By Karen Bufka

I just read the complete Declaration of Independence. What jumps out at me is not the “When in the course of human events” beginning, nor the middle, with its long list of grievances against the Crown, but the very end, where these brave visionaries putting their lives on the line say this: 

“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.”  

“We mutually pledge to each other” is a phrase we need to keep in the forefront of our minds today.  We are not stepping away from a tyrannical monarchy. But we face many challenges to the vision set out in our founding documents.  

Our country seems to be dying. We can help it to be reborn. But we can only do that together.

200 years after Jefferson et. al. wrote the Declaration, British military officer Sir John Bagot Glubb wrote in “The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival” that history shows that empires have a lifetime of roughly 250 years. Within that lifetime, they proceed through consistent stages: Age of Pioneers, followed by an Age of Conquests, an Age of Commerce, an Age of Affluence, an Age of Intellect, and an Age of Decadence.  

One can look at his description of each of these stages and apply it to the United States of America.  In doing so, we can see that the USA is in the final stage of its empire.  I’d prefer to say, in the final stage of its initial empire, because I trust that the USA will, with the help of each of us, be reborn to live another 250 years.

We find ourselves in a time of turmoil and uncertainty, our institutions breaking down around us, just as one would expect during Glubb’s Age of Decadence, which he characterizes as suffering from a “lowering of moral standards, cynicism, pessimism and frivolity.”  

We can either go back to bed and hide under the covers, hoping to wait out the storm, or we can take the Founding Fathers’ remarkable vision and bring it back into clear focus. We have everything we need. We can wake up and start acting like pioneers again, start over at the beginning.  

What would that look like?  According to Glubb, during the Age of Pioneers there is “an extraordinary display of energy and courage”, and the new nation is distinguished “by unresting enterprise in every field.” The pioneers are ready “to improvise and experiment.” All of us can do that. We have it in us, in our forefathers’ blood which runs in our veins, even if we have been born into an Age of Decadence.

No one is coming to save us. We have to save ourselves and we can only do it by working together. Only by working together. 

If we are going to give re-birth to the United States of America, then let’s follow the example of the Founding Fathers — who did not always agree with each other but created something remarkable together — and “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence…mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”