America at 250: Reflections of a Patriot by Choice

By Jianli Yang

Saturday, July 04, 2026

 

As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its Founding, I have found myself reflecting on my own journey in America and what this extraordinary nation has meant to me. I owe my freedom and even my life to this country. I have told before the story of returning to China from my graduate studies in the U.S. to participate in the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement, surviving the massacre, later earning my doctorate in political economy from Harvard University, returning once again to China to promote peaceful democratic reform, being imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party, and finally being rescued through the determined efforts of the United States. My gratitude to America is permanent and profound.

 

But this is not that story. Instead, I want to share experiences that I have never written about before, moments that shaped my understanding of America long before I was forced to depend upon it.

 

In 1986, I left what many considered an exceptionally promising future in both academia and politics in China. I came to the United States to pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. For the first time in my life, I breathed the fresh air of freedom.

 

Only those who have lived under dictatorship can fully appreciate what freedom feels like. It is not merely a constitutional principle or a political slogan. It is an atmosphere. It is the quiet confidence of ordinary people who do not live in fear. It is the ability to speak without constantly calculating the consequences. It is the simple dignity of walking through life without wondering whether someone is watching every move you make. Despite the tremendous academic pressure and the formidable language barrier I faced at UC Berkeley, I experienced a sense of inner peace unlike anything I had known before.

 

To a young man who had grown up in a country still emerging from decades of political terror, poverty, and isolation, the San Francisco Bay Area seemed almost unreal. The Pacific breeze carried not only the scent of the ocean but also the spirit of liberty. People laughed openly. They debated passionately. They dressed however they pleased. They criticized their government without fear. Individuality was not merely tolerated; it was celebrated.

 

Berkeley itself was an intellectual revelation. The university demanded excellence. The competition was intense. Yet what impressed me even more was the institution’s moral seriousness. Mathematics, philosophy, economics, history, and political science were not treated as isolated disciplines but as different paths toward understanding truth. Ideas mattered. Evidence mattered. Debate mattered.

 

In China, intellectual inquiry was constrained by ideology. At Berkeley, questioning authority was considered one of the highest academic virtues. That experience permanently changed how I viewed both scholarship and citizenship.

 

Naturally, I was also astonished by America’s prosperity.

 

Only days earlier I had left behind a country where scarcity remained a defining feature of daily life. Standing in San Francisco, I was amazed to learn that most of the magnificent skyscrapers before me were privately owned. Banks, automobile manufacturers, and countless other great enterprises were built and operated not by the state but by private citizens.

 

This was a society that rewarded initiative, innovation, and hard work. It was a country where individuals were encouraged to create, build, and succeed. I began asking myself: Is this what people mean by the American dream?

 

Ironically, this did not seem entirely foreign to Chinese civilization itself. Classical Chinese philosophy never condemned prosperity. The Zhou Yi (Book of Changes), one of the foundational texts of Confucian thought, recognizes the pursuit of wealth as part of human nature and encourages productive labor, creativity, and prosperity pursued with virtue. Why then, I wondered, had the communist regime deprived generations of Chinese citizens of private property, economic opportunity, and personal dignity? Why had a civilization with such rich philosophical traditions become trapped in a political system that denied so much of human potential?

 

America’s prosperity and intellectual freedom dazzled me. But something else moved me even more.

 

On weekends I often drove my old used car into small towns throughout Northern California simply to see more of American society. Their beauty impressed me. Their cleanliness impressed me. Their harmony with nature impressed me. Yet what touched me most was something remarkably ordinary: Every town had a beautiful public library. Every library had wheelchair access. Soon I noticed that buses, public buildings, sidewalks, and countless other public facilities were also designed to accommodate people with disabilities.

 

One day I found myself in tears. Throughout China, I had seen poor people and disabled people humiliated, ignored, and mistreated, often with no legal recourse whatsoever. I remembered the helplessness I felt witnessing their suffering. Here, by contrast, a wealthy society had chosen to measure itself not only by economic achievement but also by how it treated those who could contribute least to material prosperity.

 

That reminded me of a story from a Chinese classic The Book of Chuang Tzu. An inspector asked a livestock trader how he judged whether a pig was truly healthy. The trader replied that he examined the parts of the animal least likely to accumulate fat. If those weakest parts were healthy, then the whole animal must be healthy. Chuang Tzu used this story to teach that the true measure of a society is found not at its strongest points, but at its weakest.

 

I came to believe that the same principle applies to politics. A just society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. America, imperfect as every nation is, understood this truth better than many societies I had known.

 

In every human heart, two aspirations should coexist: the desire to pursue individual happiness and achievement, and the responsibility to care for the vulnerable and protect the common good. The healthiest society is one that safeguards liberty, protects private property, rewards excellence, creates opportunities for success without artificial ceilings, and simultaneously ensures that those who are disadvantaged are not abandoned. Freedom and compassion are not enemies. They are partners.

 

This conviction has deep philosophical roots in both the East and West. Nearly simultaneously, Confucius and the great philosophers of ancient Greece arrived at remarkably similar conclusions. Confucius taught the Doctrine of the Mean — a politics of balance, moderation, and moral restraint. The Greeks engraved upon the Temple of Apollo the timeless injunctions: “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess.”

 

Long before I entered politics, I came to believe that the first principle of good government, or the golden rule of politics, is simple: Do not go to extremes. Political extremism almost always begins by claiming moral certainty. It often ends by denying the humanity of those who disagree. History repeatedly confirms this lesson.

 

The Chinese Communist Party has governed through successive extremes. First came radical communism, which abolished private property and devastated society through campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Later came state-directed crony capitalism, in which political privilege — rather than free competition — determined economic opportunity. In both systems, ordinary citizens ultimately served the interests of those who held power. Dissent was criminalized. Independent institutions were crushed. Human rights became subordinate to political control.

 

America offered something fundamentally different. Here, competing political parties represented different interests and different philosophies, yet they remained bound by constitutional rules, elections, federalism, and the rule of law. Citizens disagreed vigorously, but disagreement itself was not a crime. Americans of different races, religions, backgrounds, and beliefs could largely live together in mutual tolerance while participating in the same democratic experiment.

 

I began to believe that the ideals I had encountered in both Chinese philosophy and Western political thought had found their most successful practical expression in the American constitutional order. My own dream merged with the American dream.

 

The society I envisioned decades ago remains the society I hope for today: one that firmly protects fundamental human rights, places no artificial ceiling on individual achievement, guarantees a basic floor of human dignity for the vulnerable, rewards work and innovation, and preserves liberty under the rule of law.

