Can America survive if the next generation meant to preserve it believes our best days are behind us? As the Daily Signal has worked on a special project for America’s 250th birthday, I’ve been fixating on this question and struggling to answer it. But we might soon know the answer.  A recent study from Pew Research found that just 4 in 10 Americans ages 18 to 29 believe America’s best years are ahead of it. Today is the Day! “Sacred Honor: The Declaration That Defines a Nation” premieres TONIGHT, July 2, at 8:30pm EThttps://t.co/AmnJt3i2l0Featuring Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson), Sen. Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee), Sen. Eric Schmitt (@SenEricSchmitt), Rep. Brandon Gill… pic.twitter.com/Efik3YQKRM— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) July 2, 2026 I’ve always wondered what Pew or Gallup or other polls would have found if they existed in America’s founding era. What would the colonists have said on July 4, 1776, if asked if their best days were still ahead?  It’s very possible poll results in 1776 would look very similar to 2026 if the Founding Fathers’ letters serve as any indication. “Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress, to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants?” Benjamin Rush wrote in a July 1811 letter to John Adams.  The birth years of Continental Congress members if the United States Declaration of Independence had been signed in 2026. pic.twitter.com/BKcjerK6Jb— History Calendar (@historycalendar) June 30, 2026 Rush was just 30 years old when the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, the document’s principal author, was 33. Several signers of the Declaration were younger than both.  With scant cause for optimism beyond hope in God’s providence, they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in support of the Declaration and to one another. They picked up that quill and signed their own death warrants as the world’s greatest superpower prepared to invade.  Two hundred and fifty years later, America faces different yet very serious challenges. Our prosperity, liberties, and way of life are threatened from within and without.  We’re at an inflection point, but we don’t yet know if it is a peak or a valley. Our choices are social revival or socialist revolution. America’s Founding Fathers are not the only ones who prove the young are capable of immense political change. When they authored “The Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx was 29 and Friedrich Engels was 27. Fidel Castro was 30 and Che Guevara was 27 when they led the Communist revolution in Cuba.  TRAILER: “Sacred Honor: The Declaration That Defines a Nation”PREMIERES JULY 2 ON THE DAILY SIGNAL’S YOUTUBE“Sacred Honor” takes the audience inside the years and months leading up to America’s independence and invites viewers to think like the great statesmen of our… pic.twitter.com/XzpOdNdCHt— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) June 29, 2026 My generation must choose the way of the statesman or the socialist. The way of the socialist is easy. It unleashes the passions, encourages violence, inflates the ego, and relentlessly pursues power.  The way of the statesman is hard. It places prudence over passion, politics over violence, sacrifice over selfishness, and sublimates its power to God.  Before we can act as statesmen, we must first learn how to think like them. The Daily Signal is out with a new documentary that encourages viewers to think, and inspires them to act, like America’s Founding Fathers.  “Sacred Honor: The Declaration That Defines a Nation” takes its audience inside one of the greatest political dramas in history that culminates in America’s Declaration of Independence. America’s independence was not inevitable. It is born out of a fierce contest of ideas, convictions, and interests between men whose actions would give rise to the greatest civilization the world has ever seen.  Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, Victor Davis Hanson, Heritage Foundation President Dr. Kevin Roberts, and many others help the Daily Signal tell this story of statesmanship.  For 250 years, the Declaration of Independence has given Americans a cause worth fighting for. Every generation, in its own time, has been called to make the Founders’ pledge in support of our Declaration of Independence.  Now it’s our turn. If we too pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to America, its best days may still yet be ahead.