse our celebrations with a fiery dedication to reconstitute what is rightfully ours.

We have failed to ‘keep’ the republic the founders bequeathed to us.

Yet even as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, most self-identified patriots will not contemplate pledging “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” — or even using the constitutional tools still available to rectify today’s “long train of abuses and usurpations.”

How hollow will this anniversary ring if we celebrate a document we ignore when its moral logic applies more urgently now than when Thomas Jefferson’s mighty pen etched the shot heard ’round the world?

Tragically, 250 years after declaring independence from a monarch, we have embraced the “elective despotism” Jefferson feared. We have allowed every sector of our economy to be distorted, manipulated, and monopolized by government and its allies. We have allowed them to surveil and track our lives. We have allowed them to transform our demographics and culture. We have even allowed unelected judges to hand out citizenship to invaders.

In short, we have failed to “keep” the republic the founders bequeathed to us.

All we have left is the flickering ember of the spirit of 1776 still burning within a significant minority. From that ember, we must rebuild, reconstitute, or chart a new path.

But the threat no longer resides across an ocean. It is embedded in our law, culture, government, body politic, and economy. So we are left with a critical question: Do we still possess the wherewithal — or even the desire — to “provide new Guards for [our] future security”?

Or will we continue to suffer while evils remain sufferable until the burden becomes impossible to bear and impossible to defeat?

Elective despotism replaced monarchy

How did we reach a point at which nearly every aspect of the Constitution has been abrogated, except for those clauses debased by courts and political elites to prevent the public from repairing the very holes they tore in our social compact?

George Washington foresaw the danger in the republic’s earliest days. In his farewell address, he warned that political parties would turn public policy into “the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction” rather than the “organ of consistent and wholesome plans.”

Instead of political branches and layers of federalism checking one another, we got unified divisions through political parties owned by special interests rather than by the common good.

Jefferson warned Madison that “factions get possession of the public councils,” that bribery corrupts them, and that personal interests lead them away from the general interests of their constituents.

The modern dysfunction crystallized in the decades after World War II. Fueled by the expansion of the administrative state, the growth of welfare dependency, and cultural balkanization, both parties reoriented themselves toward monied donors and specialized factions at the expense of the nation.

Despite the manufactured theater of division between liberals and conservatives, the true divide lies between the bipartisan donor class — allied on most critical issues — and the everyday citizens they govern.

RELATED: America’s founders risked the gallows. What are we risking?

Bettmann/Getty Images

Ordinary citizens can rarely reach real governing power in meaningful numbers. Winning requires war chests of cash, which are readily available only to those willing to serve special interests.

Today, a single congressional district contains roughly 761,000 people, far more than any individual colony in 1776. Even state Senate races in large states routinely exceed $1 million in campaign expenditures. Running for governor, senator, or president requires astronomical resources. Candidates are forced into an insatiable quest for campaign funds, making them reliant on the forces undermining the common cause.

With rare exceptions, our political system is bought and paid for by narrow donor interests. We pride ourselves on holding free elections, but our actual choices are often scarcely more divergent than those found in openly totalitarian regimes.

Madison’s warning in Federalist No. 10 was prophetic: “Men of factious tempers … or of sinister designs” may “first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.”

Our modern factions have effectively merged into a monopolistic cartel. We now suffer the disadvantages of a small, easily corrupted republic without the dilution and accommodation Madison hoped would temper faction in an extended republic.

The result is a breakdown of representative government.

Grievances worse than 1776

What has this half-century duopoly wrought?

We now have government-created monopolies in every major industry, from tech and medicine to food and banking. This tyranny largely operates on autopilot. It is decentralized and largely unaffected by elections. It is embedded in crony capitalism — a form of “private” venture socialism that evades our laws, corrupts public policy, and monopolizes the capital required to win office.

Meanwhile, we have a government surveillance state strong enough to monitor, deter, and punish those who organize against its tyranny but somehow too weak to confront violent crime, open borders, Antifa communists, and the threat of Islam.

Anarcho-tyranny at its finest.

Rather than the legislature predominating, as Madison envisioned, we are ruled by an unelected judiciary that has been wrongly accorded the status of final arbiter over every constitutional, political, and social question.