 

Looking back, I recognize that my first impressions of America were necessarily idealistic and incomplete. Over the years, my education, friendships, scholarship, and experiences taught me that America’s history is richer, more complicated, and more self-critical than I initially understood. Yet complexity has only strengthened, not weakened, my admiration for this country.

 

Generation after generation, Americans have expanded the promise of liberty while preserving constitutional continuity. The country’s remarkable network of families, churches, civic associations, local governments, independent courts, and voluntary organizations forms the social fabric upon which freedom ultimately depends.

 

After World War II, America became not merely the world’s strongest nation but the principal defender of the free world, the leading advocate for human rights, and the brightest beacon for countless people struggling against tyranny — including me.

 

I love America not because it is perfect. I love America because it possesses the moral capacity to correct itself without abandoning its founding principles.

 

Of course, America today faces profound challenges.

 

Political extremism increasingly feeds upon itself, with excesses on one side often serving to justify excesses on the other. Identity politics has deepened social divisions. Confidence in the rule of law has weakened. Constitutional boundaries among the branches of government have become subjects of growing controversy. America’s retreat from confident leadership within the free world has created uncertainty about the future of the international order that generations of Americans built at enormous sacrifice.

 

Even more consequential may be the revolutionary impact of information technology, especially artificial intelligence. AI is reshaping democracy, economic competition, national security, human relationships, and even our understanding of what it means to be human. The extraordinary concentration of wealth and power in a handful of technology companies, combined with their increasingly complex relationship with government, challenges many of our traditional assumptions about capitalism, liberty, equality, markets, and constitutional governance.

 

These are questions that neither conservatives nor progressives can afford to ignore.

 

Yet the principles that first inspired me nearly 40 years ago remain unchanged. A free society should protect human rights. It should reward excellence without limit. It should guarantee basic dignity to those who struggle. It should preserve ordered liberty under the Constitution. Above all, it should reject political extremism and seek the wisdom of moderation.

 

As someone who has experienced both totalitarianism and democracy, I remain convinced that America’s greatest strength has never been ideological purity. It has been constitutional balance, civic virtue, and an unwavering belief that free people, governed by laws rather than passions, are capable of self-government.

 

Those convictions continue to guide my own thinking. They also shape my hope that America can overcome its present challenges and enter the second half of its third century stronger, freer, and more confident than ever. In future essays, I hope to explore these questions in greater depth and details.

 

May God continue to bless the United States of America.

What the Declaration Declared

By Thomas Sheppard

Thursday, July 02, 2026

 

Two hundred and fifty years ago, John Adams could barely contain his excitement. “I am apt to believe that [this day] will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival,” he wrote to his wife, Abigail. “It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” He believed he was living on one of the greatest days in history, and he refused to let anyone dim his ardor. “You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not… The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.”

 

That Adams was slightly off on his date has long been a source of humor, but he was right in the main. While the Continental Congress did vote to declare America’s independence on July 2, it still needed time to finalize the wording of the official statement, and thus it was not until July 4 that the Declaration of Independence rolled off the printer’s presses. At the time, Adams was far from alone in seeing the actual vote as the crucial point and the declaratory document as something of an afterthought. The moment of declaring independence was history-making; no other colony had severed relations with its metropole and become a new nation before. But at the time, it competed for attention with multiple other dramatic events. The Continental Army was scrambling (ultimately without success) to hold onto New York, while many members of the Continental Congress wished they were back in their respective home states for what was seen as the more important work of drafting new constitutions for 13 now-autonomous states. With independence declared, political momentum focused on the much more immediate concerns of state building and war-fighting. It is probable that, if all the Declaration of Independence had done was announce separation from Great Britain, it would amount to little more than a historical footnote today.

 

Instead, this document has become the political heart of the American nation. The Declaration of Independence still matters a quarter of a millennium after its signing because it did more than state what “these united states” were not—appendages of the British Empire; it declared what the new nation is, arguably the first creedal nation in world history. A political entity born of Enlightenment ideals and then-radical beliefs about humanity, the Declaration of Independence matters not only because it announced a change in the relationship between the American colonies and London, but because it forever altered how the world perceives the connection between human beings and their governing institutions. It was a document that created an American nation, but it was also a document written for the world, and the world could never be the same once its words were promulgated.

 

***

 

In May 1776, Adams believed the colonies had already effectively broken with Great Britain. No one could deny an open war existed on American soil—blood had been spilled at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill more than a year earlier, and George Washington’s army had just driven a British force out of Boston. Meanwhile, all of the British royal governors had been ousted from their capitals to new lodgings in Royal Navy ships offshore, and British rule on the ground was nonexistent. In light of these momentous events, Adams pressed through a resolution calling on all the colonies to “adopt such Government as shall in the Opinion of the Representatives of the People best conduce to the happiness and Safety of their Constituents in particular and America in General.”

 

If all the Continental Congress had wanted to achieve was declaring a separation from Britain, Adams’ resolution came incredibly close. The preamble to Adams’ resolution bluntly excoriated the British government for attempting “the destruction of the good people of these colonies,” and “hostile invasions and cruel depredations,” and called for new, American governments whose responsibility would include quashing any lingering vestiges of royal authority. This was the language of severed ties and independent action. For Adams, as far as the matter of independence was concerned, the Declaration itself was a bit superfluous.

 

Some members of the Continental Congress, still harboring dreams of rapprochement with the mother country, felt Adams had swindled them, slipping his preamble condemning Britain and essentially announcing independence into a straightforward bill to sustain governance in chaotic times. But the mood of the Congress, and much of public opinion, had moved beyond the reconciliationists. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense had swept through American culture like wildfire at the beginning of the year, and with every drop of American blood spilled, the reality became more inescapable that the 13 American colonies had become a distinct entity.

 

On June 7, Virginia made it official. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia put forward a resolution “that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states.” A few delegates dithered or requested time to receive official instructions from their respective legislatures, and the vote on Lee’s resolution was pushed to the following month. But Congress as a whole felt confident enough in the outcome to go ahead and name committees for managing foreign alliances and establishing plans for “the form of a confederation” of the soon-to-be independent states. As for the committee that has earned iconic status in American history, it seemed far less consequential at the time. Congress designated a Committee of Five to write up a statement to go with the forthcoming declaration of independence.

