Determined Patriotism: The 56 Men Who Risked Everything in 1776

In this Independence Day special of The Right Side with Doug Billings, Doug takes listeners beyond the fireworks and into the real story of 1776, the Declaration of Independence, and the 56 men who risked everything to give birth to the American Republic. This 250th anniversary episode is about courage, sacrifice, moral clarity, and the meaning of Determined Patriotism in our own time. 

The Founders didn’t sign the Declaration with any guarantee of victory. They had families, homes, businesses, reputations, and fortunes to lose. Some were captured. Some lost property. Some saw their families suffer. But they stood anyway because they believed liberty came from the Creator, not from kings, governments, courts, or popular opinion.

Doug walks through the political world of July 1776, the Committee of Five, the drafting of the Declaration, the lesser-known stories of signers like Caesar Rodney, Richard Stockton, Francis Lewis, Abraham Clark, Carter Braxton, John Hart, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and others — and shows why their example still matters.

This is not just a history lesson. It is a call to honor the inheritance the Founders gave us, defend the principles they declared, and recover the grit, faith, courage, and moral clarity required to preserve the Republic.

Ladies & Gentlemen: The Right Side is now upon you!

 #DeterminedPatriotism #IndependenceDay #DeclarationOfIndependence #1776 #FoundingFathers #The56Signers #DougBillings #TheRightSide #America250 #ForTheRepublic 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

The Right Side with Doug Billings. Hello, America. Hello, world. I'm Doug Billings. This is the right side. Today, July 4th, 2026, America's 250th birthday, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And today, on the Right Side, we're going to go way beyond the fireworks of the moment. All right. I'm going to take you inside the real story of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence. The grit, the sacrifices, and the moral clarity it all actually took. And I'm going to connect it straight to what I call determined patriotism is, and what determined patriotism demands from us today, right now. Ladies and gentlemen, the right side is now upon you. Are you ready? Let's go. The right side with Doug Billings.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

We are not liberal snowflakes who melt away in the face of tragedy, adversity, and challenge. We are a covenant nation under God. His divine providence is not dead and it's not gone. It is living within each and every one of you. And you will bring it to life in such a way that the world has never seen before. We never back down. We never give up. We march forward.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Okay, hello America. Hello, world. Uh, welcome to the right side. I'm Doug Billings, your lovable host. Make sure that you click the bell, subscribe, follow, so that you get all of the notifications of new content that we put out. Follow me on YouTube at The Right Side Doug Billings, on X at Doug Billings, find me on Truth Social, Facebook, The Right Side with Doug Billings, all of that good stuff. Follow and like and share. Share the content because we're in this thing together. This is how we reclaim the Republic back to the divine providence of God and the intent of the Founding Fathers. And what a perfect day to talk about the intent of the Founders and Divine Providence. July 4th, 2026. Today, uh the 250th anniversary. It's one of the most consequential documents, our Declaration of Independence in human history. And while we're at it, I've got a favor for you. Can we please retire the phase uh or the phrase happy fourth? Can we just get rid of it? I mean, think about this for a minute. Because during Christmas, we don't say happy 25th. Happy 25th, merry 25th, everybody. We don't do it during Christmas season. This is Independence Day. So let's call it what it is. Happy Independence Day, everybody. I know it's a pet peeve. I agree. I I admit, I admit it's a pet peeve. Uh there is no such holiday called Happy Fourth or the Fourth. So Happy Independence Day. Thank you for indulging me, letting me get that out of the way. But instead of just the usual fireworks stories and the look across the Republic about parades and so forth, I want to take us inside of the moment when everything changed in America. I want to look at the real political world of 1776, okay? The behind-the-scenes debates, the division in the colonies. It was real and it was intense. And I want to talk about the raw courage that it took for 56 ordinary men with families and fortunes to sign a document that the British Empire would call treason. And we're going to connect that directly to what I call determined patriotism. It's the same internal grit and the moral clarity that we need right now. I mean, if we're serious about restoring this republic to God's divine providence and the intent of the founders. So let me set the stage. All right. It's the spring and early summer of 1776 in Philadelphia. The Second Continental Congress is meeting in the Pennsylvania State House. Outside, the Revolutionary War is already more than a year old. Shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord. Boston had been under siege. The British were sending more troops, more ships, the most powerful army and navy in the world coming our way. Yet, even with the fighting already underway, full independence, it wasn't a done deal, not even close yet. A lot of people in the colonies and some people inside Congress still hoped for reconciliation. There were loyalists who wanted to stay, you know, under the crown. There were moderates who thought that just one more petition to the king might fix things. There were lots of merchants, farmers, business people, attorneys, doctors, clergy, you know, all had family ties to Britain. That you know it pulled against the the inclination just against a clean break away from England. Every colony had been given uh you know delegates to this convention, and the delegates were given instructions. Some of them actually forbade voting for independence, these instructions. You cannot vote for independence. Now go to Philadelphia, but you are not to vote for independence. So that was the real state of play at the time. It wasn't a united group of patriots who all of a sudden decided one morning to, you know, throw off the yoke of British rule. In a lot of ways, it was a messy, divided, high-stakes political fight that was happening while a war was already raging. On June 7th, 1776, Richard Henry Lee from Virginia introduced a resolution declaring that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states. All right, so that forced the issue into the open, and it sparked a real intense debate within Congress. Some of the delegates, like John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, they argued for more time and more attempts at a reconciliation. They were not being cowards, ladies and gentlemen. They were trying to avoid what they saw as an irreversible step. So we can extend them grace in their discussions and in their debate. But something else had been happening. In the meanwhile, you have Thomas Paine and his pamphlet called Common Sense, which had been circulating like wildfire in the colonies. And it was a little bit different than previous writings in the colonies because it was written in plain English, plain language that ordinary people could understand, and it made the case that separation from England wasn't just necessary, it was possible and it was right. So Payne helped shift the entire conversation from can we fix this with the king? to something like, why should we keep trying to fix something that's fundamentally broken? Now, behind the scenes, there was quiet but very determined work to get enough colonies on board so that a vote could actually pass. Delegates were writing home, they were trying to get their inf you know their instructions changed. It was hard, it was unglamorous, it was political labor. And on July 2nd of 1776, the the Lee resolution passed. Okay. Remember, he put it on the floor, he wanted to vote on independence. So on the 2nd of July, that resolution passed. Twelve colonies were in favor of it, New York abstained at first. Okay, so 13 colonies, all of them in favor of it, New York abstains. Two days later, on July 4th, Congress approved the text of the Declaration of Independence. All right. Now, ladies and gentlemen, here's what I want you to see between the lines of the story. These 56 men didn't know how the story was going to turn out. They had no guarantee of, you know, Yorktown or a treaty seven years later. They were deciding in real time while facing the full wrath and the might of the British Empire. Trying to decide all of this. Signing that document meant declaring themselves traitors, and the penalty for that was death. So they were pledging their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, with every reason to believe the cost would be high. And yet they did it. They didn't do it because they were reckless, but because they they they had reached a point of moral clarity. They saw a pattern of tyranny clearly enough that they were willing to risk everything instead of continue underneath it. So that clarity combined with the internal fortitude to act, despite division, despite the danger, is what we're going to unpack over the next next uh few moments here on the show today. This we're not just going to talk about, you know, the the key figures, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. I'm going to look at some of the lesser-known signers also whose personal stories of grit and will uh surpass uh many of what you know surpass many standards of what we today call ordinary charisma, determination, determination, and patriotism. I think they're gonna surprise and inspire you. So I'm gonna see with you and explain what actually happened. And we're gonna see what it actually cost almost all of those 56 men and their families. And we're gonna draw a straight line from their determined patriotism in that hot Philadelphia summer to the determined patriotism that we need in 2026 and beyond. Now, here's the hopeful truth. These 56 men were not perfect. They had disagreements and flaws, they faced odds that it would have made most people walk away from the entire cause, but they chose to stand anyway. And because they did that, we are still here. We're still free to do the work of restoring this country to its founding principles. That's the spirit that I want to carry through this special today. I want to talk about the committee of five, okay? Because look, once Richard Lee's resolution for independence passed on July 2nd, Congress still needed the actual document that would explain to the world and to history why the colonies were taking the step. So on June 11th, they appointed a committee of five to draft the document, the Declaration of Independence. The committee of five, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Now, here's what's easy to miss about that committee. These weren't five random politicians just thrown together. They represented a deliberate balance of regions and perspectives in this country, in the colonies. New England, the Middle Colonies, and the South. The man who was given the primary job of writing the draft was the 33-year-old Virginian Thomas Jefferson. Now, Jefferson didn't write it in some grand government office. You know, it wasn't plush, it wasn't high-end. He worked in a rented second floor room at the home of a bricklayer named Jacob Graff. You know, it was a quiet spot on the edge of Philadelphia. Jefferson drew from his own earlier writings from the Virginia Declaration of Rights that George Mason had drafted, and from, you know, the great natural rights thinkers of the of their current time and of the past. Jefferson wasn't inventing something out of thin air, and he wasn't, he wasn't trying to recreate the wheel. He was putting into clear, powerful language ideas that had been developing for years. So in about two weeks, Jefferson Jefferson produced a draft that the other four committee members reviewed. John Adams had already been pushing hard for independence for months. Okay, so he brought that urgency to the table. Benjamin Franklin, at 70 years old, was the oldest and the most experienced of the group, and he offered his famous editorial touches as well. One of the best known changes came from Franklin, in fact. Jefferson had written that certain truths were, quote, sacred and undeniable. Benjamin Franklin suggested changing that to, quote, we hold these truths to be self-evident. That small edit made the language stronger and more universal. Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert R. Livingston of New York, they helped shape the document with their own legal and political expertise. And the committee wasn't just polishing words here, folks. They were making sure that the final product could actually hold the colonies together and at the same time speak to the wider world. I mean, that's a Herculean task, to say the least. But the real work and the real tension came when the draft went back to the full Congress. They had to debate it, they had to discuss it. So over the next couple of days, the delegates went through it line by line. You know what? They made more than 80 changes to the document. Some were small, you know, matters of wording and grammar and so forth, but others were bigger. A long passage that condemned the slave trade. Yes, the Founding Fathers originally had put a long passage about the evil of slavery and the slave trade. Well, it was struck out because the South Carolina and Georgia delegates refused to support independence if that stayed in. So that I think that's just a side note. You know, when we say we we hear liberals say, well, America was founded on slavery. It's evil, it's not an exceptional country at all. We they tried. The Founding Fathers wrote language in there that they wanted to identify as, you know, anti-slavery language. They they understood the evil of it all, but they also had to compromise and keep a group of 13 colonies together. So what their hope was, ladies and gentlemen, that their principles and their ideas were, and they are, nearly perfect, that future generations would fix what they couldn't. Okay, so we extend them grace in this. But they, this is a collective group of 13 colonies who didn't agree and were famous for those disagreements. So South Carolina and Georgia wouldn't stay in the game if the anti-slavery language was in there. There was other language that was too harsh towards the British people as a whole, and they softened that up to focus only on the king and his ministers. So all of this wasn't just a bunch of hotheads scribbling in a back room. Okay, this was serious, deliberate statesmanship. And it was happening while a war was already underway and while the outcome was far from certain. That's the backdrop. Now, here's what I want you to see between the lines. Okay, the the men on the committee and the larger Congress itself that edited their work, these guys were not reckless ideologues. They were experienced lawyers, merchants, farmers, and public servants who understood the stakes. They knew that once this document got out there, there would be no going back. And they also knew that the ideas that they were declaring, you know, that rights come from the creator, not from government, and that government exists to secure those rights, those were radical in a world that was still ruled by kings who claimed that their authority came from God or from bloodlines. So what that revealed about the founding is important. America wasn't born from a mob or a sudden emotional outburst. It was born from a process of reasoned argument, moral clarity, and the willingness to count the cost before taking the step. So these 56 men had studied history. They understood what happens when people surrender their liberties piece by piece, and they decided that the pattern of abuses that they had endured had crossed the line that they could no longer ignore. And that same clarity and willingness to act on principle, even when it's costly, even when the outcome is uncertain, is exactly what determined patriotism looks like. It's not about having a perfect condition or a guaranteed victory. It's about seeing the truth clearly enough to stand on it anyway. And once the final text was approved on July 4th, well, the real test began. The declaration had to be signed and it had to be defended. Most people know the big names on that document, but the strength of the moment didn't come from just those famous men. It came from the full group of 56 who eventually signed it, including quite a few of those names most Americans today wouldn't recognize, but whose personal stories of grit and sacrifice are every bit as powerful. And so that's where I want to head next because this committee of five gave us the words. But it took 56 men from all 13 colonies to put their names on the final document. Most people can name Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, maybe John Hancock. But the real strength of that document came from the full group, including those names that again, they don't appear in textbooks very often, but yet, you know, whose personal courage and sacrifice were every bit as real. For example, take Caesar Rodney of Delaware. On the night of July 1st, 1776, the Delaware delegation was deadlocked. Thomas McKean was for independence. George Reed was against it. Okay. A courier rode very hard from Philadelphia to Dover to tell Rodney that the vote was hanging in the balance. Rodney was already very ill. He had suffered from asthma. He had a painful cancerous growth on his face. But he got on his horse anyway, and