It is April 19, 1775. The sun is barely up over Lexington, Massachusetts. On the green, a group of colonial militiamen, farmers, tradesmen, fathers, and men of faith, stand in a loose line facing a column of the most disciplined professional soldiers on earth.
They are outnumbered. They are outequipped. By every conventional military calculation, they have no business being there.
But they are there. Because they had already decided, long before that morning, that there were things in their lives worth defending—their families, their communities, their God-given right to govern themselves.
Those men were not soldiers. They were citizen warriors. Men who kept a rifle by the door and a Bible on the table. Men who understood that freedom is not a political abstraction. It is a moral condition, granted by God and defended by the people willing to pay for it.
They were, in every sense of the word, warrior poets.
I've Been Part of Something I Want to Tell You About
I had the privilege of being part of Revolutionary America, a new documentary from Hillsdale Studios narrated by Tom Selleck, coming to theaters May 31 through June 2 for a limited three-day run.
I don't say privilege lightly. This is a film that takes the founding of this nation seriously, not as mythology, not as a political talking point, but as a true story about real men who made irreversible decisions under impossible pressure. Men who signed the Declaration of Independence knowing it might be their own death warrant. Men who endured at Valley Forge. Men who crossed the Delaware on Christmas Eve.
As an Army Ranger, I've spent a significant part of my life studying how men fight and why, what drives a man to hold his position when everything in his body is telling him to run. The Minutemen fascinate me for that reason. They weren't trained warriors in the conventional sense. They were ordinary men with an extraordinary conviction, that the people they loved were worth defending, and that God had given them both the right and the responsibility to do it.
That conviction is what built this country, and it is what this film captures.
Why This Film Matters
We are living in a time when the founding of this nation is being deliberately misrepresented. In classrooms, in culture, and in media, the story of what America is and where it came from is being rewritten by people who have decided that the founding was nothing more than a power grab by wealthy landowners.
The men who founded this republic were imperfect, every one of them, but they were also serious men, serious about liberty, serious about virtue, and serious about the idea that human dignity comes not from government but from God. They built something that has never existed anywhere else in human history, a nation grounded in the conviction that every man is accountable to a higher authority over any king.
That idea is worth understanding, it is worth defending, and right now, it is worth showing up for.
Buying a ticket to this film is a small act, but it is a statement. It says that this story matters. That truth matters. That we are not willing to let the founding be buried under a revision that serves someone else's agenda.
The movie industry pays attention to what audiences show up for. When we show up in numbers for something like this, it sends a signal that there is an audience hungry for truth, for history told honestly, for the kind of story that reminds us who we are and what we come from.
Our friends at Hillsdale College have built something exceptional here. If you've taken any of their free online courses, you already know what they stand for. This film carries the same commitment to sharing the truth.
Take Your Family. Take Your Church. Show Up.
This is a three-day window. May 31 through June 2. Take your kids. Take your church group. Take someone who needs to be reminded what this country was built on and what it cost the men who built it.
Our founders were always ready to defend the people they loved. They didn't wait for a better moment or a more convenient season.
This is a small ask by comparison, but it is our moment to show up for the values our forefathers risked everything to enshrine in this land.
Get your tickets now at hillsdale.edu/revolution.
Remember, Train Hard. Train Smart. And know the story of what was built so you understand what is worth defending.
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