Even if citizens in deep-red states successfully navigate the political process, unelected federal judges claim final authority over every political question, including whether the children of illegal invaders are citizens. And while those judges are nowhere to be found when authentic constitutional rights are violated — remember COVID? — they swoop in whenever states try to interpose against federal tyranny or address illegal immigration.

The grievances against the king cannot hold a candle to the 10-alarm fire we face today.

The grievances against the king cannot hold a candle to the 10-alarm fire we face today. Our modern tyranny is more encompassing and embedded within our own institutions, wielding more power than a distant monarch ever could.

John Adams warned us to “nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud.” Responding to the claim that he was stirring up rebellion over a threepence tax on tea, Adams insisted that “Obsta principiis” — resisting beginnings — was the only maxim that could preserve liberty.

He understood that tyranny grows like a cancer. When the people give way, he warned, “their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast” that later resistance becomes impossible. Corruption grows, dependents multiply, and “virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality” become objects of ridicule.

That is precisely the corruption that has consumed our demographics, government, legal system, and economy. Worse, it has hollowed out the people’s desire to resist.

Patrick Henry warned of the fatal consequences of acting too late. “It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope,” he said, but he wanted to know “the whole truth” and “the worst” so he could provide for it.

He pressed the urgency: “When shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year?” Would the people gain strength “by irresolution and inaction,” or by “hugging the delusive phantom of hope”?

God blessed the founders’ bold preemptive strike on tyranny while they still had power. With it, they built a prosperous and just civilization.

As late as the 150th anniversary, Calvin Coolidge could boast that despite “the welter of partisan politics,” Americans could still turn to the Declaration and Constitution with confidence that those “great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken.”

A century later, after at least 50 years of duplicitous leadership and feckless controlled opposition, we find ourselves inside Henry’s nightmare. We are rapidly losing both the resolve and the practical ability to resist.

So what do we do now, years too late and trillions of dollars short?

Nonresistance is slavish

The most vexing question of our time is this: How do we morally and practically apply the Declaration’s principle of the right to revolution in the modern era?

We extol the famous lines about inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We praise government by consent of the governed. But what happens when a citizenry suffers radical social transformation without representation — a transformation that inhibits life, liberty, and property in a way that would make King George blush?

We often gloss over the Declaration’s central justification for revolution: When faced with a “long train of abuses and usurpations,” the people have the right and duty “to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

To the founders, this was not metaphor. The Maryland Declaration of Rights stated plainly: “The doctrine of non-resistance, against arbitrary power and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive.”

RELATED: America’s founders deserve better than AI slop

Heritage Art/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Yet this doctrine of nonresistance is precisely the posture the modern political right has adopted. Part of this stems from an ethos that venerates law and order and opposes political violence. Part is practical calculation in an age when even local governments possess coercive force beyond what entire armies wielded in the 1770s.

No rational citizen wants violent rebellion or hot civil war. But we cannot even muster a unified vision among Republican leaders for peaceful resistance to unconstitutional laws, policies, and court orders.

Where are the local officials with the spine to refuse enforcement? Where are the state leaders willing to interpose on behalf of their constituents? Need we be reminded of the COVID mandates? How does that overreach compare with the relatively ethereal touch of King George?

Voting Republican every two years, trapped in a perpetual political Groundhog Day while remaining passive in between, will not save the republic. Such complacency is a betrayal of the people and principles we claim to celebrate.

Madison’s final hope

Had the founders established a single consolidated national government, we would be out of time and options. At this late hour, after Adams’ “shoots” of arbitrary power have matured into thickets of tyranny, it is virtually impossible to abolish a centralized leviathan so powerful amid a deeply balkanized population.

Yet one bulwark remains: Madison’s federalist design.

The structural defenses are badly weakened. Nevertheless, we still have 50 state governments and thousands of layered county and local jurisdictions that retain sovereign authority. In a substantial portion of America — perhaps 40% — these jurisdictions are populated by strong majorities who still have the principles of 1776 pulsing through their veins.

If we consistently elected representatives in these regions who reflected the people’s will — treating leaders like Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis as the bare-minimum standard rather than as an anomaly — we could use the 10th Amendment and state institutions to interpose on behalf of the people.

Red-state America, or at least defiant pockets within it, can become the last “asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty,” as Samuel Adams envisioned after the signing of the Declaration.

Isolated citizens acting alone cannot topple systemic tyranny. But if the people reclaim control over one state government, and then a few more, those sovereign institutions can become the shield necessary to resist.

