This year has marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and therefore the United States of America. That has been an occasion for great celebration, and rightly so. But it is also an occasion for reflection, especially on the ideals and history that shaped the American people.
Reflection may sound like a strange way to mark a great national anniversary, but it is a distinctly and familiarly American form of patriotism. This country has always offered its people fodder for serious thought, and Americans have always looked upon our country both as the home we love because it is ours and as a great republican experiment that must be measured against its principles. That the 250th birthday of our nation is a time for asking whether we are living up to those is only natural.
And it is also a time for working to make sure we do live up to them, by helping the rising generation of Americans know our shared principles and history. Sustaining a free society requires civic education and formation, and our society does not do enough of that necessary work now.
This combination of the desire to celebrate and reflect on our country and the need to teach the next generation to appreciate it has been the impetus behind an ambitious project undertaken by the American Enterprise Institute—a project called “We Hold These Truths.”
Over the course of several years leading up to this summer’s anniversary, AEI invited 40 scholars from around the nation to a series of conferences devoted to key themes important to understanding the American Revolution. We worked with them to produce engaging, accessible essays on these subjects intended to seed the work of civics education for many years to come.
The themes were democracy and the American Revolution; capitalism and the American Revolution; religion and the American Revolution; natural rights, the common good, and the American Revolution; slavery, equality, and the American revolution; the American Revolution and America’s role in the world; the American revolution and the Constitution and the American Revolution in American history.
The scholars represented a variety of viewpoints and approaches, and took up each of these themes from a variety of angles that could allow their work in combination to offer a broad field of vision on each subject. They were scholars of history, law, economics, political science and more. Some were the most established and familiar names in their fields, and others were young rising stars. The first speaker at the first of our conferences was the great Gordon Wood, the dean of American historians, who later sadly passed away just weeks before the July 4 anniversary.
Each gathering brought together five or six scholars to take up one of these themes and produce an essay on that subject. These essays, geared to the level of a smart college student, were collected into eight volumes—one on each distinct theme. I edited the volumes along with AEI colleagues Adam White and John Yoo.
The resulting collection offers readers a new and accessible 21st-century civic literature on the American founding. Clear-eyed and devoid of partisanship, it seeks a mature love of country, engaging in neither idolatry nor iconoclasm, but rather grateful and informed reflection.
This project is intended as a gift to the nation. The essays are available online for free, along with videos of the conferences, at http://america250.aei.org. Paperback editions of the volumes can be purchased at low cost anywhere books are sold—and they have already begun to be assigned in college courses around the country. Library-ready hardback editions are also available, as are collector’s box sets, with beautifully bound volumes. But the work of getting them to readers, young and old, who would most benefit from them is only beginning.
In the coming months and years, we will work to secure the resources to make these books available at no cost to every public library in the United States, and to every high school and college library open to receiving them. We aim to work with partners in the field to turn these essays into curricular materials that can be used by high school teachers. This should help shape the teaching of civics in a broad range of schools—public and private, religious, secular and classical—and reach home schoolers as well.
Philanthropists willing to support those outreach efforts could help in many ways, large and small. These include connecting us with their local public libraries or a school or college they believe would be interested, or enabling us to facilitate the development of civics curricula informed by this work.
The goal of this project is to rise to the occasion of America’s 250th anniversary by enabling future generations to better know and appreciate their inheritance. Patriotism in a free society is not just a matter of pride, but also of knowledge, education and formation. American citizens don’t grow on trees. They are civic achievements that take work and dedication. And if our republic is going to endure, we will need to devote more effort and resources to that vital work.
America deserves it.
Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, and a contributing editor at National Review.
