2024 is different. Americans desperately need a break… as many of them as we can get. This is why Prepper All-Naturals is holding an unprecedented “Freedom for the Fourth Flash Sale” to celebrate Independence Day.

July 3rd and 4th only, all of their premium long-term storage beef products come with a 35% discount with promo code “freedom35“. Ribeye, NY Strip, Tenderloin, Sirloin, all on sale, including the popular 4-packs and 10-packs.

Our readers can take advantage of this very limited offering until midnight, July 5th. When the fireworks are done and we finish honoring our great nation, so too will this special disappear. Visit Prepper All-Naturals today.

Just about every major decision that our leaders make is self-destructive, and if we stay on the road that we are currently on our nation is not going to survive.  So let us hope for some sort of a great awakening to happen soon, because the clock is ticking.

In a recent article, Jeff Lukens pointed out that when nations finally die they tend to do so “with surprising speed”…

When nations die, they do so with surprising speed. Ernest Hemingway made a similar observation when a person in his novel was asked how he went bankrupt, and his reply was, “Gradually, then suddenly.”

Nations are built upon classical values — perseverance, self-reliance, and honor. A great nation is one whose values have made it unusually prosperous. In its latter days, the nation becomes hollowed out and burdened with a costly, top-heavy government. The middle class is expected to provide generosity to the masses. Over time, traditional values fade away, and everyone seeks to live off everyone else.

The United States shows aspects of a once great power past its prime. It is socially and politically divided, aware of the necessity for changes, unable or unwilling to make them, and losing the conviction in the shared goals that earlier invigorated it.

Sadly, he is quite right. Our core values have been fading away for decades, and at this point most Americans realize that something has gone horribly wrong.

In fact, a recent Gallup poll discovered that a whopping 87 percent of us rate the overall state of America’s moral values as either “poor” or “only fair”…

A record-high 50% of Americans rate the overall state of moral values in the U.S. as “poor,” and another 37% say it is “only fair.” Just 1% think the state of moral values is “excellent” and 12% “good.”

We know that we are deeply sick, but we don’t have the willpower to turn things around.

In addition to the moral decay that we see all around us, Americans are also losing faith in the things that are supposed to unite all of us as Americans.

Another Gallup survey that was recently conducted found that only 29 percent of Democrats and only 33 percent of Independents are “extremely proud” to be Americans at this point.

Patriotism is in decline, and this is especially true among our young people.  As a result, fewer and fewer of them want to serve in our all-volunteer military, and this is starting to cause major problems. Our “all-volunteer force” has been shrinking, and so if a major war were to erupt we would likely see a draft be instituted…

Because of its cost, the AVF is too small to handle a major war or emergency. When faced with two medium-size campaigns, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the AVF was seriously challenged to provide sufficient troops, despite constant mobilization of reservists, the enlistment of local allies, and the deployment of copious contractors. A major conflict would break the AVF—an open secret in defense circles, but something that few in Washington want to discuss. Over the past year of fighting, Russia and Ukraine have both taken casualties equal to at least half the active-duty U.S. Army. (U.S. military doctrine says that a force is destroyed after sustaining 30 percent casualties). Selective Service, subject to even less scrutiny than the AVF, remains on the books because if we ever enter into another major conflict, we will need a draft again.

Could you imagine how our young adults would respond if such a thing actually happened?

There would be riots all over the country.

Right now, so few young people want to enlist that the U.S. Army isn’t even coming close to meeting their recruiting targets…

The result is that 2023 is likely to be the worst year for military recruiting since the AVF began. Most of the services have already said that they will fail to hit their recruiting targets. The Army, short 15,000 recruits last year and facing the same shortfall this year, is shrinking. The Army’s top enlisted leader, Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston, recently warned that trying to do more with less is putting “an enormous strain” on soldiers and their families.

In order for an all-volunteer military to work, a significant portion of the population has got to deeply believe in the core values that the country represents.

But what are America’s core values today?

The guy in the White House and his family have made millions of dollars by doing favors for foreigners, and our deeply corrupt news networks don’t seem to care very much.

