Posted on 06/25/2026 9:13:31 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
As the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a new Gallup survey finds that most Americans believe the nation's founders would be disappointed with the current state of the country.
According to the survey, just 19% of Americans say the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased with how the U.S. has turned out, while 77% believe they would be disappointed.
The findings mark a sharp decline from a quarter-century ago.
In 2001, 42% of Americans said the founders would approve of the nation's trajectory. That figure fell to 29% in 2013 and has now dropped to fewer than 1 in 5 Americans.
The survey found that skepticism about America's current condition extends across political and demographic lines, though Republicans were more likely than Democrats to believe the founders would be pleased.
Among Republicans, 25% said the founders would approve of the country today, compared with 21% of independents and 13% of Democrats.
The partisan divide has shifted over time. In 2013, when President Barack Obama was in office, Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to say the founders would be pleased, with 42% of Democrats expressing that view compared with just 12% of Republicans.
However, 69% of respondents said the United States has succeeded in fulfilling its founding principles, with 20% saying "a great deal" and 49% saying "a fair amount."
That figure is lower than in previous eras.
In 1976, during the nation's bicentennial celebration, 77% of Americans said the country had achieved at least a fair amount of success in realizing its founding ideals. The figure reached 84% in 2002 following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Among Republicans, 30% said the nation has succeeded a great deal, compared with 20% of independents and 10% of Democrats.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
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to be fair, I think they’d be surprised how long it’s lasted...
The Civil War was the first major test.
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
Finally, the libs and I agree on something…just for very different reasons.
B Franklin
Wonder if it’s before or after the demoncRATS in the previous 12 years tried to destroy our great country? President Trump has only had 2 hellish years (plus 4 previous years) trying to put the country aright with the RATS putting up every obstacle in the book while lying their fool heads off.
I think they would be anguished and weep uncontrollably.
The Founding Fathers are weeping at watching America turn Communist before our very eyes
Disappointed?
They would be appalled.
The Founders expected members of Congress to serve a term of two, then go back to their farms. They never expected the Deep Staters who would entrench themselves in office for decades.
So there was no need for term limits,
Sorry, Founders. But you dropped the ball on this one.
Did they get the results before or after the poll?
I’ll wager that opinions about why they’d be disappointed vary widely.
Yes, they would, when they saw how many communists, socialists and generally corrupt freaks have been elected to office. They would be appalled.
The shooting would be done and bodies buried by now if they were still alive
They fought a revolution over ~3% tax on tea. They would be disappointed in 50%+ tax on our labor.
They fought for freedom from government, and now government micromanages us.
“Universal suffrage? What in the name of Providence were you thinking!?!”
They were mostly Christian so of course they would be disappointed.
It seems to ask about the presumed reaction of the Founders to the state of the nation today. Note, the question was not directed to The Framers who were laying out the architecture of the new government while the Founders were laying out justification to break away from subservience to England because all men are created equal.
So the founders are being asked the judge whether their work succeeded in establishing a nation independent of Britain where equality among men flourished. The answer is obvious and demands the Framers acknowledge that America is indeed independent of Britain and, by any measure, equality has flourished. Today, the United States recognizes more equality among women, Native Americans and significantly, by the abolition of slavery, among African-Americans.
The Framers, about whom this question is presumably not directed, would answer about whether their architecture held the nation together while preserving the principles outlined in the Bill of Rights and led to mutual prosperity. That is an entirely different series of questions, invoking an entirely different array of responses.
A respondent to to Gallup's inquiry will no doubt base his response on a set of unspoken assumptions about what the constitutional actually says and what values that Constitution undertakes to secure. Whatever the respondent says is right because the question is wholly subjective. This sort of thing might be of some interest to a political scientist, or to a campaign manager but to me as a constitutional conservative the data points are little more than statistical noise.
Most Americans don’t know there were over 50 Founders; over 100 if you include the Framers and other crucially important persons.
Especially,
Most Americans do not know that we as Americans invented transatlantic abolitionism.(it approaches that nearly all Americans do not know we invented that)
So unfortunately the question as a whole is worthless. It’s a purely political question designed to weaponize the Founders and promote the media’s “trump bad” agenda.
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