he rode nearly 80 miles through a violent thunderstorm and arrived in Philadelphia the next morning, still in his boots and spurs covered in mud. And Caesar Rodney walked straight to the hall and cast the deciding vote for independence. So Delaware joined the yes column, and the moment and the momentum held. So that single ride helped make the vote unanimous. Caesar Rodney signed the Declaration of Independence later and he kept serving even as his health declined. Then you can look at the three signers from Georgia. Button Grinewitt, he signed the document briefly serving as an acting governor. He died in May of 1777 from wounds that he received in a duel with a political and military rival. He was only 42 years old. Button Grinnett. His fellow Georgian signers, Lyman Hall and George Walton, they also paid immediate prices for their participation in all of this. Walton, who had risen from an orphan and a carpenter's apprentice to a lawyer, was wounded and captured during the British sease of Savannah, Georgia in 1778. He spent time as a prisoner of war before eventually becoming governor of Georgia and later a United States Senator. Okay? These weren't abstract patriots. These were men who stepped forward and then dealt with the consequences in real time. New Jersey. Richard Stockton. Another story that doesn't get told enough. So Richard Stockton was a respected lawyer and a family man, captured by the British after the signing of the Declaration of Independence and imprisoned under very harsh conditions that broke his health. And he never fully recovered, and he died in 1781 at the age of 50. Then there's New York's Francis Lewis. He saw his home burned to the ground, his wife captured, held in brutal conditions, and she never fully regained her health either. South Carolina's Thomas Hayward Jr. and Arthur Middleton, both captured when Charleston fell in 1780 and spent over a year imprisoned in St. Augustine, Florida before being exchanged. So it wasn't just the famous cases. Abraham Clark of New Jersey had two sons captured and held on a notorious British prison ship called Jersey, where the conditions were so bad that thousands of people died on that prison ship. Carter Braxton of Virginia, he was a wealthy planter and a merchant. He lost most of his ships to the British Navy and a lot of his fortune trying to support the cause. He was a very wealthy man, had a lot of merchant ships that he lent to the American Navy, and most of them were destroyed. John Hart of New Jersey had his home ransacked. He spent months hiding in the woods and the forests. His health never recovered after all of that. So these men signed up knowing full well that their signatures could and in many cases did bring direct harm to themselves and the people they loved. And what stands out when you look at the full list of 56 is how ordinary most of them were. The standards of their own class, their own positions, their own work, how ordinary they were, but how powerful their actions became. These were lawyers, they were merchants, planters, physicians. There was a clergyman. John Witherspoon, the clergyman, came from New Jersey, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence. There was also Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer. He added John or Charles Carroll of Carleton to make sure that his name was associated with himself so that the British would know exactly which Carroll they were coming for if they wanted to hang him. Bravery. The youngest signer was Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, only 26 years old. The oldest, of course, Benjamin Franklin, he was 70. They came from every region. Eight of them had actually been born in the British Isles. And they were not a monolith. They were all not united with the same worldview, the same ideas. They had different interests, different temperaments, different levels of enthusiasm at different moments. But when the moment of decision arrived, enough of them found the internal fortitude to act together. Now, here's what this shows us, my friends. The men who signed the Declaration of Independence weren't superhuman. They weren't guaranteed to win. They were flesh and blood human beings who had something to lose: homes, businesses, reputations, families, and they chose to risk it all anyway. Their determined patriotism wasn't a slogan, I can tell you that. It was a willingness to absorb real personal consequences for a principle that they believed came from a source higher than any king or any parliament. The kind of commitment that takes is rare in any generation. And it's what turned a political document into the foundation of a new nation. And that's exactly the quality of things in life and the state of play that we're going to need again in this country if we're serious about preserving what they started. Look, those 56 men signed their names. They weren't making a symbolic gesture. They were putting their lives, their property, their families on the line in a very real way. And some of them paid heavier prices than others. The pattern across the group tells us something important about what real commitment looks like, because a number of them saw their homes ransacked or burned. Several of them were captured by the British and held under conditions that damaged their health, sometimes permanently. Others lost ships, plantations, businesses that had taken lifetimes to build. Wives and children were harassed, imprisoned, or forced to flee. And quite a few of the signers themselves never lived to see the final victory that they helped to secure. Some died during the war, year, you know, from from wounds. Some died from exhaustion, or just the strain of what they had taken on. So others died not long after, and their bodies and their fortunes broken by the effort that this all took. Take Richard Stockton again, for example. Captured, imprisoned in a harsh condition, never fully recovered. Francis Lewis lost his home, watched his wife suffer in captivity. Thomas Hayward Jr., Arthur Middleton spent a year in a British prison in St. Augustine after Charleston fell. Abraham Clark had two sons held on that infamous prison ship that I mentioned, the Jersey, in conditions that were so brutal that thousands of people died. Carter Braxton watched much of his merchant fleet be destroyed. And so they're not abstract losses. They were direct, they were personal, and they were results of consequences that hit these men and the people who they loved. But what's striking, at least to me, is how many of them kept serving anyway. Some of them returned to Congress, others took up arms or helped govern their states even after suffering major setbacks. They didn't treat their signatures as a one-time act of bravery and then step back. They stayed in the fight, even when it kept costing them. And so here's what this tells us about the character that's required to start and to sustain a republic. These men understood that the phrase they signed, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, it wasn't just poetic language. It was a literal description of what they were risking. And unlike a lot of leaders in some other revolutions who used the chaos that was caused to enrich themselves, these signers came out of the war, at least most of them did, poorer than they were when they went in. They bet everything on an idea that they believed was bigger than their own comfort or their own safety. And what sustained them through all of that cost was a combination of moral clarity and a quiet trust in something higher than themselves. You see it in their letters. I encourage you all to read the Founding Fathers' personal letters and their speeches. You find it in the actions of the Continental Congress. You know, the Continental Congress set aside days for fasting and prayer during the darkest periods of the revolution. They weren't relying on perfect political conditions or guaranteed victory. They were relying on the belief that the principles they had declared were true and that those principles were worth the price. That kind of internal fortitude is rare. And it's also exactly what determined patriotism demands in any generation. Because it's easy to wave a flag when everything's going well. It's a lot harder to keep showing up and to keep sacrificing and to keep defending the principles when it costs you something real. Your time, your reputation, your resources, your income, your family, your comfort. The men who signed in 1776 showed us what that looks like in practice. And here's the hopeful part, folks, because they were willing to pay that price. The republic that they launched survived its early tests and it grew into something stronger. Their sacrifices weren't in vain. They created space for future generation generations, including ours, to continue the work of preserving and restoring what they began. And so as we go on, we're going to move from the men who signed the document to the document itself. What it really says, why it really mattered then, why it still matters now. You know, it's this it it's the clearest statement of the American creed. And so up to this point, we've spent time with the 56 men. All right. You know what they risked, you know who they are, and what many of them personally lost. So let's shift the attention to the document and let's look at what it actually accomplished, not just in you know that that hot Philadelphia summer, but across the centuries that have followed. Because the Declaration of Independence was never simply just a list of grievances against King George. It was a deliberate statement of first principles. First principles that fundamentally redefined what a legitimate government could be and what a people could claim for themselves. When you read the opening paragraphs carefully, you see that it begins not with complaints, but with a sweeping philosophical claim. It asserts that there are laws of nature and of nature's God that apply to all human beings, and that among these are certain unalienable rights that no government grants, and therefore no government can legitimately take away. The famous line: we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That's not rhetorical decoration, okay? It was the foundation. And by grounding those rights in the creator instead of the state, you know, in a majority vote or in a royal decree, the signers of the declaration were making a radical claim for their time in history. They were saying that legitimate political authority rests upon something higher than human power. From there, the document moves right into the purpose of government, to secure those rights. And when any government becomes destructive of that purpose, the people have both the right and the responsibility to alter or abolish it and to institute a new government that will better secure their safety and happiness. That was the moral and legal justification that they offered to the entire world. It wasn't just we don't like the taxes, it was a carefully reasoned argument that the British government had violated the fundamental reason government exists in the first place. Okay, now here's what's easy to miss if you only skim the list of grievances at the end of the document. The Continental Congress didn't just simply accept Jefferson's draft. They spent several days editing it line by line, and many of those changes actually strengthened the final product. They removed some of the sharper language that was directed at the British people as a whole, and they kept the focus squarely on the king and his ministers. They cut the long passage condemning the slave trade because South Carolina and Georgia delegates made it clear that they wouldn't support independence if that language remained. So those were political compromises agreed, but they were compromises made in service of actually achieving independence so the larger principles could survive and eventually grow. The delegates understood a perfect document that never got adopted would accomplish nothing. The immediate purpose of the declaration were practical and they were urgent. It gave the colonies a common statement of why they were fighting, which helped unify the people who still thought of themselves primarily as Virginians or New Yorkers or South Carolinians or whatever. It was crafted to appeal, also, I might add, to potential European allies, especially France, by framing the conflict in the language of universal rights instead of that narrow colonial complaint avenue. And it created a distinct American political identity. We needed that because it was the very moment that the colonies were breaking away from Britain. So it gave us a distinct American identity. But the deeper and the longer term power of the document itself lies in what it planted for the future. It functioned as a promissory note, folks. A promissory note to later generations. The signers knew that the new nation was imperfect. Slavery was the most glaring contradiction in the document. And some of them had tried to include stronger language against it, but they were overruled. But they still chose to declare truths that would eventually judge their own society and every society that came after. And that decision required a particular kind of moral clarity and long-term thinking. They were willing to set aside high standard, even though they themselves had not fully met it, trusting that we and other future Americans would do better. So, what this tells us about the American founding is profound when you think about it. We weren't established on blood and soil, or on the divine rights of kings, or on the idea that government is the source of rights. We were founded on the conviction that rights come from the Creator, that government exists to protect those rights, and that when government fails at that basic task, the people have both the right and the duty to take action. And that creed is what made the American experiment different from nearly every other nation in history. And it's exactly why the Declaration continues to serve as the clearest statement of who we are and what we're supposed to be. In an age, you know, today, when moral relativism is common and when the founding principles are frequently attacked or they're just quietly set aside, this document still works as a North Star. It tells us what we're fighting to preserve and what we're trying to restore when things drift away. That's I mean, look, writing the words of the Declaration was one thing, but actually defending those words through more than seven additional years of war was something entirely different. The signers didn't get to approve the document and then just sit back while somebody else secured the victory. They had to sustain the fight militarily, politically, diplomatically, and personally. They had to do that through repeated setbacks, internal divisions, and long stretches where success looked anything but certain. The war had already been, you know, underway for over a year when the declaration was approved in July of 76. And it would drag on until the Treaty of Paris in 1783. During that time, the Continental Army, I mean, you talk about serious defeats. New York fell, Philadelphia was occupied by British forces, the brutal winter at Valley Forge tested the limits of endurance and morale. There were moments when the entire cause appeared to be collapsing. But the leadership in Congress and on the battlefield kept the effort alive. And that kind of persistence over the years, over the weeks, over the months, doesn't happen without a particular kind of internal character. These men also had to hold the colonies together. Don't forget, because they had very real divisions. Not every American supported independence. There were active loyalists who opposed the break with Britain and sometimes worked actively and covertly against it. There were moderates who continually hoped for some sort of reconciliation. You know, economic interests didn't align cleanly across the colonies. Merchants in port cities often had different concerns than planters in the South. Regional loyalties were strong. Personal rivalries existed within the leadership ranks, but enough people stayed committed to the core principles to keep the movement from fracturing. And that unity wasn't automatic. It had to be maintained through ongoing debate, persuasion, and a shared willingness to put the larger goal ahead of individuals or regional preferences. And what people a lot of times overlook is how much of the decisive work happened a long way from the battlefield. Okay, Benjamin Franklin spent years in France using his reputation, his diplomatic skills to secure the foreign support that eventually proved to be critical for us. Roger Sherman of Connecticut brought steady institutional knowledge and consistency across multiple founding documents. John Witherspoon, he was the only clergyman among the signers, okay? He contributed a moral and a philosophical voice that was shaped by his deep religious convictions and his leadership at what later became Princeton University. Charles Carroll of Carrollton brought a Catholic perspective that was growing common in public life. So these weren't just politicians or soldiers in the narrow sense. They were men who brought different strengths, different experiences, worldviews, temperaments to the same cause. And they stayed engaged even when the path forward was difficult and uncertain. And I think what this tells us about the character that actually wins and sustains liberty, it's not, you know, loud declarations that are made when everything's going well. It's the willingness to keep doing the necessary work when progress is slow, when criticism comes from both outside and inside the movement, and when personal comfort, reputation, or safety is on the line. The founders faced all of that. They were second guessed, they were attacked in print. Some of them, you know, cases politically undermined during the war years. Some of them lost influence or faced personal consequences, but the core group stayed in the fight because they had reached a point of moral clarity about what was at stake. They believed, they believed the principles that they declared were true. And they believed that those principles were worth the long, costly effort that was required to make them real on the ground. That combination of moral clarity about the goal, plus the fortitude to pursue it through years of difficulty, is what I mean by determined patriotism. It's not about having perfect conditions or the guarantee of a quick victory. It's about refusing to quit or to lower the standard just because the work is hard and the easy path would be to step back or to compromise on principle. We can learn lots of lessons in today's world about all of that, especially for you all of us who are seeking accountability and justice for people who used the government to go after political opponents in the modern world. So the men who signed the declaration and then defended it over seven very difficult years, they showed us what kind of commitment looks like in practice, what it looks like. And again, they were not superhuman. They had doubts, they had disagreements, they had moments of exhaustion, they had times when the outcome looked bleak, but they kept choosing the harder path because they saw clearly what was at stake and what would be lost if they gave up. And that's the quality that's always separated lasting republics from those that eventually collapse or they drift into something unrecognizable. The founders didn't win because everything went their way or become victory, you know, because a victory was quick. They won because enough of them possessed the internal grit to stay in the fight until the principles they had declared had a real chance to take root and to endure. I mean, truly inspirational. The men who signed the declaration and then defended it over the following seven years faced an extraordinary combination of challenges. I mean, they were declaring independence from the most powerful empire in the world at that time. They had no standing army, no standing navy capable of matching what Britain could send across the Atlantic. And they were deeply divided internally. They had loyalists actively working against them, many others still hoping some form of reconciliation might be possible. Their economies were tied to Britain in ways that made separation economically painful and risky, and they had no guarantee whatsoever that their effort would succeed. Nothing. They were placing, again, their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, on principles that they believed were true, with very little assurance that victory would come in their lifetimes. So we're obviously not facing red coats marching on our towns or distant monarchs threatening us today, but we are facing serious and sustained challenges to this republic that these men created. I mean, we see the gradual erosion of constitutional boundaries and norms that were designed to limit government power. We see cultural and educational institutions that frequently treat founding principles as outdated obstacles instead of enduring truths that are worth preserving and teaching our kids. We see lawfare, institutional pressure that's used as tools to silence dissent or to punish political opponents. We see division deliberately encouraged for political advantage instead of, you know, helping to heal for the sake of the common good. And we see a noticeable decline in civic virtue in this country, of personal responsibility, of faith and prayer, of moral clarity that self-government actually requires. And so those threats are different in form from the ones that the founders faced, but they're real threats to the same inheritance. Now, the good news is that the internal qualities needed to meet these challenges are the same ones that the signers of the Declaration of Independence demonstrated in their time. They needed moral clarity, the ability to recognize when foundational principles were being violated, and then the willingness to name it, to call it out plainly. They needed grit, the determination to keep going and keep doing the necessary work, even when the results came slowly and the path forward was difficult. They needed fortitude, the capacity to absorb criticism, to absorb setbacks, and personal. Cost without abandoning the cause. And they needed enough unity around the core principles to continue moving forward, even when they disagreed on lesser matters. Okay. So that combination of qualities is again what I call determined patriotism. It's not about displaying enthusiasm when it costs us nothing. It's about showing up and staying engaged when it does cost something. Maybe it costs your time, your comfort, your reputation, your resources. It's about refusing to lower the standard just because the work is hard or because progress feels slow. So what I warn you about, all of you people who say, I want vengeance and revenge, I want justice right now. First of all, vengeance and retribution are not conservative values. But it ties into what the founders had to go through patience and working hard, seeing it through. And it's about doing all of that while you stay anchored in the actual creed that the founders declared, instead of, you know, drifting towards personalities or temporary political advantages or clickbait or emotional reaction or whatever. So, what does determined patriotism actually look like in practice in our time? It looks like making the effort to understand and teach the real history and the actual principles to the next generation instead of accepting simplified or watered down, distorted versions of it. It looks like getting involved at the local level, at schools, in school board meetings, town halls, churches, community organizations, instead of waiting for somebody else in Washington to solve it for you. Are you kidding me? It looks like using your voice and your influence with integrity, even when staying silent or going along with the crowd would be a lot easier. And it looks like supporting the people and the institutions that are genuinely working to uphold constitutional order and the rule of law instead of just criticizing those people who aren't. And I think it looks like, you know, living with personal integrity and responsibility in your own life and family, because a republic ultimately depends on citizens who are capable of self-government. The founders weren't perfect men, folks. They clearly did not have perfect conditions. They succeeded because they aligned themselves with truths they believed were bigger than any single generation, and because they were willing to trust that those truths would ultimately prevail, even if they didn't see the full results in their own lifetimes. You see, they didn't, they didn't require perfect unity or a guaranteed victory before they took action. They only needed enough clarity and enough courage to do their part and to keep doing it. And I'm telling you, that same path is open to us today. We don't need perfect agreements or ideal circumstances. We need enough people who are willing to see clearly, I think to speak honestly, to act consistently over time, and to stay in the fight for the long haul. That's how republics are preserved when they're healthy. It's also how they're restored when they've drifted away, by the way. So America, by the way, doesn't need to be fundamentally transformed, as the Dark Messiah Obama stated. We need to be reclaimed back to the providence of God and the intent of the founders. And that's the the all of that is the direct inheritance of what the determined patriotism, I guess, of of what we have been talking about throughout this special program today on the right side. It you know, the the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, they didn't put their names on a document for themselves. They signed it for the generations they knew that they would never meet. They signed it for people who had not been born yet, people who would inherit whatever kind of country they managed to secure. In 2026, in the year that we marked 250 years of that declaration, that inheritance has come to us. The real question isn't anymore, you know, what they did in that hot Philadelphia summer. The real question is what we will do with what they left us. Every generation faces its own version of that test. The founders were not perfect men, and they didn't leave us a perfect country. They left us a set of principles and a form of government and an example of what it looks like when people are willing to risk a great deal for something they believe is bigger than themselves. They showed us what moral clarity can do, what grit and forfeit can do, that they aren't just admirable qualities. Those are the qualities that actually move history when everything else is uncertain. And those are the qualities that, you know, they're not locked away in 1776. They are still available to anybody willing to choose them today. That is what determined patriotism ultimately comes down to. It's the decision made again and again to carry forward the best of what was handed to us instead of letting it erode through neglect, cynicism, or convenience. It's the willingness to do the work that preserves a republic, not just when it's easy or popular, but especially when it's not. It's teaching the next generation that the real story is this, instead of, you know, the simplified, distorted, watered-down version. It's showing up in the places where the daily life of self-government actually happens, and it's using your voice, your resources, your influence with honor. And it's all about living in your own life with a way in a way that makes self-government possible. Because I can tell you, there's no constitution that can survive if the people that it governs have lost the capacity for self-control and personal responsibility. The men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 didn't have perfect unity. They didn't have perfect conditions. They didn't even have the guarantee that their effort would succeed. What they had was enough moral clarity to see what was at stake and enough courage to act on it anyway. That same combination is available to us. We don't need to be perfect. We don't need to have all of the answers or see the full outcome in our lifetimes. We only need to decide that the principles are worth defending and that we are willing to do our part. This is the real meaning of the inheritance that we celebrate every Independence Day. It's not just fireworks and parades, it's the ongoing responsibility to keep the flame lit. The flame of ordered liberty, of rights that come from the Creator, and of a government that exists to secure those rights instead of to grant or withhold them at its pleasure. The founders carried that flame. And they carried it forward under a lot more difficult and harder circumstances than what we face. Now it's our turn to carry all that forward under the circumstances that we've been given. So, ladies and gentlemen, as we head into this 250th anniversary, the question I want to leave you with is simple, but it's an important one. What will you do with this inheritance? Are you going to treat it like something that will take care of itself, or will you treat it as something that requires your active, determined participation? The answer to that question, repeated across enough lives, is going to determine what kind of country the next generation receives from us. Happy Independence Day, ladies and gentlemen. Until next time, God bless you. God bless your families. God bless the United States of America. Please prayerfully consider heading over to Doug Billings.us to contribute to the program. We are in this thing together, ladies and gentlemen. Believe it. For the Republic. Cheers. The right side with Doug Billings.