The United States of America will celebrate its 250th anniversary in three years. Yet as the nation approaches this historic milestone, the number of U.S. adults prioritizing classic American values like family, religion and patriotism is plummeting. According to a new Gallup survey, only 39 percent of Americans are “extremely proud” to be American, which is only up 1 percentage point from last year’s record low.

In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, extreme pride ranged between 65 percent and 70 percent. The share of adults extremely proud to be American is only about half of what it was just two decades ago. This precipitous fall is mainly due to the Democratic Party’s adoption of radical leftist politics. The share of Republicans who are extremely proud to be American has fallen from 80 percent to 60 percent over the past 20 years. Meanwhile, the share of Democrats has fallen from 65 percent to only 29 percent.

A separate poll conducted earlier this year by the Wall Street Journal and the independent research institution norc found similar results. It reported that only 30 percent of Americans said having children was very important to them, only 38 percent said patriotism was very important to them, and only 39 percent said religion was very important to them.

Belief in both family and God is dropping alongside patriotism. Sadly, this makes a lot of sense as values like family, freedom and self-sacrifice are intrinsically tied to biblical teachings about God.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And in the Notes on the State of Virginia, he further asked, “[C]an the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?”

In the early modern period, America’s founders voiced the nation’s broad political consensus that America’s political values were special because they were designed to protect people’s God-given liberties. Yet a century later, people began giving up on their belief in God and started accepting the premise that liberties are the gift of the federal government. Democrats especially came to view the U.S. Constitution as a charter of “negative liberties” that limits the government’s power. Therefore, they started to despise America’s constitutional form of government like they despised the idea of a Creator and the idea that the Creator instituted the nuclear family.

The attack on the family, the attack on God, and the attack on patriotism are not unrelated. Rather they are a coordinated assault on a particular worldview that America’s founders enshrined in the Constitution. In fact, Jefferson recognized the similarities between Anglo-Saxon common law and the laws of ancient Israel, and his original intent was to have an image of the Anglo-Saxon kings Hengist and Horsa on one side of the Great Seal of the United States and an image of Moses and the Israelites following a pillar of fire on the other.

This is history that even historians and constitutional conservatives do not understand. They love the freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the free market, freedom of religion, majority rule with minority protection, the rule of law, limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, governance through elected representatives, equality of all men, and inviolable individual rights granted by a higher power than human government. But they admit they do not know where these principles ultimately came from.

Some conservatives, such as British author Daniel Hannan, believe these principles were established in “the dark years, violent and unchronicled.” Yet they did not originate in the minds of Anglo-Saxon leaders.

Records such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a.d. 890) and the Ynglinga saga (a.d. 1225), although colored with legend, attest that 22 generations prior to the birth of Alfred the Great, the Angles, Saxons, Danes, Norse, Swedes and other related peoples lived on the north shore of the Black Sea. These people migrated to northwestern Europe during the era when the Roman Empire expanded into the region. These ancient Sakasones spoke the language of the Medes, but their political traditions came directly from the lost 10 tribes of ancient Israel.

In his most popular book, The United States and Britain in Prophecy, the late Herbert W. Armstrong proved that the Angles and Saxons actually descended from the lost Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. He wrote:

Through the rule of 19 kings and seven successive dynasties, the 10-tribed house of Israel continued in the basic twin sins of Jeroboam: idolatry and Sabbath-breaking. …

But in 721–718 b.c., God caused the house of Israel to be invaded and conquered by the kingdom of Assyria. These Israelites were removed from their farms and their cities and taken to Assyria on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea as slaves. …

The Assyrians—before 604 b.c.—left their land north of Babylon and migrated northwest—through the lands that are now Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, and into the land that is called Germany today. Today the descendants of those Assyrians are known to us as the German people.

The people of 10-tribed Israel also migrated northwest. Though the Assyrians had taken Israel into captivity, the Israelites did not remain as slaves of the Assyrians in Europe. They continued on a little further—into Western Europe, the Scandinavian peninsula, and the British Isles!

The history of the United States and Britain is the history of the Angles and Saxons and related peoples. That history traces back to Israel! And far from exalting the Anglo-Saxons, this history humbles them. The precious, positive, world-changing values the Angles and Saxons spread across the globe came not because of them but in spite of them. The history of America’s forefathers is the history of rebellion, failure and subjugation. Yet the continued existence of the Israelites—let alone their positive influence on the world—is attributable to God.

God promised great blessings to the Israelites. But in Leviticus 26, He warned them that if they sinned against Him, He would delay those promises for 2,520 years (for proof, read The United States and Britain in Prophecy).

Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser iii carried the eastern half of the tribe of Manasseh away captive in 732 b.c. Then King Sargon ii carried the other half of the tribe away in 718 b.c. Count 2,520 years from 732 b.c. and you arrive at 1789, the year the Constitution went into operation. Count 2,520 years from 718 b.c. and you arrive at 1803, the year of the history-altering Louisiana Purchase that began America’s meteoric rise to superpower status.

This is not the history of a superior people. This is the history of a great and superior God. And when Americans despise this history and try to undermine the Constitution, they are insulting the God who blessed them with it. The fact that only 39 percent of Americans are “extremely proud” to be American is not a sign that they have suddenly developed some much-needed humility. It is a sign that they have become ungrateful and self-righteous. It is a sign that they need to rediscover the right kind of patriotism.

To learn more about this patriotism, please read Character in Crisis, by Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry.