#100 | A NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION
IDENTITY POLITICS | Mark Boonstra: A return to virtue must begin in the home. And in our schools. For it is only by instilling into the next generation.
Podcast Version:
A New Year’s Resolution
As another year comes to a close, the birth of a new year is once again upon us.
And in the coming new year—2026—we will soon celebrate another birth.
The birth of our nation.
Sure, we do that every year. But 2026 is special.
July 4, 2026 will mark the 250th birthday of the United States of America.
250 years. A quarter of a millennium.
Pretty incredible when you think about it.
On July 4, 1776, our Founding Fathers shook off the bands of tyranny, invoking the right of a free people “to assume among the powers of the earth, separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” “Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,” the Founders thus declared:
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.
And as they set out to establish a new form of government based upon the rights bestowed upon them by God, they pledged:
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The Constitution that followed described the liberties it assured as “Blessings” from One greater than ourselves:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Following the Constitutional Convention of 1787, an 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin—the Sage of the Convention—was reportedly asked what form of government we had established. His reply:
A republic, if you can keep it.
Indeed, Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution expressly adopted a “republican form of government”:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.
Yet, Franklin’s assessment of the new republic was a cautionary one. “If you can keep it,” he said. And he was not alone in expressing that worrisome sentiment. New Jersey Governor William Livingston—a signer of the Constitution—echoed it in a February 17, 1787 letter to Elijah Clarke:
I am really more distressed by the posture of our public affairs, than I ever was by the most gloomy appearances during the late war. We do not exhibit the virtue that is necessary to support a republican government; and without the utmost exertions of the more patriotic part of the community, and the blessing of God upon their exertions, I fear that we shall not be able, for ten years from the date of this letter, to support that independence which has cost us so much blood and treasure to acquire.
Well, we not only made it 10 years, but on July 4th we will have made it 250. The “blessing of God” has continued to sustain us.
Franklin’s and Livingston’s caution lives on, however.
Too many in our society (and government) “do not exhibit the virtue that is necessary to support a republican government,” nor do they invite or even acknowledge (much less appreciate) the “blessing of God” upon us.
As we approach our 250th birthday, we would well be reminded of Franklin’s “if you can keep it” admonition.
And we should resolve in the new year to demand that our society (and government) invite the continued “blessing of God” by returning to the virtue required to sustain us.
This notion—that the survival of our republic depends on an adherence to “virtue” and on the “blessing of God” permeated our Founding Fathers’ vision in birthing the new American republic.
Shortly before seconding the resolution of independence, John Adams described a “republic” as a form of government that is founded in religion, morality, and public virtue:
The Form of Government, which you admire, when its Principles are pure, is admirable indeed. It is productive of every Thing, which is great and excellent among Men. But its Principles are as easily destroyed, as human Nature is corrupted. Such a Government is only to be supported by pure Religion, or Austere Morals. Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.
Adams wrote to Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Pennsylvania:
I agree with you in Sentiment that Religion and Virtue are the only Foundations; not only of Republicanism and of all free Government: but of Social Felicity under all Governments and in all the Combinations of human Society.
Adams’s cousin, Samuel Adams, declared that “the benevolent Creator designed the republican Form of Government for Man.”
Alexander Hamilton wrote that “virtue or morality is a main & necessary spring of popular or republican Governments.”
Massachusetts Governor John Hancock—whose signature elaborately adorns the Declaration, said:
Sensible of the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state, I cannot but earnestly commend to you every measure for their support and encouragement. . . . [T]he very existence of the republics . . . depend much upon the public institutions of religion.
Another Declaration-signer, Rev. John Witherspoon of New Jersey, declared that “it is our duty to testify our gratitude to God” and that the survival of the republic depends on the promotion of “the public interest of religion” by those in government:
Those who are veiled with civil authority ought also, with much care, to promote religion and good morals among all under their government. If we give credit to the holy Scriptures, he that ruleth must be just, ruling in the fear of God. . . . So true is this, that civil liberty cannot be long preserved without virtue. A monarchy may subsist for ages, and be better or worse under a good or bad prince; but a republic once equally poised, must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty, and by some tumultuous revolution, either return to its first principles, or assume a more unhappy form.
A return to virtue must begin in the home. And in our schools. For it is only by instilling into the next generation—and the generations that follow—the values of virtue, morality, and religion, that our republic can be sustained for another 250 years.
Our Founding Fathers understood this as well.
In 1786, Pennsylania’s Rush—who became known as the Father of American Medicine—penned an essay entitled, Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, in which he said:
The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.
A few years later, Rush offered A Defence of the Use of the Bible as a School Book to Rev. Jeremy Belknap:
In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament, that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes, and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government, that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of christianity, by means of the bible; for this divine book, above all others, favours that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues, which constitute the soul of republicanism.
Maryland’s Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration, concurred in a November 4, 1800 letter to another Marylander, Constitution-signer James McHenry:
Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore, who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime & pure, which denounces against the wicked eternal misery, & insures to the good eternal happiness are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.
In his first inaugural address, President George Washington cautioned that “the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.” Indeed, he said, “the destiny of the Republican model of Government” depends on it.
Eight years later, as President Washington left office, he implored the American people in his Farewell Address to remember that “virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government” and that we should resist “attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric”:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men & citizens. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure—reason & experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
On December 31, 1805, McHenry wrote to his son:
On the eve of a new year, accept, my beloved son, of my anxious and fervent wishes for your daily happiness. May every new year add to your mental improvements, give strength to your good habits, and when you shall come forth into the world the accomplished scholar, render you dearer and dearer to your fellow citizens. Above all things, I pray to God, that while we remain here below, your and our lives may be so spent as to ensure to us through the merits of our redeemer, a blessed hereafter.
And as a new year dawned on January 1, 1816, Gouverneur Morris—the Penman of the Constitution—entered in his diary:
Another year is buried in the abyss of a past eternity. What the coming, or, rather, the arrived year may bring is known only to the Omniscient. But we know that, whatever may be its course and incidents, they will be what they ought to be.
As we enter 2026 and prepare to celebrate our 250th birthday, let us resolve that what “ought to be”—and what will be—is that we return to the first principles of our Founding Fathers, and that we re-instill into our society (and our government) the principles of virtue, morality, and religion that might sustain us for another 250.
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