 

 The group tasked with drafting a statement of independence formed on June 11. Adams was obviously included, as were Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. The bulk of the writing fell to Jefferson, a man who had clearly distinguished himself as a gifted writer through his “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” and having the bulk of the writing come from a Virginian would be helpful for all-important sectional unity. At the time, the Declaration was seen by virtually everyone as decidedly secondary to the vote itself and the formation of a confederated government, and no one seemed to attach much urgency to the words their colleague from Virginia was crafting. Jefferson worked quickly, completing most of the draft in only a few weeks.

 

Jefferson identified his first task as presenting “the causes which impel them to the separation.” He acknowledged that taking such a momentous step for “light and transient causes” would be a serious mistake. The grievances driving Americans to cut ties with the empire they had been loyal members of for well over a century were far from light and transient, though. They amounted to “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.” In a series of fiery blasts against King George III, Jefferson drew on highly emotive language more suitable to describing the collapse of a marriage than a political severing; in his original draft, Jefferson said of Americans, “we must endeavor to forget our former love.”

 

The Declaration’s charges against the king were intended as a call to arms, not a dispassionate discussion of the political scene. As such, we must own that a few of those charges were more than a little dubious. In his biography of King George III, Andrew Roberts chips away at some of Jefferson’s overwrought language and vague accusations, sharply dissecting the ogre-like image of the British monarch that had come down through history. But even if he was a reasonably enlightened monarch, he had reduced his American subjects to a second-class status and deprived them of the basic rights and liberties that all Englishmen expected—indeed were entitled to under the British constitution. He had made the population of the 13 American colonies his enemies in practice, and now they would be his enemies on the battlefield.

 

However, the Declaration was not written with the king as its intended audience, nor was it written for the British people, though Jefferson addressed them explicitly in some passages. The document was not even written with an American audience primarily in mind—had he intended it only for his countrymen, Jefferson could easily have stopped with a discussion of the reasons the king was no longer fit to govern. There was ample precedent on that point, and he did draw on Britain’s own 1689 Declaration of Rights that had ousted King James II. Moreover, several states had already issued formal statements on the need to sever ties with the British government.

 

None of these were sufficient for Jefferson’s purposes, though. “State and local resolutions on Independence said nothing about the flaws of the British constitution, or the future of mankind, or the birthday of a new world,” as Pauline Maier notes in her study of the American Declaration’s origins. Jefferson was writing for the world, because he intended to rally global public opinion to the American cause, a cause of liberty that he considered universal. Thus, he drew not only on English precedents, but on Enlightenment principles, particularly the ideas of natural rights and government by consent. He especially pulled from John Locke, though Locke’s “life, liberty, and property” was ennobled to life, liberty, and “the pursuit of happiness.” The result was a statement of political philosophy more than a mere collection of grievances.

 

After completing the draft, Jefferson shared it with Adams, Franklin, and the rest of the committee, who suggested revisions. It was at this stage that “sacred and undeniable” truths became “self-evident” truths in the preamble, but overall the other four drafters were happy with Jefferson’s work. The same could not be said for the Congress as a whole, which set to work editing Jefferson’s draft once it was received from the committee. Delegates debated certain passages, removing or altering sections they found controversial. Jefferson’s line criticizing the fact that “Scotch and other foreign auxiliaries” were heading to American shores offended a few delegates proud of their Scottish heritage. The comment had to go.

 

More controversial in the eyes of later generations was the deletion of a clause criticizing the slave trade. The clause was cut in part because it made the absurd claim that King George had dispatched slave ships to seize Africans and then impose them as a labor force on an unwilling American population, a wildly implausible fiction that helped salve the consciences of Americans fighting for liberty while holding their fellow men in bondage—Jefferson himself prominent among these. His denunciations of slavery were unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of Southern delegates, who would never have signed a document that included such stark condemnations of slavery.

 

Jefferson reacted to all these changes in roughly the same manner as every writer throughout history whose work has been subjected to an editor. Years later, he still stewed over the repeated “depredations” and “mutilations” to his essay. Sensing his misery at the time, Franklin tried to console him with an amusing anecdote about a hat-maker who tried to get a sign for his shop designed by committee. Whether the tale did Jefferson any good in the moment, he appreciated the attempt. Adams likewise expressed a preference for Jefferson’s earlier version, but historians have generally endorsed Congress’ work. The final version of the Declaration was leaner, more focused, and more reflective of a broad consensus of opinion that could get 13 disparate colonies on board with a united war effort against the world’s preeminent military power.

 

On July 2, 1776, Congress voted itself free of the British Empire. Two days later, it officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. In the immediate aftermath, the primary effect was to crystallize the goals of the fight, to abandon forever any notions of salvaging the relationship with Great Britain. If that was all it had done, the document would be largely forgotten today, of as minor significance as its crafters initially suspected. The Declaration’s transcendent ideas have come down through history in words that even the critical Roberts concedes stand as “superb prose which will justly live for as long as democracy and self-government still matter in the world.”

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” With these opening lines, the Declaration became an American Scripture, a statement of national creed that made the nation far more than a mere breakaway of the British Empire, but a beacon of Enlightenment ideals for all the world.

 

The Declaration of Independence has no legal standing in the United States. It cannot be cited in court nor used as binding criteria for legislation. As a statement of political philosophy, though, it is the cornerstone of the nation. To be an American is not to hold a certain ethnic identity or to trace a certain lineage; it is to venerate the transcendent truth that human beings—regardless of race, class, capability, or social standing—all stand equal before their Creator. Their capacity to live, to live free, and to live well comes from a power above all human governments and can never be denied by institutions made up of mere mortals. To be an American is to believe that government exists for the people—all of them—and not the other way around. Governments are established to protect inalienable rights, not to give and take rights based on the whims of the ruler or even some conception of what those in power paternalistically decide is best for those under their boot. To be an American, in short, is to believe, affirm, and cherish a set of truths that plant the responsibility for a virtuous society squarely on the shoulders of its citizens and plant responsibility for keeping those rights safe and sacred on the shoulders of the people’s government.

 

It was Abraham Lincoln who best encapsulated this truth. Speaking at Independence Hall as the country was on the brink of a horrific civil war, Lincoln reminded the nation what its founding document stood for. “It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

 

Two hundred years ago, John Adams struggled for breath. He wheezed out his last words, “Thomas Jefferson survives,” just before passing into eternity. Once again, he was wrong on the details but right on substance. Jefferson had died hours earlier, memorably asking, “Is it the 4th yet?” before lapsing into his final coma. But he does survive. Two centuries after his death, he lives on in immortal words that split history. Through civil war, domestic discord, economic roiling, and seasons of terrifying global turmoil, the idea that birthed this nation and the experiment in liberty it inaugurated endures. Today, perhaps more than at any time since the Civil War, America’s standing as an exceptional inspiration for liberty and human rights, a shining “city on a hill,” is suffering under dire strain. May we all—native and newcomer, Democrat and Republican, contented and zealous—take up the ideals that Jefferson penned and dedicate ourselves anew to seeing that they remain a beacon of what is best in humanity for another 250 years.