Party conventions can beat elective despotism

None of this will happen under our current electoral system.

No prominent Democrats share our values, and no more than 10% of Republicans share them and are willing to fight for them. That percentage shrinks the higher one climbs the political ladder.

This returns us to elective despotism. The only viable way to reach voters under the current system is through torrents of cash, supplied by the venture-socialist interests subverting our government, society, and economy.

That brings us to a pragmatic solution: the state party convention system.

Ironically, we can weaponize the party apparatus — one of the mechanisms that fueled this crisis — to dismantle it. Changing the general election system would require near-impossible constitutional reform. But the process for nominating candidates is governed by private party rules.

In more than 40% of the country, the Republican nominee is virtually guaranteed to win the general election. The problem is that GOP nominees are often corrupted by the establishment. In direct primaries, the corrupted candidates with enough money win 95% of the time.

But who says we must hold primaries?

Red-state America, or at least defiant pockets within it, can become the last ‘asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.’

Unlike easily manipulated mass-primary voters, Utah’s convention delegates, while imperfect, are vastly more discerning. They frequently disregard establishment financial advantages and support underdogs over entrenched incumbents. Unfortunately, figures like Mitt Romney maneuvered to gut the convention as the final determinant of nominees in Utah.

Imagine if every red state selected candidates exclusively by convention. It would instantly neutralize the donor class. No amount of special-interest cash could force a thousand informed grassroots delegates to unsee a candidate’s weak record.

Even if a compromised candidate secured the nomination once, he would be kept on a short leash, knowing he would face those same delegates again.

Victory would require convincing 1,000 principled activists rather than raising $5 million — or $100 million in statewide Texas races — for mass television buys. That would spark grassroots candidate recruitment from the very leaders we have ignored: smart, godly men with the tenacity to understand the times but without the money to present themselves in a high-cost direct primary.

Critics may dismiss conventions as smoke-filled rooms. But each delegate is elected at a neighborhood precinct meeting of registered local Republicans. This is hyper-local, decentralized civic engagement — exactly the type of organizing our founders modeled through Committees of Correspondence.

In an era of financial and institutional monopolies, this remains the most viable path to electing a critical mass of patriots in red America within one or two cycles.

Interposition is your friend

Once we establish a mechanism to elect real patriots and reclaim state sovereignty, we must use the doctrine of the lesser magistrate to interpose against external tyranny.

The founders did not fail to imagine federal usurpation. They failed to imagine that all 50 states would genuflect to it like servile puppy dogs.

A rogue district judge ruling? An unconstitutional presidential order? Even a law of Congress? The founders never doubted that states, pressed by homogeneous populations united under a common cause, would refuse to comply.

Even Alexander Hamilton, the great champion of national power, recognized limits. In Federalist No. 33, he wrote that federal acts “NOT PURSUANT” to constitutional powers are “merely acts of usurpation” and “deserve to be treated as such.”

The founders fought a bloody war to create a federalist system so we would not have to. If we asserted the constitutional authority already vested in the states, we could neutralize many tyrannical policies without firing a shot.

That requires reforming nominations, electing leaders with clear marching orders, and finally translating rhetoric into action when faced with unconstitutional mandates.

Naturally, once patriots secure governing control in red regions, they should not rule capriciously, unmoored from constitutional restraint like the French Revolution. But patriot leaders must understand that the Constitution cannot become a one-way street or a suicide pact.

We want to preserve constitutional order. We have no obligation to preserve the usurpations of the other side. Nor must we “amend the Constitution” to reverse decades of unconstitutional laws, policies, and court opinions.

RELATED: America turns 250 with a broken heart

Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Immigration offers the clearest example. The only reason we have so many illegal aliens is that the government has violated the immigration laws passed by Congress. Much third-world legal immigration also arose from visa-program abuses not pursuant to law.

The federal government does not get to violate state sovereignty and then insist that states cannot enforce their sovereignty. Strong red states should reclaim control over immigration, remove illegal aliens, and bar employment in visa categories that have been abused, including H-1B.

The same principle applies to the ravaging of red-state lands. Corporate takeovers of farms and ranches through wind, solar, and data centers exist because of government favors. Although conservatives generally oppose heavy-handed regulation, states have a right of self-defense and may use regulatory power to stop takeovers created by government distortion.