The values that Joe Biden says that he represents are diametrically opposed to the values of our founders.

At this point, the White House is literally seething with evil, and so it shouldn’t surprise us that the Secret Service just found cocaine in the White House library…

A game of Internet Clue has broken out on social media as Americans share memes about the cocaine found at the White House over the holiday weekend.

Mystery ensued on Tuesday following reports that a suspicious white powder that turned out to be the narcotic was found at the White House library on Sunday, sparking a hazmat situation and forcing an evacuation.

The discovery came two days after recovering addict Hunter Biden, 52, was last seen at the White House, and internet trolls took joy in speculating on the culprit.

During his lifetime, Hunter Biden has consumed mountains of cocaine, and so there is lots of speculation that he was responsible for bringing it into the White House.

Hopefully that is not true, because it would be really bad news if he was experiencing a relapse.

Of course the White House library is under video surveillance 24 hours a day, and so the Secret Service should be able to easily determine who brought cocaine into that room. But if it was Hunter Biden, I am sure that the story will be hushed up and brushed under the rug.

In Washington, deception and lies have become more common than the truth, and most Americans are entirely convinced that this will never change. But one way or another, change is coming.

No government that hates the truth will stand for long.

And as James Howard Kunstler has aptly observed, truth will ultimately prevail even if America does not…

Hard times will produce strong men and women with a bias toward reality, which naturally tends to comprise things that are truthful. Untruth will be consigned back to its traditional category: Evil. It will be shunned, as it should be. Nations come and go and perhaps America, as a federation of states united as one, will go. Many of the self-evident truths that were born with her will remain to be honored one way or another, in some region of this large land-mass, or another. Events await. Facing our time of dark uncertainty, we have a lot to think about this Fourth of July, a very solemn holiday.

We certainly do have a lot to think about.

Time is running out.

Will America wake up in time?

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Article cross-posted from End of the American Dream.

Several historical websites hold some fascinating facts about this national treasure, including the National Archives in Washington, D.C. History.com’s article, “9 Things You May Not Know about the Declaration of Independence,” by Elizabeth Harrison, has some intriguing information, too. Let me elaborate on some of those and convey a few others I’ve discovered.

1. Benjamin Franklin wrote the first “declaration of independence.”

In April 1775, the American Revolutionary War began at Lexington and Concord. On July 5, 1775, a entire year before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress adopted the Olive Branch Petition, written by John Dickinson with the help of Thomas Jefferson. It appealed directly to King George III for reconciliation between the American colonies and Great Britain.

Though Benjamin Franklin signed the Petition for the sake of consensus, he radically differed with it and said that stronger sentiments were necessary because the Petition was destined to be rejected.

Franklin was so appalled by British atrocities and exhausted of their rule that he planned the first articles of confederation and drafted a declaration of independence to be issued by none other than Gen. George Washington.

So strong was the language of the draft that Thomas Jefferson wrote, while some members of Congress like himself “approved highly of it,” others would be “revolted at it.” Jefferson explained in his private commentary that “proposing it to congress as the subject for any vote whatever would startle many members.”

It seems Congress just wasn’t ready to throw down the gauntlet, yet. My, how things can change in a year!

2. Thomas Jefferson had problems with the adopted version of the Declaration of Independence – written largely by him.

On June 11, 1776, the Second Continental Congress appointed a committee of five men (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman and Thomas Jefferson) to write a Declaration of Independence.

The committeemen, in turn, appointed Jefferson to produce a first draft for their consideration, which he did by utilizing other documents such as his own draft of a Virginia constitution, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and state appeals for independence. The committee and later Congress made some revisions to Jefferson’s draft before formally adopting it on July 4, 1776.

In the end, Jefferson was troubled by their revisions, especially Franklin and Adams’ removal of a diatribe blaming British King George III for the transatlantic slave trade. Who knows? Maybe if that paragraph were left in the document, our founders might not be maligned as much today for being pro-slavery.

3. The Declaration of Independence wasn’t signed on July 4, 1776.

On July 1, 1776, the Second Continental Congress began meeting in Philadelphia at what is now known as Independence Hall. They spent the next few days debating and revising the Committee of Five’s draft. After adopting the Declaration of Independence on July 4, they didn’t sign it for roughly another month because New York’s delegates weren’t authorized to vote in favor of independence until July 9, and it also took two additional weeks for the Declaration to actually be produced in its final printed form.

Most delegates signed the official Declaration on Aug. 2, but at least six others didn’t sign it until later, and two more never signed it at all (namely, John Dickinson and Robert R. Livingston.)

4. The original Declaration of Independence wasn’t written on paper.

As the National Archives explains, the original was “engrossed on parchment, which is an animal skin specially treated with lime and stretched to create a strong, long-lasting writing support. The printed version on paper and was read aloud from town squares throughout the colonies, so that those who could not read would receive the news about intended separation from England.”

5. There are at least 26 surviving paper copies of the Declaration of Independence of the hundreds made in July 1776 for circulation among the colonies.

After Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, the Committee of Five was also responsible with overseeing its reproduction for proclamation to those living in the 13 colonies. The reproduction was done at the shop of Philadelphia printer John Dunlap.

“On July 5, Dunlap’s copies were dispatched across the 13 colonies to newspapers, local officials and the commanders of the Continental troops. These rare documents, known as ‘Dunlap broadsides,’ predate the engrossed [official] version signed by the delegates. Of the hundreds thought to have been printed on the night of July 4, at least 26 copies survive. Most are held in museum and library collections, but three are privately owned,” according to History.com.

6. When Gen. George Washington read aloud the Declaration of Independence in New York, a riot resulted.

Again, History.com explained, by July 9, 1776, a copy of the Declaration of Independence had reached New York City. At the time, tensions about the Revolutionary War ran very high, with Americans split between revolutionists and loyalists. And British naval ships actually occupied New York Harbor at the time.

When Gen. Washington read the words of the Declaration in front of City Hall, a large crowd rallied and cheered. However, later that same day, they fell a statue of King George III, melted it down, and converted the led into more than 42,000 musket balls for the Continental Army.

7. All 56 signers of the Declaration paid a price for their rebellion and our freedom.

For a number of years, an email widely circulated with some history, some legend and some falsehoods about what happened to the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. But here’s the real scoop, as I detailed in my Official Chuck Norris Fact Book, where I also cite the sources.

At least 12 signers had their homes and property taken, ransacked, occupied, or burned. Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of William Ellery, George Clymer, Lyman Hall, George Walton, Button Gwinnett, Thomas Heyward Jr., Edward Rutledge and Arthur Middleton.

Robert Morris’ home was overtaken as well, and Philip Livingston lost several properties to the enemy. John Hart’s farm was looted, and he had to flee into hiding.

Francis Lewis had his home and property destroyed. The enemy then jailed his wife, and she was held for months before being exchanged for wives of British soldiers. Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, lost his ships and cargo to the British navy.

Thomas McKean wrote to John Adams in 1777 that he was “hunted like a fox by the enemy, compelled to [move] my family five times in three months.”

Five signers were captured by the British as prisoners of war and had to endure deplorable conditions as such. One signer lost his son in the Revolutionary Army, and another had two sons captured.

On Nov. 30, 1776, one signer, Richard Stockton, a lawyer from Princeton and longtime friend of George Washington, was captured in the middle of the night by loyalists and jailed by the British. Stockton endured weeks and months of brutal treatment and starvation. When he was finally released, his health would never be the same. He is actually the only signer to recant his endorsement of the Declaration, followed by him swearing his allegiance to King George III.

Over the six years of war, more than 12,000 prisoners died in prisons, compared to 4,435 soldiers who died in combat. And that’s just a sampling of what these men sacrificed, and why we honor what they did for us annually on Independence Day.

May we never forget the sacrifices our founders made for our freedom. Happy birthday, America! God has certainly shed His grace on thee! From my wife, Gena, and myself, may you and yours have a wonderful, patriotic and safe Independence Day!

(Next week in Part 2, I will give five more little-known facts about the Declaration of Independence, including the strange place a July 1776 paper copy was discovered, and what is really written on the back of the leather original.)

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