Our American Heritage

By Allen C. Guelzo

Friday, July 03, 2026

 

Growing up in the early 1960s, nothing captured my imagination more than a history magazine: American Heritage. While other kids buried their noses in Mad and Batman, I was entranced by American Heritage’s golden spread-eagle logo, the hardbound magazine covers, the full-color reproductions of historic paintings, and the “junior” book histories. And the “heritage” its articles celebrated was an open-armed jubilee for what the magazine’s founding editor, Bruce Catton, called “that great, unfinished, and illogically inspiring story of the American people doing and being and becoming.”

 

A lifetime later, we are playing with a new definition of heritage. If I access a Substack that flies under the banner “Heritage Americans,” I learn that heritage now means being a lineal descendant of “Protestant, English-speaking, Northwestern Europeans, primarily English, who birthed the American nation, starting from Jamestown in 1607 to approximately the 1870s.” Another website insists that being a “heritage American” is best understood as “involving seven inheritances: the English language, Christianity, self-government, Christian government, liberty, equality under the law, and relationship with the physical land.”

 

And whether he clearly intended this or not, Vice President Vance almost made this definition of heritage official when he explained last July that “America is not just an idea,” and that being an American is not “purely agreement with the creedal principles of America.” It’s “a particular place with a particular people and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.”

 

***

 

No one had better claim to the kind of heritage the Substacks are describing than Abraham Lincoln. His most distant ancestors had arrived at the peak of New England’s “Great Migration” of the 1630s; his grandfather had fought in the Revolution, and several very distant relatives had held office in Massachusetts politics.

 

But it never occurred to Lincoln to define himself as an American in any other terms but those of 1776 and the principles of the Declaration of Independence. He said in 1861 that the Revolution was about “something even more than National Independence . . . something that held out a great promise to all the people of the world to all time to come.” That “something” was the Declaration’s announcement that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Lincoln did not enter his plea against slavery by appealing to English common law, to purple mountain majesties or to 17th-century bloodlines, but to certain inherent principles which were hardwired into every human being and a “proposition” to which Americans then “dedicated” themselves.

 

Lincoln was fully aware how much the landscape of America had been changed by the crush of immigration in his day. “Perhaps half our people,” he said in 1858, “are not descendants at all” of the Revolutionary generation; “they are men who have come from Europe — German, Irish, French and Scandinavian.” However, they have only to take up the Declaration, and there they find

 

that those old men say that ‘We hold these truths to be self -evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.

 

Like that golden spread-eagle in my old magazine, the Declaration fires the imagination of everyone willing to grab hold of it. It is the “electric cord,” Lincoln continued, “that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men . . . as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.” Rather than “giving up that principle,” Lincoln said, “I would rather be assassinated.” Which he was, and by John Wilkes Booth, one of the supreme examples of those who believed that race, language, and culture defined our heritage rather than a “proposition.”

 

Booth was hardly the only one who subscribed to such notions. The paladin of the pro-slavery argument, John Calhoun, argued frankly that the Declaration was an error, and that liberty was “a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike.” And it was one of the basic convictions of the monarchs and aristocracies of the 19th century that no state founded simply upon a “proposition” — much less, one about human equality — could survive. The turn-of-the-century reactionary, Joseph de Maistre, sneered at the idea that “a political constitution could be written and created a priori.” Declarations of great ideas are, at the end of the day, only tracks of ink on paper and “would be useless to a people alien to liberty.”

 

Sixty-five years later, sitting in the House of Commons, Sir John Ramsden cheered the outbreak of the Civil War as the bursting of “the great republican bubble,” and the king of Belgium rejoiced that the American Civil War would “raise a barrier against the United States and provide a support for the monarchical-aristocratic principle in the Southern states.” This was what forced Lincoln to the conclusion that whatever else the “great civil war” represented, it was fundamentally a test that would determine “whether this nation or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.”

 

***

 

In 1863, a Danish-born captain named Hans Peter Jorgensen set out a brief explanation of why he had volunteered for service in the Union army. It had nothing to do with blood or soil, or the English language or the “physical land.” It was much simpler for him: “Freedom is the same everywhere, and I cheerfully give my life in its defense. I would give more if I had it.” His comrades in the 15th Massachusetts buried him in the Evergreen Cemetery at Leominster three weeks after he was killed at Gettysburg. Is there any, even among the most ardent “new heritage” promoters, who will not say that that burial plot is as sacred an American soil as any other acre on the continent?

 

It’s because we are the offspring of a great idea that we do not need to check our genealogical charts to see if we qualify. We may well be the offspring of any nationality (and we are usually the offspring of more than we think, as historical DNA analysis will confirm). But in a larger sense, we are also the children of Washington and Madison, of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, of Ma Ingalls and Ida Straus. And that golden spread-eagle still embraces us all.

America’s 250-Year Winning Streak

National Review Online

Friday, July 03, 2026

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died at the age of 35 — a fact that has prompted many lachrymose musicologists to wonder at what might have been. Were it not for the hand of Providence, the United States of America may well have suffered the same fate. Today, we tend to look back at the sundry threats and crises that have peppered America’s history as inevitable waypoints on a long march toward glory. But this is a luxury that has been accorded to us by the sweat from others’ brows. Had a few of the details changed in December of 1776, or in September of 1814, or in the summer of 1862, this country, as envisioned, could have been relegated to a curiosity of the past. Nor, in the last century, was our survival as a free republic guaranteed. The view from Hooverville was bleak indeed. So, until that auspicious glint of sunlight saved the day, was the outlook at Midway. During the Cold War, we avoided the predations of a millenarian cult that had promised to “bury” us — although, as Wellington had it after Waterloo, it, too, was “the nearest-run thing.”

 

The old saw holds that “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.” And boy does God have a stellar HR team. Here, cometh the hour, cometh the man is close to a guarantee. At our birth, we needed a Washington, a Jefferson, a Franklin, an Adams, a Madison, and a Hamilton — and, remarkably, we got all of them in one crowd. In our most acute crisis, we needed a Lincoln, a Grant, and a Sherman, and they showed up right on cue. Other hours of need have delivered leaders such as Ronald Reagan; military luminaries such as Winfield Scott and Dwight Eisenhower; and the host of dissidents, conciliators, and movement-builders who successfully staved off the extremes. When, from time to time, the siren’s song of mutiny has grown uncomfortably loud, it has been met by Henry Clay, Frederick Douglass, William Jennings Bryan, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., Antonin Scalia, and (dare we add) William F. Buckley Jr. However one likes to imagine our Shining City on a Hill, one must assume that its gates are magnetic.

 

This weekend is America’s 250^th birthday. It ought, as John Adams famously proposed, “to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.” But, above all else, it ought to be an occasion for thanksgiving, reflection, and more than a little old-fashioned awe. This country — not in theory, or on some days, or if altered fundamentally by radicals, but as it currently exists, on July 4, 2026 — is a miracle for the ages. A quarter of a millennium after its inception, it boasts a brilliant and enduring constitutional order, a dynamic and industrious people, an unequaled system of free enterprise, and a timeless creed that has attracted the notice of stargazers worldwide. F. Scott Fitzgerald observed that, unlike most nations, America has “about it still that quality of the idea.” And so it does. But it has benefited, too, from millions of Atlases, who, in cutting deep into Appalachia, blazing the Oregon Trail, sculpting skyscrapers in the New York City air, and setting their sights as high as the Moon, sedulously built the comfort and abundance by which we are surrounded.

 

Ours is a land of wonders. We invented baseball, jazz, Hollywood, the airplane, the telephone, the internet, and air conditioning. We play host to Grand Central Terminal and Monument Valley and New Orleans. We were home to Mark Twain and John Ford and Elvis Presley and Miles Davis. The touchstone companies of this century are here: Google, Apple, SpaceX, Amazon, and more. On the eve of the Revolution, Edmund Burke characterized the 13 colonies as having been subject to a “wise and salutary neglect.” In 2026, such an idea seems astonishing. It is impossible, wherever one resides, to ignore the United States.

 

That America finds itself in this position is no accident. It is the consequence of a series of conscious choices that have been made throughout our history, and that ought to be remade over and over again. America at 250 is the product of our Declaration, that “great spiritual document,” whose presumptions, per Calvin Coolidge, exhibited “a finality that is exceedingly restful.” America at 250 is the product of our Constitution, which, unlike those that emerged from the rebellions in France, Russia, and China, took human nature to be immutable and ambition to be a force to be harnessed instead of suppressed. America at 250 is the product of our free markets, which reward work and ingenuity and head off the contrived sclerosis that has congested so much of the Old World. America at 250 is the product of a set of stringent protections — of speech, conscience, religion, arms, property, the presumption of innocence, and more — that have held fast even as they atrophied elsewhere. And, above all, America at 250 is the product of that most necessary of all human instincts: gratitude — for what was, for what is, and for what, God willing, will be in the years to come.

What We Love About America

The Dispatch Online

Saturday, July 04, 2026

 

Happy Saturday! We at The Dispatch hope you’re spending your Fourth of July with family, fireworks, and maybe some grilled meats. But if you’re still wanting something to read halfway between your morning coffee and your afternoon beer, we’ve compiled a fun list of our staffers’ favorite things about this country we call home. From road trips to democracy to South Florida, our specific American loves run the gamut—and we’re sure yours do, too.

 

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·         Anna Coulter, program coordinator, SCOTUSblog

 

I’m usually not one to participate in protests, but life in D.C. means I often encounter a range of demonstrations, from popular to quite niche. I love that, in America, we have the ability to peacefully protest about really anything. Through witnessing marches on my commute home, I’ve learned about religious minorities, horrible tragedies, and the tenacity of those who live here. Even if I don’t agree with your motion, I’m grateful for you and your belief in making America better.

 

·         David M. Drucker, senior writer

 

To borrow a phrase from Dicky Fox in Jerry Maguire: “I don’t have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I’ve failed as much as I’ve succeeded. But I love my wife; I love my kids; and I love life in America because I have the freedom to pursue my kind of success.”

 

·         Ashley Dowdney, intern

 

For being a pluralist country, America is quite particular. My hometown, Asheville, North Carolina, seemed like an average mountain town as I aged through middle and high school. But coming to college broke terrible news: Fermented soda and tempeh reubens were no normal finds in the rest of America, as they were in Asheville. Generations ago, “go West, young man” was much more literal. But today, we find our “West” in oddball communities. When the Chaco-sporting rock climbers of Asheville put down lavender-blackberry double IPAs together, it’s a vestige of this American rugged individualism, that insatiable quest for a place and community that is our own. Few were born among their fellow weirdos, but they sought and found their own in this colorful tapestry of a country. This phenomenon isn’t limited to this corner of Appalachia. There are many cases of unique Asheville-like towns, all strange in a distinctly American way.

 

·         Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief

 

I think one of the best things about America is the general cultural tendency to take people as we find them. We hear a great deal about identity politics, racism, antisemitism, sexism, homophobia, class warfare, etc. And these are real issues and concerns—which is true everywhere. But what makes America stand out is the general tendency of normal Americans to form their opinions of the individuals they meet or work with based on their actual characters and behaviors. Everyone knows a jack—s or two (or 10) who defies this, but in my experience they are the exception in the real world (as opposed to online). And such people are generally considered jacka—es by other Americans. This doesn’t mean Americans accept or tolerate everyone they meet, but they tend to form their opinions based on what they see in front of them.

 

·         Surya Gowda, TMD reporter

 

Growing up in South Florida, I had a near front-row seat to the spectacular shows that were the NASA space shuttle launches. I’m only old enough to have memories of the tail end of these launches, which ran from 1981 to 2011, but the ones I do remember mostly involved me rushing out to the courtyard with my elementary school class to watch in awe as a rocket lifted off into outer space. Given that we were located about 90 miles south of the Kennedy Space Center, we couldn’t see much more than the rocket itself in the distance, accompanied by a bright point of fire and a thin white condensation trail. But what my classmates and I collectively witnessed was not just a shuttle launch from afar, but an extraordinary testament to human achievement. Life in America offers countless such opportunities for ordinary people to experience extraordinary things, and that’s what I love most about it.

 

·         Steve Hayes, CEO

 

Freedom. We enjoy a system built to limit the power of government and safeguard our liberty. And even in times that test those constraints, when we have reason to worry that our current leaders are too eager to cast aside the wisdom of the Founders, there is a visceral and quintessentially American impulse to resist that governmental overreach. Sometimes—now, for instance—I wish those instincts were stronger and more widespread. But they’re there and they’ve been part of the American character from our earliest days. And even in challenging times, they’re reason for optimism.