The Constitution cannot be treated as strong enough to prevent us from rectifying grievances but too weak to stop the violations that created them.

Where is our modern ‘Common Sense’?

How do we fortify elected officials with the composure and courage to interpose and protect red-state economies, cultures, and quality of life?

We cannot expect one or two courageous leaders to go out on a limb without support from the people. Contrary to the right’s obsession with celebrity saviors, Hillary Clinton was partly correct: It takes a village.

During the Revolution, Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and the Boston Gazette helped galvanize colonists into a revolutionary mindset. They helped the people support local patriots over the British.

Where is our Thomas Paine?

The good news is that the internet allows almost anyone to become one. National politics is saturated with commentary, much of it empty calories. But an ordinary patriot can gain prominence locally by doggedly covering state and local issues and officials.

In less populous parts of the country, focused media attention on wayward local officials and praise for patriotic initiatives can build support for the institutional and party changes we need to party in 2026 like it’s 1776.

The public must be activated to treat every day like Election Day. We need a permanent activist class, akin to the Sons of Liberty, willing to create political kill zones for anti-American policies in red America.

We have more guns than ever and fewer liberties than ever.

Day after day, pressure must champion social and economic policies aligned with our founding principles and root out leaders who betray them.

Benjamin Rush understood the power of media. A newspaper in the present crisis, he wrote, would be “equal to at least two regiments.”

Today, we need high-quality, hyper-focused patriot media to awaken red America. Our mission must be to evangelize those who already claim to be patriots but remain passive on the sidelines — and turn them into active reformers.

Preaching to the choir is exactly what we need, so long as it produces revolutionary-minded activism rather than the political fentanyl ravaging conservative media.

Declare independence from federal subsidies

True fortitude requires declaring independence from an abusive relationship. The greatest reason red-state politicians and policies fail to reflect their majority culture is that state governments are addicted to federal funds.

The most dangerous place in government is between a Republican politician and his federal grant.

Whether the issue is Medicaid, education, energy, or environmental grants, follow the money if you want to understand why liberal policies such as solar and wind land-grabs are pervasive across red America despite public opposition.

The people and their leaders must say no to federal funds as fiercely as they say no to unconstitutional mandates and rogue judicial rulings.

You cannot achieve political independence without severing the financial ties that bind you to the mother ship. You cannot enjoy independence from the queen bee’s stinger if you crave dependence on its honey.

Make militias great again

Many conservative Baby Boomers boast that their arsenals of expensive pistols and AR rifles will neutralize tyranny. Yet we have more guns than ever and fewer liberties than ever.

I am not disparaging the Second Amendment. But in its current individualized application, it no longer functions as “the true palladium of liberty,” as St. George Tucker described.

Even a small local law enforcement agency has more firepower, surveillance capacity, and legal authority than any individual citizen can realistically confront. Ask January 6 defendants who did little more than walk into a public building after barriers were removed. Despite whatever firearms they owned at home, they were dragged out by FBI SWAT teams. No one was there to help.

We should not ignore the Second Amendment. We must rediscover its forgotten clause.

Because we spent decades convincing the legal system that self-defense is an individual right — not solely the right of a state-sanctioned militia — we forgot the importance of the militia clause itself.

It is time to make militias great again.

Not ragtag armed hobbyists in the woods, easily infiltrated by federal agents. Rather, as part of red-state and county interposition, we must bring the militia under color of law.

Former Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Lamb had the right idea with a pilot “citizens’ posse” to train local patriots as adjuncts to deputies. Ostensibly, the purpose was to protect the community against anarchy and natural disasters. But it also buttresses the doctrine of the lesser magistrate.

By syncing local officials, law enforcement, and the populace under a common cause, the community builds a legally sanctioned shield against tyranny.

RELATED: The common-sense case for nationalizing US elections

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

If federal or state government installs unconstitutional surveillance cameras, a local militia backed by law enforcement could protect citizens who dismantle them and enforce local laws against such intrusions.

If a future Democrat president deploys the FBI to arrest political opponents for speech or beliefs, a local militia operating under the sheriff and county officials could ensure that the FBI is not welcome.

Democrats effectively did this in Minneapolis against ICE, uniting citizen groups, local law enforcement, judges, and elected officials against a legitimate federal power. Why should we shy away from using the same unified prescription to protect fundamental American rights against illegitimate federal power?

Make Exodus 18:21 leadership great again

Leaders who cheat on spouses and families will not remain loyal to constituents. Nor will God bless a morally bankrupt movement with success.

Over the past decade, the alleged patriot right has become saturated with figures who espouse biblical virtue on camera while privately living lives often more debauched than those of the secular left. I have lost track of how many Republican officials, candidates, and influencers have engaged in rampant fornication — and even paid for concubines to get abortions.

Part of the reason we are losing ground on cultural issues is that centrist suburban voters look at the GOP, see through the artificial posturing, and recognize that the private behavior of these leaders contradicts the family and biblical values they preach.

The founders were not perfect men. Neither were their movements free from sin. But we must at least return to a standard that seeks virtuous leaders.

Exodus 18:21 tells us to choose “capable men … who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain.”

John Adams understood this. “Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private [virtue].”

Consider our issues today: free and fair markets, sovereignty, ordered liberty, security from crime and Islam, medical freedom, techno-feudalism, life, marriage, privacy. All the special-interest money stands on the other side. Every political temptation will break conservative promises unless leaders have virtue.

Electing transactional fornicators is the surest path to enacting tyranny under the banner of patriotism.

The status quo is not an option. If we fail to innovate aggressively and reconstitute the spirit of the American Revolution in a way that morally and practically confronts today’s tyranny, the remaining options will be dark enough to make the French Revolution look mild.

Let’s choose light, and do it on our own terms, as the founders did.

Our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor must mean something again.

​1776, America 250, Declaration of independence, Founding fathers, Anarcho-tyranny, Covid, Republicans, Trump, Democrats, Alexander hamilton, Thomas jefferson, Opinion & analysis 

America has a habit of bringing ideas — sometimes others’ ideas — to life. This habit breeds a certain culture of meritocratic, independent superiority, understood by self-made elites and commoners alike, that ideas are a dime a dozen: If you don’t get out there and actually do it, you’re just another dreamer.

I think the most powerful example of this dynamic, and its enduring resonance today, is found in a single line from a single film. In the smash hit 1962 epic “Lawrence of Arabia,” our hero sums up the Western ethos of the ennobled individual will by refusing to let his Arab ally die. Confronted with the dismissive, fatalistic belief that the man’s seemingly inevitable death in the desert is foreordained by God, Lawrence famously snaps back that “nothing is written!” Sure enough, he saves the man, through sheer force of personal grit.

The only true choice is one of freely willed action.

The line was written by British playwright Robert Bolt for British director David Lean in a British production of a British tale of a British officer. Yet, casting our eye across the pond on this landmark national anniversary, we are struck by how lonely America seems today in its insistence on not only the Western principle that a man can, through goodness and greatness, personally break the iron grip of circumstances, but on the proactive living-out of that principle, without which it is but a hollow aspiration.

Our uniquely aggressive, defiant, and self-justifying sense of optimism can, of course, be taken too far; at the extremes, it can lead us to deny that God is always in control and to accept the deaths of millions as a price worth paying for greater power, riches, or renown.

Fate, however, is a pagan concept that can fraudulently enchain a whole people; even a whole world. And the power of even the most ordinary and obscure of men to shatter prideful prognostication through freely willed spiritual sacrifice is richly rooted in great godly obedience.

The paradox of these two ways — that our love of enacted independence can either fulfill or default on our relationship with God — weighs extra heavy upon the soul this 250th year of our land. The chaotic circumstances of our fast-accelerating technologies have opened doors to new expressions of both the healing and damaging versions of our national will to do, not just to think, feel, or be.

For many, simply trying to stay abreast of these developments in the field of AI alone is too bewildering, frustrating, and frightening an effort to maintain. Many who manage to keep roughly current are themselves increasingly pushed for the sake of cognitive stability toward one of the two extreme positions — deifying or demonizing the thing.

Yet the actual state of play is not, in fact, reflective of the urge to feel willfully in control by choosing sides in a crisp, clean, complete, and comprehensive war for all the marbles, then determine the fate of America, the world, and humankind.

