Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of men risked everything — their fortunes, their families, their lives — to declare that human beings are born free. That declaration wasn’t just a document. It was a dare. A dare that said rights come from God, not from some bureaucrat’s desk. And for a quarter millennium, that dare held.

Now? Gallup says only 58% of Americans are proud to be American. Just 27% of Democrats plan to fly the flag this Fourth of July. Not burn it, not protest it — simply display it. We’re not dealing with apathy here. This is something more deliberate. And frankly, more dangerous.

From Fox News:

A newly elected Republican lawmaker is putting America’s founding principles back before Congress ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday, arguing the country must recommit to them as socialist ideas gain traction on the left.

Rep. Matt Van Epps, R-Tenn., unveiled legislation reaffirming the Declaration of Independence — a move he said follows a congressional tradition of marking major national anniversaries with the founding document.

Van Epps’s bill — the Declaration of Independence Reaffirmation Act of 2026 — would formally reaffirm and re-adopt the Declaration as an “Organic Law of the United States.” And before anyone dismisses this as mere ceremony, Congress did exactly this at America’s centennial. It mattered then. It matters more now.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., already passed companion legislation unanimously in the Senate earlier this month. Both men agreed to move forward after playing in the annual Congressional baseball game. Sometimes the best ideas start on a ball field, not a committee floor.

“We felt like this was the right time to do it so that generations forward understand that we love our country at America 250,” Van Epps told Fox News Digital.

The right time, indeed. Because the people trying to dismantle the republic aren’t hiding anymore.

The socialist threat knocking at Congress’s door

Van Epps filed this bill for a reason, and her name is Darializa Avila Chevalier. The 32-year-old activist just won the Democratic primary in New York’s 13th Congressional District and is projected to waltz into Congress this November. She calls herself a “democratic socialist.” Her résumé tells a darker story.

Chevalier co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an organization that pledged itself to the “total eradication of Western civilization.” After American airstrikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, her organization posted “Marg bar Amrika” — Persian for “Death to America.”

Read that again. A woman whose organization called for death to this country is about to occupy a seat in its Congress. You can’t make this stuff up.

“I can’t express vehemently enough how antithetical socialism is to the entire American experiment,” Van Epps told the Daily Signal. “Socialism, Marxist, leftist ideas have failed every time they’ve been tried in the history of the world.”

And Chevalier isn’t a one-off. A full slate of Democratic Socialist candidates swept primaries across deep-blue New York districts. This isn’t a fluke. It’s a movement — one that treats the American founding not as an inheritance worth preserving but as an obstacle worth demolishing.

A nation that forgets its heroes

Sen. Schmitt framed it bluntly on the Senate floor: “America’s deepest crisis is a loss of memory.”

Hard to argue with that. Only 28% of Democrats say they’re proud of America’s 250-year history. A pathetic 11% believe America is the greatest country in the world. That’s not a policy disagreement. That’s civilizational surrender.

“Too many powerful voices in this country teach the next generation to receive it with suspicion instead of gratitude,” Schmitt warned. “A people that forgets its heroes will soon be ruled by men who despise them.”

Or, in this case, by activists who post “Death to America” and then run for American office.

The inheritance in our hands

The Declaration of Independence Reaffirmation Act won’t single-handedly reverse decades of cultural rot. No legislation can. But it plants a flag — a congressional declaration that America’s founding principles aren’t dusty relics to be discarded but living truths worth defending.

“Let Congress repass the Declaration of Independence,” Schmitt urged. “Let the American people hear it again. Let the children of this republic learn that they are heirs to heroes.”

This Fourth of July, fly the flag. Teach your children and grandchildren what 1776 actually meant. The founders staked their sacred honor on this experiment. Two hundred and fifty years later, the least we can do is refuse to be embarrassed by it.

Key Takeaways

• Rep. Van Epps’s bill would formally reaffirm the Declaration of Independence as America turns 250.
• Democratic Socialist primary victories reveal a growing anti-American movement targeting Congress itself.
• American pride has cratered from over 90% after 9/11 to just 58% today — worse still among Democrats.
• Congress must actively defend founding principles before the next generation is taught to abandon them.

Sources: Fox News, Daily Signal