 

·         Charles Hilu, reporter

 

America is unique in that it has such a serious culture of college sports. Sure, there are huge sports fandoms in other countries, but nowhere else really mixes higher education with live sports as America does. It adds such excitement to the college experience.

 

What’s more, college sports fandom extends beyond current students to graduates and even people who did not go to a particular school. This gives a diverse collection of people something in common amid their differences. As a suburban kid from a little outside of Detroit, I may not have much in common with someone who grew up in the middle of Los Angeles, for example, but if you tell me he’s a Michigan fan, we’ll be friends immediately.

 

At a time when America’s third places and common-ground institutions are deteriorating, college sports offer a place where people of different beliefs can come together, learn about each other in a low-stress environment, and have a little fun.

 

·         Eli Kronenberg, intern

 

While hiking a section of Maine’s 100-mile wilderness as an early-teenage camper, the challenges thrown our way seemed unrelenting. The steep uphill climbs, the bruising downward slopes, and the weight of our packs made each step more arduous than the last. Then, as we reached a grassy plateau during golden hour, the smell of a grill emanating from an off-trail house caught our attention. Its occupants were supplying so-called “trail magic”: freshly cooked hot dogs, snacks, and ice-cold sodas for tiring hikers who passed by. We stopped to indulge, delaying our progress toward the day’s endpoint, but gathering some much-needed fuel and getting to know our generous hosts. Only in this country can you be in the midst of the most breathtaking nature—rocky mountains that look out onto gargantuan lakes, forests that extend for miles, valleys that glisten in the summer sun—and still feel the neighborly warmth of fellow Americans who treat strangers as though they were family.

 

·         Rachael Larimore, managing editor

 

Higher education has taken its lumps in recent years, with skyrocketing tuition and complaints about ideological indoctrination. But much of the drama involves elite private institutions. Meanwhile, our public universities play an important role in keeping the engine of America running. Sure, other nations provide free university education, but often only to those who meet stringent admission standards. And comparably few offer the residential experience that enables young adults to establish independence and develop into productive citizens—and the variety of offerings is unparalleled. They are the perfect environment for ambitious kids from any economic background, and they are just as good at churning out Fortune 500 CEOs as the privates. America, heck yeah.

 

·         Charlotte Lawson, associate editor

 

When I was a child, I dreamed of becoming a deep-sea fisher in Alaska. Had I ever reeled in anything bigger than a half-pound bream off my grandpa’s skiff in middle Georgia? No. Did I have total conviction in my ability to realize this goal? Yes. A few years later, I decided my talents were better suited to Rhode Island, where I could serve coffee by day and write my novel by night. Never mind that I grew up in the Sun Belt and wilted in the cold. Surfing in Hawaii (despite a distinct lack of coordination), wrangling in Wyoming (I’d ridden a horse exactly once), and excavating historical sites in Virginia (this one, admittedly, was plausible) also all had their moments.

 

Some may call it indecision, but I call it freedom—and for that, I have America to thank. The United States, in its sheer size and diversity, continues to pass down the frontier spirit to new generations. Our options aren’t nearly as limited by language, geography, or borders as much of the world is, and that allows Americans to envision all sorts of beautiful and fascinating lives for themselves. For me, that meant settling down on the east coast of Florida. But who knows? The frontier still beckons.

 

·         Valerie Pavilonis, ideas editor

 

Road trips. The fact that you can get in your car and drive, and there will always be gas stations and bathrooms and billboards and maybe a Buc-ee’s if you’re lucky. I took a long drive down the boot of Italy in 2022 and sure, there were fewer eyesores of roadside ads. But sometimes you need to be reminded that, yes, “HELL IS REAL,” and sometimes you need to be eating a brisket sandwich while listening to The Marshall Tucker Band while you do it. Road trips are how you charge the American soul.

 

·         James Scimecca, membership growth manager

 

Does “all of it” count? Maybe it’s not “cool” or “statistically correct” to say it, but America really does feel exceptional. I was recently in Alaska and was simply awestruck by the mountains and forests—but I get a similar twinge walking through my neighborhood and seeing red, white, and blue bunting on a townhouse fence. If you clear out some of the political noise, there’s still a real, present sense of wonder and optimism in America. It’s contagious.

 

·         Daniel Sipes, intern

 

Road trips have always struck me as a uniquely American pastime. Partly it’s our geography. We’ve got a surplus of long, flat, empty stretches of road, perfect for joyriding. But it’s also something about Americans: We like to drive. It’s not just a way of getting from point A to point B. Many Americans go on road trips where there’s no real destination at all. The point is to travel quickly and see everything, the way you can’t from an airplane window. America is so vast, its people and geography so varied, that one place doesn’t even come close to summing it up; the only way to really see America is a road trip. It’s no wonder that so many of our great books are travel narratives. The road trip comes from a deep desire at the heart of the American psyche: a desire for fortune, adventure, and—ultimately—togetherness.

 

·         Evan Spear, TMD reporter

 

I love the highway system. Growing up in Los Angeles, I had to rely on it to get most places and, when it worked, it was fantastic. I’ve never felt freer and more American than driving in the far left lane with the windows down on the 101 freeway with the glittering Pacific Ocean to my left (it goes without saying that I always drove at a reasonable and Dispatchian speed). I felt like I could drive anywhere in the country. It still blows my mind that we built all those freeways.

 

·         Mike Warren, politics editor

 

I love the way Americans organize themselves into groups—Burke’s “little platoons”—around shared interests and public spiritedness. Yes, there are fewer bowling leagues, as Robert Putnam noted a generation ago, but Americans still love to get together for a self-driven purpose. America is its pickleball leagues, its improv comedy groups, its book clubs, its charity drives, its neighborhood block parties, its garage bands, its Cub Scout packs, its knitting nights, its fan conventions, its company softball teams, its board game meetups, and its church soup kitchens. These are the purest expressions of both our freedoms and our responsibilities as citizens, and that innate American desire to get together and do something remains as strong as ever, even as the isolation of our modern age threatens it. The long-term health of our country depends, I believe, on the strength of these institutions.

 

·         Kevin D. Williamson, national correspondent

 

Having no class. We are not a truly classless society in either sense of that word, and while we do sometimes approach classlessness in the negative sense, we also come close to achieving it in the positive sense. If you’re in England or India or Spain, it matters a great deal who your parents are, where you went to school, what church your grandparents went to, what kind of accent you have. We Americans just have money, and it is a hell of a lot easier to make some money than to substitute your grandparents for some fancier ones. It isn’t perfect, but that’s how we keep score, and it’s why we’re twice as rich as our British cousins.