As disorienting and destabilizing as it may be, the state of the AI art in America is a riot of competing and conflicting trajectories and tendencies. Between the deifiers and the demonizers is a roiling stew of wildly different factions: open-sourcers, both for and against Chinese tech; closed-sourcers, some pragmatic, some principled; groups in favor of nationalization; groups opposed; groups opposed depending on how much nationalization is on the table; groups opposed depending on who is doing the nationalizing. There are interests pushing for federal preemption of the states, others hammering away at state-level laws either to restrict or enshrine the right to compute, and still others focused simply on playing politics with the issues in the most effective and enriching ways.

RELATED: The backlash against AI reveals it’s a terrible scapegoat

RYGERSZEM/Getty Images

A farrago of federal bills jostles together with a flotilla of regulatory efforts, some but not all flowing from the administration’s executive orders and broader agenda. The Supreme Court is now in the mix. Foreign countries and administrative bodies are striking at American companies, imposing fines and rules of their own. The list goes on.

No single political authority is in control of our national technological situation. No one spiritual authority is recognized as our shared guide. We exist in a moment indescribable as simply democratic, oligarchic, technocratic, fascist, communist, socialist, capitalist, nationalist, populist, anarchic, despotic, or, frankly, anything else. We have the Declaration, we have the Constitution, we have federalism, and we have each other. The rest is remarkably, almost stunningly, up in the air.

We can all sit around and wait for the shoes to drop, and for many, beset by the universal cares of life and the hypnotic glare of tech’s pulsing power, paralysis can seem the only sustainable option. But for many more, even those inclined to choose silence and self-exile over wading into the melee, the only true choice is one of freely willed action. Interpreting technological acceleration as the unfolding of fate itself is a choice, not a cosmic requirement, one that is often made reactively, as cope, rather than proactively, as will to power. What presents as prediction is often actually a bet on the overwhelming power of the past, one that denies human agency and life-bringing newness more than it enables people with skin in the game to manifest their plans.

Rather than freaking out over the AI chaos, we ought to take this memorable opportunity to put our actions where our principles purport to be. Don’t try to game out the scramble of the factions. Don’t try to win prediction roulette, scrying, soothsaying, and scheming a way to strength or safety. Decide with discernment where you can forge a path in a manner that allows you to meet your own gaze in the mirror in the morning. And trust that what is written about us is written on the heart, where we still may pledge our honor, and all that is sacred within, to freely make good on who we have been given to be.

​United states, Artificial intelligence, America 250, Tech 

Foreigners across the globe have flooded the United States for the World Cup — and according to videos they’ve been posting to social media, what many of them are finding is freedom, opportunity, abundance, and a culture that still allows people to be different.

One man posted a video of himself walking around a neighborhood with driveways for planes, commenting on how that would never be allowed in the U.K.

Another man posted a video of himself excited about free soda refills, while a woman posted a video of herself wearing a Buc-ee’s hat, excitedly talking about the mindset of Americans: “We don’t care; do whatever you want.”

“If you want to dress a certain way, go for it. If you want to start a project, go for it. If you want to pass a car on the right, you can do it. And it’s something that personally is helping me to heal, because when you’re used to shrinking yourself, and you arrive in the U.S., and you discover this space to just be yourself and do whatever you want,” the woman said.

“It’s so refreshing,” she added.

“Share these things. I’m telling you: All we need is to believe that we are worth saving. That’s the first step. Listen to what people from all around the world are coming here and experiencing and saying about you,” Glenn says.

“You could be overseas and say they just hate people. They are bigots or whatever. They just hate foreigners or they don’t want, you know, brown people or whatever the lie is. It’s not true,” he continues.

Glenn points out that as long as you treat America with respect, you’re welcome here.

“That is America. Again, I don’t need you to look like me. I don’t need you to dress like me. I don’t need you to listen to the same kind of music. I don’t need any of that. I just want you to respect the basic idea that all men are created equal,” he says.

“Endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And governments are instituted among men to protect those rights. And that’s what makes us different,” he continues.

“It’s not our wealth,” he says.

“It’s a total mindset that you can be different because we can all come together on one idea: that we are all meant to be different and the government is to enforce the freedoms that we have.”

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​United states, World cup, The glenn beck program, Uk, Glenn beck 

Sorry, leftists. Despite a decade of screeching demands that we refuse to “normalize” Donald Trump, the concept of Trump as president of the United States and the most powerful man on earth is now the norm.

Thank goodness.

Even some of Trump’s fiercest critics have softened.

As we celebrate our country’s 250th birthday and our exceptional heritage, it’s nice that the cultural focus on politics in general and on Trump in particular has waned.

The Trump obsession has not been healthy for America or our relationships with one another. Deep familial divisions that Jesus predicted would result from resistance to God’s truth instead have occurred because of a fleeting political landscape.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in November 2025; Demetrius Freeman/the Washington Post/Getty Images

Joy Behar, for instance, seemed to forge a genuine connection with Vice President JD Vance during his appearance on “The View” last month. Without any trace of her trademark snark, Behar afterward characterized Vance as “intelligent” and funny, while Vance complimented her tough persona and joked good-naturedly that they are now “best friends.”

Americans in deep-blue cities like Memphis and D.C. have thanked Trump for cleaning up crime in their area and for restoring beautiful fountains and statues. Meanwhile, the No Kings rallies have made little impact, while attempts to cancel celebrities for participating in Trump-adjacent events have failed miserably.

In fact, respecting the office appears to be back en vogue.

For the first time under a Trump presidency, a championship NBA team has accepted an invitation to the White House. Trump’s hometown team, the New York Knicks, will reportedly travel to the White House to mark their first title in more than half a century.

Jack Hughes, who scored the game-winning overtime goal against Canada to bring home Olympic gold in men’s hockey, indicated back in February the power of sports to unite the country:

“Everything is so political. We’re athletes. We’re so proud to represent the U.S., and when you get the chance to go to White House and meet the president, we’re proud to be Americans and that’s so patriotic.”

It turns out that endlessly hating Trump, and by extension, America itself, is exhausting. Even certain Democrats had to admit in an election autopsy that “anti-Trump sentiment alone was insufficient to motivate voters” in 2024.

By contrast, falling in love with the U.S. is easy. Just ask the thousands of World Cup visitors who have been surprised by the kind welcome they have received and the unique culture they have experienced in America’s heartland.

America and American greatness are much bigger than any one person, and though a larger-than-life figure, Trump is just a man — a man who, to paraphrase basketball legend Michael Jordan, still has to use the bathroom just like we all do.

The era of treating Trump as an “existential threat,” an enemy, or even a proxy for all of America’s faults, real or perceived, is over. For nearly six of the past 10 years, Trump has been the president of the United States, and the sun has still risen in the east and set in the west.

In other words, all is normal. Thank goodness.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​America, Politics, Donald trump, Opinion 

A U.S. Olympian canoeist who was arrested for allegedly vandalizing the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial has been indicted by a federal grand jury, according to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.

David Hearn, 67, willfully and “violently” damaged a 2-square-foot section of the sealant at the pool on June 19 after it was renovated by order of President Donald Trump, according to Pirro.

‘By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.’

“Today a grand jury has returned a felony indictment against a defendant, David Hearn, for felony destruction of property for which he faces 10 years in prison,” Pirro said in a media briefing.

She said Hearn admitted to reaching down into the pool and that National Park Service employees observed him forcefully pulling up and removing the bottom liner “with both hands.”

A National Park Service employee reportedly told Hearn to stop what he was doing.

“Hearn reacted by shouting at that Parks employee, saying that she cared too much about the reflecting pool,” Pirro said.

The witnesses described Hearn’s behavior as “belligerent, rude, and disrespectful.”

Hearn denied damaging the liner in comments to the Washington Post.

“I didn’t vandalize anything,” he said. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

The renovation of the reflecting pool has been mocked by many on the left, but others say it was a necessary and reasonable effort to clean up the monument for the 250th anniversary celebration.

Hearn competed for the U.S. in the 2000 Olympics.

RELATED: Trump greets crew that restored Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in visit to the White House

“This was a deliberate act to damage the Reflecting Pool at the National Mall that members of the National Park Service actually have worked hard to restore and have witnessed,” Pirro said.

She added that there are about six other similar cases being investigated.

“Some of them will be misdemeanors, and some of them could be less, like a violation, but we’re reviewing every case based upon the evidence and reviewing all of the reports, and right now it’s about another half dozen misdemeanors,” Pirro said.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Lincoln memorial, National mall, President donald trump, Reflecting pool, Politics, National park service 

Elected officials in California are carrying on with business as usual, even after their constituents voted overwhelmingly to send them packing.

An election was held on April 28 in the California city of Avenal in Kings County, where the mayor, Alvaro Preciado, and three city council members — Leticia Gamez, David Reynosa, and Pablo Hernandez — were recalled with at least 76% of voters backing the ouster in each case. The Kings County Registrar of Voters certified the recall election.

‘I’ve never seen a city so deflated.’

The driving force behind this electoral housecleaning — which the council members unsuccessfully attempted to stop with a lawsuit in April — was principally voter concerns about transparency and the council’s previous decision to cease contracting with the county fire department.

Preciado, Gamez, and Hernandez voted on June 11 to reject the will of the electorate and remain in office. They even approved a new city budget despite recall advocates producing a restraining order, reported the SF Chronicle.

Those officials clinging to power, including Reynosa, maintain that the recall election was conducted unlawfully by Kings County and without the council’s authorization.

Preciado told the SF Chronicle last month that he was staying in office until a judge decides on the recall’s legality.

California Democrat Attorney General Robert Bonta cleared the way for legal action against the recalled officials on June 11.

RELATED: Gov. Pritzker says he’s one of the good billionaires, not the ones vilified by socialists

In his opinion, Bonta noted that “if the Relators are correct on the merits, then the Defendants are not lawfully occupying office. It would not be in the public interest to permit elected officials to disregard election results.”

Days after Bonta granted the recall campaigners’ application for leave to sue in quo warranto, residents served Preciado and the other recalled officials a lawsuit and an earful at an Avenal city council meeting.

Dalila Barajas, a resident of Avenal who is one of the recall proponents, told KGPE-TV, “It just seems that the more meetings they have, the more money that they’re spending illegally, the more our citizens are getting frustrated and the more we’re asking for them to step down.”

While Bonta cleared lawsuits against the recall officials, King County District 2 Supervisor Richard Valle criticized the state attorney general for his apparent disinterest in the scandal, telling KMPH-TV on Wednesday, “I believe that if these were MAGA republicans who were refusing to leave office, someone in California would have done something about that.”

“We were hoping he would take some action,” added Valle.

“I’ve never seen a city so deflated in my time of being around in public service. The people feel like nobody’s coming to help,” added the King County supervisor. “Why is it being allowed to take place here in the state of California, in the county of Kings, in the city of Avenal? It’s embarrassing.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​California, Robert bonta, Recall, Election, Politics 

Pro-lifer warrior Seth Gruber has a chilling message for Americans celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday: “To celebrate America, this 250th, while simultaneously doing nothing to tear down the high places of weird, gay sex stuff and baby killing would merely be the decoration of a coffin.”

On this enlightening episode of “Relatable” with Allie Beth Stuckey, Gruber warns that America has “37 years left” before she fails — unless Christians are willing to rise up and be “the last stand.”

Gruber begins by sharing two facts that should alarm anyone who cares about America’s longevity:

In a 2025 interview with Noema Magazine, celebrated historian Niall Ferguson said, “My sense is that history has always been against any republic lasting 250 years.” J.D. Unwin’s 1934 book “Sex and Culture” — a massive study of 80 primitive societies and six major civilizations across 5,000 years of history — found strong positive correlation between a society’s level of sexual restraint (especially premarital chastity and monogamy) and its cultural energy, creative flourishing, and societal achievement in art, science, architecture, literature, etc.

Given America’s age and modern culture’s celebration of all things sexually depraved, Gruber believes the nation is a ticking time bomb.

According to Unwin’s research, “Societies that adopted and … codified total sexual freedom collapsed within 90 to 100 years,” he explains.

He pinpoints 1973 as the year America embraced “total sexual freedom” thanks to three landmark events: Roe v. Wade that made abortion a constitutional right, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller v. California that effectively opened the floodgates for widespread, legal pornography distribution, and the passing of the Endangered Species Act that gave more legal protections to animals than unborn children.

These developments put a “demonic trinity” on America’s throne, says Gruber: Molech, the god of child sacrifice, Ashtoreth, the goddess of sexual immorality, and Baal, the god of animal worship.

“That should be a little bit of an Old Testament alarm bell for the church in America that maybe we came into something of a demonic trinity and agreement in ‘73 that codified total sexual freedom,” he tells Allie.

“That’s why I think America began its 90- to 100-year clock in ‘73, which means we could be approaching the third and final chapter of Western civilization in this republic as we understand it today,” he warns. “That should be a sobering wake-up call.”

To hear the full interview, watch the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​250th us anniversary, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey