President Donald Trump praised America’s Anglo-Saxon roots during a White House state dinner for King Charles iii last week. He said the United States is more than “just an idea.” Rather, it is a nation built on a real culture, character and history brought to the New World, specifically by English settlers.

“Long before we had a nation or Constitution, we had a culture,” President Trump noted before saying that American patriots carried “Anglo-Saxon courage” in their blood and an “English faith” in their hearts. He also pointed to the Magna Carta of 1215, an early English document that limited kingly power.

The Founding Fathers held these Anglo-Saxon traditions as their birthright and built the American culture and Constitution on them. Yet liberal voices attacked President Trump’s speech. The View cohost Sunny Hostin said Trump ignored Native Americans and enslaved people. Atlantic writer Jonathan Chait called it close to “white nationalism,” claiming Trump defines America by its bloodlines and culture instead of its values. Critics Ahmed Baba and Joseph Olmo said that the term “Anglo-Saxon” is used by those who want a less diverse America.

Meanwhile, many conservatives cheered Trump’s words. Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss said Britain needs to rediscover that same “Anglo-Saxon courage.” Commentators noted the historical facts that America’s language, common law, individual rights and love of liberty came from English roots. They argued that the U.S. is not just an economic zone or a diversity experiment but a real nation with real history, real culture and real principles that have a real origin.

National Center for Constitutional Studies founder W. Cleon Skousen wrote in The Making of America: The Substance and Meaning of the Constitution: “Many have thought the Ynglings, or Anglo-Saxons, included a branch of the ancient Israelites because they came from the territory of the Black Sea (where the 10 tribes disappeared) and because they preserved the same unique institutes of government as those which were given to the Israelites at Mount Sinai. But whether related or not, there is certainly irrefutable evidence of a cross-fertilization of laws and cultural values between these two peoples.”

In The United States and Britain in Prophecy, Herbert W. Armstrong proved from secular and Bible history that the Angles and Saxons descended from the lost Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh.

“Traditional British and American principles” actually trace back not to some wise men in the forgotten mists of history but to Mount Sinai and the one true God!

The United States is indeed more than “just an idea.” It is a people who have been instructed by God, blessed by God, and tasked by God to be an example, or a “light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6).

President Trump’s comments should remind Americans of this rich heritage at a time when it is under attack. The liberal backlash shows how far some have moved from understanding America’s true foundations. Yet even most constitutional conservatives have forgotten or have never known the origins of the principles they hold dear.