 

 

The American Creed, for All Americans

By Jonah Goldberg

Saturday, July 04, 2026

 

Happy 250, minus a day. Unless you’re reading this on Saturday, in which case: Happy 250!

 

When I say “Happy 250,” “Happy Fourth of July,” or “Happy Independence Day,” it doesn’t matter whether you just got your green card or if you’re a family that came over and farmed Massachusetts soil two-and-a-half centuries ago. It’s the same holiday, and you have the same ownership of it. Or at least the same right to claim ownership of it.

 

There are lots of people who like to talk about America as if “ownership” of America builds up in the bloodlines of patriots over time. If you have ancestors who came over on a sailboat in the 18^th century, they view you as more American than if your parents came here in a lifeboat from Vietnam in the 1970s. Some even assign letter grades based on how far back your American family tree goes. If your family came through Ellis Island a century ago, you’ll never be more than a Grade C American.

 

We should be clear: This is just a form of identity politics. It literally grades individuals on a metric they have zero control over. It’s no different than assigning grades based on skin color, sex, or height. You have as much control over who your grandparents were as you do over how tall you are. It’s fine to be proud of your grandparents or grateful that you’re tall, but don’t pretend it’s a personal accomplishment.

 

I have no problem with people being proud of their family histories; in fact, I applaud it when a family history is something to be proud of. But grading the quality of Americans by their ancestry is disgusting to me. It’s also stupid.

 

But I should also say this metric of patriotism flatly contradicts my personal experience. I know people with ancestors going back to Colonial America (as I do on my mother’s side),  and I’ve known people who have no American ancestors at all because they’re immigrants. All along that spectrum, from “heritage Americans” to just-off-the-boat Americans and everyone in between, I don’t think I’ve seen any meaningful correlation with someone’s patriotism.

 

This is not to say that all first- or second-generation immigrant families are super patriotic and all “heritage Americans” aren’t. Some recent arrivals are remarkably ungrateful to be here (indeed, some market their ingratitude to get elected to public office). And some old families pass their love of country from one generation to the next like they’re making additions to an ever-improving family project. I’m just saying that in my experience, you can’t predict who is patriotic based on how long their family has been here. Love of country is distributed according to different criteria than the number of branches on your American family tree.

 

Creed, culture, and Christianity.

 

One of the oldest debates on the right is whether America is a nation or an idea. Much like the nature-vs.-nurture debate, when serious people discuss it in good faith, the consensus is virtually always “both.”  Here’s my friend Ramesh Ponnuru, editor of National Review, on the most recent edition of  The Editors podcast:

 

I think we’re obviously both a creed and a culture. We’re a culture that includes a creed. And the creed is to a significant extent, an extrusion from that culture. It’s a cultural achievement. The creed is important because it serves the people, the American people. They’re the point of it. They’re what instantiates its value. So I just think that this creed versus culture argument just ends up being a false dichotomy and should be basically abandoned.

 

When unserious people, or serious demagogues, debate this, they almost always straw-man their opponents. J.D. Vance rejects “the logic of America as a purely creedal nation.” Because according to that logic, he says, “billions” of people can become Americans if they “agree with the principles of the Declaration of Independence.” Precious few people are making that argument. But it sounds brave to stand up to it all the same.

 

Some people I admire do say “America is an idea.” But I’ve never heard any of them follow up such statements with “and therefore let’s open the borders to everyone who agrees with it.”

 

But I don’t want to hash out the creed vs. culture debate again. Instead, I want to push back against my own position, in part by extruding from Ramesh’s remarks about the creed being an extrusion of the culture.

 

Normally when you hear people—including me—argue “it’s both,” we talk about it like the creed and culture arguments are two sides of the same coin. But that analogy implies alternating states. The possible results of a coin flip are binary: Either heads wins, or tails does. The coin has both a creed and culture side, but it’s still zero-sum. As with the nature vs. nurture argument, we say it’s “both,” but what we often mean is that some things are 100 percent nature and some are 100 percent nurture. And sometimes that’s true. Your eye color is 100 percent genetic. The language you speak is 100 percent nurture.

 

But the creed and the culture are marbled, blended, mixed. Our culture is very creedal. Our creed is very much the product of a culture, even though our creed has some vital universal principles within it. Comparatively few Americans know who John Locke was, but the cultural stew they live in has all sorts of Lockean bits and flavors.

 

I wrote a lot about all this in Suicide of the West. In that book, I was largely trying to persuade progressives that the ideas and ideals that define America, and liberal democratic capitalism more broadly, are the best tools to accomplish what they claim to want. If you think the goals of the state or politics should be to improve health, education, autonomy, freedom, happiness, and prosperity, then the tribalisms of socialism and identity politics won’t get you there.

 

Because I was trying to convince people to my left, I tried to make arguments on their terms, starting with the book’s opening sentence: “There is no God in this book.” I probably should have started, “God doesn’t need to be in this book,” because he sneaked in at the end. But the point of that line was to say that you can defend the moral superiority of our system without appeals to divine authority.

 

I’m working on a new book, and it’s aimed in a different direction. I don’t want to cannibalize any of that while I’m still working on it. But there’s one realization that I think is worth discussing here and now.

 

One of the most radical things about Christianity was the way it undermined notions of ethnicity and nationality. For a Viking, Celt, Roman, or Gaul to become Christian meant largely—though obviously not entirely— jettisoning your tribal notions of ethnicity and ancestry and adopting those of another people. Matthew Rose writes in A World After Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right:

 

Christianity also disrupts our relation to history, weakening the traditions and bonds of memory that link us to ancestors. Christian faith is anti-traditional in one glaring respect: it requires gentiles to adopt the sacred history and even the deity of another community, connecting their deepest beliefs to the unique experiences of a foreign people. Perhaps no aspect of Christian life is so spiritually deracinating, so subtly subversive of human customs. In requiring this of gentiles, Christianity revolutionized their experience of time, turning history into a story defined by its overcoming.

 

This aspect of Christianity infuriated many radical right-wing critics of liberalism. Many doctrinaire Nazis resented the way Christianity replaced reverence for Teutonic ancestors with reverence for a Mediterranean Jew.

 

In Galatians 3:26-29, Christians are told:  

 

For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

 

By becoming a Christian, your story becomes part of the story of Abraham, Israel, and of course, Jesus. This was one of the most transformative changes in all of history, and it was the foundation of what became known as Western Civilization.”

