The Re-Founding Fathers

America at 250: The State of the Union

July 4th, 2026. On the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a certain malaise lays over the country and its celebrations. Somethings… off. Something’s not quite right, and it’s hard to celebrate unreservedly.

In many ways the United States is still great, but the decay, decline, and decadence are obvious to those paying attention. The truth is, there’s something terribly wrong with this country, and with the West more broadly, isn’t there?

Economically, on paper we are richer than we have ever been. And yet, it certainly doesn’t feel like it - why is that? Morally, we tell ourselves that we are more moral than we have ever been before. But how can that be when we have forgotten God?

And underneath it all politically is a deep tension in the country, with people holding seemingly irreconcilable visions for the country. The United States today are arguably more divided as a people than any time since The Civil War.

The Need For An American Re-Founding

We need a renewal - a Re-Founding. Such an idea is not new - The United States has had several Re-Foundings already after its founding with The Declaration of Independence,1 arguably:

• The Ratification of The Constitution and its replacement of the Articles of Confederation;

• The defeat of the South in The Civil War, the Ratification of the 13th-15th amendments, and Reconstruction;

• The Progressive movement and the unfortunate additions of the 16th-19th amendments;

• The super-majoritarian quasi-dictatorial reign of FDR;

• The Civil Rights era and the cultural and sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s

Thomas Jefferson thought that each subsequent generation should have an opportunity to remake its own constitution:

“Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself, that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind, that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years, should be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure.” - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.

While Jefferson facially claims each generation to be completely independent, in the same breath he in fact recognizes the importance of tradition - the passing/handing on2 - between generations.

A true Re-Founding then takes into account not our present needs, but the inheritance we receive from those who came before, and the duty that we carry to our descendants to pass down to them what we inherited better than we received it, or at least not worse than.

And yet, the is the fundamental problem of civilization is that it naturally tends towards decay and decadence if not vigorously renewed.

Indeed, just like we do as persons.

Thus, because of this natural tendency, “The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants.”3

It has been a long time since the Tree of Liberty has been refreshed. So long, indeed, that we no longer know or understand the difference between True Liberty and False.

True Liberty and The American Tradition vs. False Liberty and A Long Train of Usurpations

Something is terribly wrong with this country. The U.S., like the West, is sick:

• The country founded for “ourselves and our posterity” and for “we the people”4 seems to no longer have a “we.” Who are “we?” What is America’s identity? It’s obvious that America’s identity has changed over time, but can an identity that has no substance long endure? If “We the People” can be changed without our consent through illegal immigration and birthright citizenship,5 then how can we “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” particularly when factionalism within our polity seems to pit our Posterity against those who could not build their own country and did nothing to build this country?

• Wars are being waged despite popular opposition on behalf of a foreign power and without a Declaration of War from Congress as the Founders established. More and more we seem to be transitioning from a Republic to an Empire, through the Imperial Presidency, our standing army, and our entangling alliances - all of these despite the warnings of our Founders and the traditions from our history of when we were, in many ways, a greater people.

• We are literally so civics dumbed down that the popular refrain is we need to protect our “Democracy,” which the Founders abhorred and Aristotle warned against. Yet no one today even cares about the distinction, if they’re even aware of it.

• We are taxed far more intolerably than we were under The Stamp and Tea Acts that triggered a revolution in this country. We are robbed through inflation and Central Banking more terrible than Andrew Jackson could ever have imagined. And a Vampiric corporate oligarchy more disconnected from the people and rapacious than ever before has sprung up in place of the American ideal of the small business owner and the Republican landowner, who are crushed at both ends by this thieving oligarchy and the parasitic free-riders of the Wellfare State.

• We no longer build great things - industrial decay and ugly architecture going hand and hand to fill our cities with ugliness and despair to match that of those who have been left behind. How can our nation be a light to the world when we have fought for decades against poverty and homelessness, but our people are more drug-ridden and purposeless than every before in our history?

• We hold ourselves up as the beacon of Freedom and Liberty to the world, and yet we have perverted those terms in service of great evils. Think of the “right” to “gay” “marriage,” which naturally follows from the “right” to divorce and the subjugation of the purpose of marriage and the family (children) to the worship of the self, the will, and the “right” to sexual license. Think of the “right” to abortion (women killing their own kids) which naturally follows from a Fornication Culture. Think of “Trans-rights” (the right to sexually abuse by chemically castrating them, and the right of mentally ill adults to mutilate their genitals and have us humor their delusions), which naturally follows from a complete ideological disconnect from any idea that there are bodily differences in sex that have real consequences that we must submit to, i.e. strict gender roles. If this is what “Liberty” brings, of what use is it? But these are False Liberties - True Liberties only spring from Natural Law and Nature’s God.

• Just think of the slavery that the abuse of sexual Liberty through divorce has left us in as a nation. The slavery of a man who is divorced by his wife, which can happen at any time with no legal standard except that of whim, is both crushing and humiliating; he can be taxed for the rest of his life, without his consent and receiving no benefit, for the purpose of ensuring his children are raised under the authority of a judge rather than his own, in the Matriarchy of Sexual Freedom. Of course, no one will ever care much about men, but the resulting sadness to children from not being raised with a loving father and mother pays us back in spades for any false happiness gained due to the unleashing of sex from marriage.

What else can what we have been enduring be called, other than a “long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinc[ing] a design to reduce [us to] absolute Despotism”?6

The Re-Founding Fathers

The purpose of The Re-Founding Fathers is to begin and continue the project of American renewal. There isn’t a complete pre-formed political program that can be implemented, since politics is necessarily the exercise of practical wisdom.7

And that’s where The Re-Founding Fathers come in.

In order to save this country, and the West more broadly, we need to get the best men, the best fathers, to put their minds to the task and dedicate their lives to this renewal. Men who recognize their duty to their country, to their children, and to their God.

The Republic is dying. Everyone senses it, but chooses to turn a blind eye while their party is in power. Our institutions are both less representative than ever before, with the rise of the Administrative State, the Imperial Presidency, and the Priestly Judiciary, while also degraded by mass democracy, as factions of special interests and the public loot the public treasury for their own private benefit, with no concern for the common good.

Many on the right are wondering if Monarchy is the solution. Perhaps America will become a Monarchy, but no medieval Catholic King is coming to save us. That is not the American tradition, and anyways it is Empire we are headed towards. We have a Republic, only “if we can keep it,” as Benjamin Franklin warned. If we end up as an Empire it will be as a punishment for our sins and our failures as a people.

The only bulwark against this is we return to our roots, the Founding Fathers. We need a true Aristocracy of the best men, the Aristoi, an Aristocracy of Fathers, if we want to keep our Republic. Virtuous, strong, rich, intelligent, and holy men must work to take power and Re-Found the Republic. Only then, and through the mercy of God, can we put the Republic back on the right path and prevent it from going down a much darker path.

Key to the success of this Re-Founding, of putting America and the West more broadly back on the right path, are the Three Pillars of Western Civilization:

• Liberty - America was founded as a cradle of Liberty. Out of fashion in many ways today on the right, due to its abuse and perversion by the left, Liberty remains one of the key pillars of America’s greatness and the greatness of the West. Without Liberty the other pillars could not stand; both Families and the Church need Liberty in order to function and flourish, just as Man needs freedom in order to function and flourish.

• Patriarchy - America, as with all great civilizations, was founded by great men. You cannot have great men, or great women for that matter, without Patriarchy, because Patriarchy is what makes Family possible. To the extent the Patriarchy disappears, so too does Family disappear, as we can see in our evil Feminist age. Likewise, without Patriarchy, nations too will degrade, as they will lack great men who love and defend their patria - for what is a nation if not an extended family?

• The Catholic Church - The extent of America’s Founding as a Christian nation or not is hotly contested.8 But what is clear is that we should be, for we cannot succeed as a moral people unless we follow God. And we cannot follow God unless we recognize who He is - Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh. Obviously America was not Founded as a Catholic country, though Maryland was founded as a Catholic colony for those fleeing persecution in England.9 Then of course there was Charles Carroll, the Catholic signer of The Declaration of Independence. When America was founded, Catholicism had been outlawed and crushed in Great Britain for nearly two centuries. The British people were Catholic for a 1000 years before Henry VIII, and less than a century after emancipation the Catholic Church is once again the largest “church”10 in Great Britain. In America, we are witnessing the coming true of Alexis de Tocqueville’s prophecy - “[O]ur descendants will tend increasingly to divide into only two parts, some leaving Christianity entirely and the others embracing the Church of Rome.” - Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835, Democracy in America.11 America’s Re-Founding must be explicitly Christian, and ideally Catholic, because we cannot fully follow Christ unless we recognize and are members of the Church He established, i.e., The Catholic Church.

These pillars were and are the source of the West’s and America’s greatness. But they are currently crumbling; with their collapse, civilization will fall. For civilizational flourishing they must be restored to greatness.

The Re-Founding Fathers is dedicated to working within the current institutions, but is sober-minded about the state of our political situation and prepared for a collapse of them. As in the 1760s, a new American political consciousness must arise, one that takes what is good within the American tradition and reforms and refashions it with the fruit of the experience we have learned from our history. And as in the 1850s, we must be prepared to face a serious crisis and fight for what is right.

The future is unknown, but the The Re-Founding Fathers will work to Re-Found a more perfect Union, one Nation, under God, with Liberty and Justice for all.