Add Movieguide® as preferred on Google
By Movieguide® Staff
Professor and legal scholar Robert George reflected on the great American “experiment” as we celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday.
“‘Experiment’ is the right word,” George, a professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton and founder of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, told the National Catholic Register. “Our founders knew that the constitutional republic they proposed to establish would be an experiment — and that experiments can fail.”
He explained that many different kinds of “systems of self-government” had failed by the time America was founded, saying that many believed “human beings are simply incapable of governing themselves.”
“We Americans can be grateful that ours is a republic that has, to borrow a phrase from Abraham Lincoln, ‘long endured,’” George continued. “The maintenance of a republican form of government for two and a half centuries is certainly something worth celebrating. And it is something for which we should all be grateful to those men who, pledging their ‘lives, fortunes, and sacred honor,’ launched the American experiment.”
George also called this moment “an occasion to remind ourselves that the experiment is ongoing, and could yet be lost, and to rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the promise contained in our founders’ declaration that ‘all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.’”
Related: Disney to Salute America’s 250th with a 24-Hour Broadcast
Other notable figures have also spoken about what they want to celebrate about our nation this holiday weekend.
At the ongoing Great American State Fair’s opening ceremony, President Trump addressed the crowd, saying, “This anniversary is a time to be proud of our past, but it is also a time to lift our sights, expand our ambitions and raise our expectations of what America can be.”
“We will leave our children nothing less than the richest inheritance, most advanced civilization and highest standard of living in human history,” he continued. “There’s never been anything like it, but with all of that being said, the best is yet to come.”
Elsewhere, the Hearst Media Production Group plans to release a new series, titled THE GREAT AMERICAN JOURNEY, which will spotlight people, places, and ideas that have shaped America over the years. The series is being produced with support from the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
“As we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, this series will showcase the best of America — our culture, institutions, history and enduring spirit of innovation,” Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Cate Dillon said in a statement.
America’s 250th birthday is a time to celebrate our country’s past — and continue working on its future.
Read Next: All the Ways Kesley Grammer Is Celebrating American History This Summer
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
Add Movieguide® as preferred on GoogleShare:
- Content: +3
- Content: 
- Content: +2