By W. Todd Groce, PhD
When the United States marks the 250th anniversary of independence this July 4, the familiar rituals of celebration like parades, fireworks, cookouts, and historical reenactments will fill the day. But an anniversary of this magnitude is about more than recalling what happened in 1776. This is an opportunity to reflect on what that moment has meant ever since and ask what it still demands today.
From the beginning, the United States was different than other nations. Ours was not a nation defined by ethnicity, religion, language, or ancestry. Our history has shown that being American has always been less about who you are by birth and more about what you believe, specifically about the ideas and values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
That’s why the American Revolution is a vibrant and powerful living idea. It continues to drive Americans, however imperfectly, toward the expansion of human freedom and a more perfect Union. Even when we have disagreed bitterly over who should be free and who should be equal, the Revolution has provided a common language and a shared point of reference.
The 13th Amendment ending slavery, the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, and the Civil Rights Movement are all examples of how the principles of the Declaration were expanded to include more people. In that sense, they are a continuation of the American Revolution.
Few expressed this truth more powerfully than Abraham Lincoln. In November 1863, as Americans killed one another by the hundreds of thousands, Lincoln stood on the killing fields of Gettysburg and reminded a fractured nation of its purpose. America, he said, “was conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” In that moment, Lincoln made clear that adherence to a shared set of principles, rather than ancestry, is what made people truly American.
These principles have proved so powerful that they have echoed far beyond America’s shores. Observers outside the American experience have long recognized the unique character of our country’s founding. Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister of Great Britain, speaking from the perspective of a civilization shaped by centuries of tradition, famously said, “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”
That philosophy is simple but also radical: that all people are created equal; that we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that we are not the subjects of a monarchy; and that we are governed by the rule of law and free and fair elections, in which power flows from the citizenry to those we choose periodically and regularly to lead us. As Alexander Hamilton proclaimed, “Here, sir, the people govern.”
Two hundred and fifty years after independence, the American Revolution still calls to us, not as a finished story, but as an ongoing challenge. When we tell that story honestly, in all its complexity, we can inspire Americans to renew their commitment to the radical and still liberating ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence—ideals that were once narrowly applied but carry even greater meaning today.
The question before us is not whether these ideals still matter, but whether we are willing, once again, to live up to them—and transmit them to generations yet unborn.