 

The point I want to make is that the American founding does something similar. When you become an American, the Founding Fathers become in a real way your ancestors. The American story becomes your national story.

 

Whatever you think of Justice Clarence Thomas, it is an amazing thing that this descendant of slaves stolen from Africa is the most zealous originalist on the Supreme Court, and in some ways the most influential “descendant” of the Founding Fathers in American intellectual life. He is certainly one of the most revered figures among those inclined to insist we are a nation of culture, not creed. But for Thomas, the culture is his creed, and the creed is his culture. Talking about where one leaves off and the other begins is a fool’s errand.  

 

Which brings me back to where I started. When a Christian tells another Christian “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Easter,” it’s the same thing as an American saying “Happy Fourth of July” to another American. That Christian can be one in a long line of Christians going back to Jerusalem. Or he can be a Christian who converted yesterday. Once you become an American, you have the same patrimony, at least in the civic sense. Once you become a Christian, you have the same patrimony in a theological sense. That is an amazing thing, to me at least.

 

American culture is many things, but one of the things it most obviously is, is liberal.  Americans don’t consult a text to demand their liberties and rights; they consult their hearts and souls. To talk about removing the love of liberty, the belief in equality before the law, or the sovereignty of the individual from the American character, like it’s as easy as erasing some words on a piece of paper, is a form of magical thinking common to intellectuals who like to fight with texts.

 

Most nationalists’ rhetoric about what is in a people’s “blood” is either harmless poetry or ugly nonsense. But if a people can have something in their blood, the American creed is in the blood of Americans. It doesn’t always show itself as much as I would like, but it’s there—and it can be called upon whether you’re a Grade A American or a Grade E American not long off the boat.

 

And that is worth celebrating.

 

Happy Fourth of July, everyone.

The Endurance of Our Declaration of Independence

By Caleb Franz

Saturday, July 04, 2026

 

Large-scale republics don’t have the best track record of longevity. Governments have historically been run by kings, emperors, or other systems of absolute authority. Rome itself lasted less than 500 years before giving way to an empire. As America celebrates our 250th year of independence as the most successful and powerful modern republic, a worrisome question lingers in many of our minds — How long can America last as a liberal republic?

 

U.S. citizens and international observers alike have pondered this question time and again since the American Revolution ended. The American experiment has persevered against the fragility of the early republic, the threat of disunion through the Civil War, and the rise of 20th century totalitarianism and two world wars. Yet with each passing generation, the core principles of republican liberty have been maintained and even expanded — albeit imperfectly, and not without periods of regression. Despite the clouds of illiberalism forming in the early 21st century, we have good reason to keep our faith in the strength of the American republic, more so than any other that came before it. The uniqueness of our endurance stems not from a shared ethnicity, language, or ancestry, but rather from a shared creed first articulated in the Declaration of Independence.

 

Following the War of 1812, the founding generation gave way to new, ambitious young leaders who had visions of national greatness. But those visions carried a fatal contradiction. The westward expansion that Thomas Jefferson optimistically thought would create an “empire of liberty” was becoming a vehicle for the spread of slavery instead. When the last surviving signer of the Declaration, Charles Carroll, died in 1832, the living link to those founding ideals was severed. American victory in the Mexican War of 1846–1848 brought the issue to a head, providing the United States with vast new territory, forcing Congress to contend with slavery’s territorial expansion and growing political influence.

 

As Congress debated the fate of the new territory, some newer members looked back to the founding era for inspiration. In 1850, the newly elected senator from Ohio, Salmon P. Chase, considered slavery to be at odds with the Founders’ original vision for America. He pointed to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 — which expanded republican government in the territory acquired following the 1783 Treaty of Paris and prohibited slavery within its borders — as evidence “that the declaration of 1776 was not an empty profession, but a true faith.” Thus, in being consistent with that vision, Congress had a right and responsibility to prohibit slavery within federal territory and the District of Columbia, and prohibit the interstate slave trade.

 

Chase’s colleague from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner, made this argument in even more vivid terms. “According to the true spirit of the Constitution, and the sentiments of the [Founding] Fathers, Slavery and not Freedom is sectional, which Freedom and not Slavery is national.” The presupposition of freedom in the United States, Sumner argued, predated the Constitution. “Earlier than the Constitution was the Declaration of Independence, embodying, in immortal words, those primal truths to which our country pledged itself with its baptismal vows as a Nation.” Sumner understood the Declaration to be the nation’s founding promise, one that Congress was obligated to honor in its legislative decisions.

 

As slavery took center stage as the driving wedge issue throughout the 1850s, Abraham Lincoln looked to the Declaration as the key to our national survival. During one of his famous debates with Senator Stephen Douglas from Illinois, Lincoln affirmed that “all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” were meant to be extended to black Americans, enslaved or otherwise.

 

After being elected president, Lincoln stopped at Independence Hall to speak on the occasion of Washington’s birthday. “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence,” he told his audience in 1861. The Declaration, he asserted, held “that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.” Lincoln’s appeal to the Declaration here was more than political strategy. He understood it as the spiritual foundation of the republic, the creed that was needed to preserve the integrity of the Union. As the Civil War ravaged the country from the outset of his administration, it was the Declaration that continued to be his guiding light. Citing it in his Gettysburg Address, he described America as a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

 

The United States officially divorced itself from the institution of slavery in 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans had new and challenging issues to confront — from Reconstruction, to rapid industrialization, to world war. In the midst of all the dramatic change associated with the turn of the century, many of the most prominent voices of the age urged bold progressive ideas to lead the United States throughout the 20th century. In contrast, President Calvin Coolidge believed that the ideas that were already articulated in the Declaration would be a sufficient anchor against the prevailing and chaotic social and political winds of the day.

 

Serving as president during the 150th anniversary of American independence, Coolidge had a unique opportunity to reflect on the Declaration and its enduring relevance. In a speech given to mark the occasion in Philadelphia on July 5, 1926, he asserted that it was not “to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound.”

 

“We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things,” he said in closing. “These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp.”

 

A hundred years later, on the 250th anniversary, we run that same risk. As in Coolidge’s day, political factions on the left and the right are happy to suggest new, bold ideas that reject the liberal tradition of the United States and its republican system of government. But also as it was in Coolidge’s day, and in Lincoln’s before him, the Declaration will help us navigate new challenges while preserving the ideas that brought us here. We look to the Declaration not just to honor the past, but to understand how to navigate our future. Its endurance is no accident — it’s the defining feature of our republic. All we need to do is cling to it.