A cause for celebration

American Experiment kicks off the 250th birthday of the nation’s founding

This year is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — or, in other words, the 250th anniversary of the birth of the great American Experiment in liberty and self-government. Across the country, Americans will celebrate the anniversary and look back with gratitude on our nation’s founding. Here in Minnesota, it is fitting that American Experiment take the lead in celebrating the “semiquincentennial.”

Watch for references to the 250th anniversary in everything we do in 2026. We will host events that celebrate the Declaration and the Founding. We will write op-eds on the importance of the Declaration not just to American history, but to world history. We will promote the anniversary on social media and with every medium of communication at our command. Our five Greater Minnesota chapters will organize their own events to ensure the 250th anniversary is a statewide celebration.

We will also do something that perhaps no other state-based organization will undertake: publishing a book on Minnesota history that translates the values of the Founding directly into our own state’s experience. Minnesota’s history is part of America’s history, and, just as America’s history is full of colorful incidents and is admirable in many ways, so is Minnesota’s.

American Experiment economist John Phelan has published a series of essays on Minnesota history in Thinking Minnesota. John plans to add several more essays and we will compile them in book form. Among other modes of distribution, we plan to donate copies of the book to school libraries across Minnesota.

The Declaration of Independence led to the founding of what is now the world’s most powerful nation, a nation that has been a force for good throughout its history. The Declaration also articulated ideals of freedom that have resonated, not just here but around the world, for the last two and a half centuries. That government derives its powers from the consent of the governed; that God has given to all people rights that may not be taken away; that among those rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — these claims were revolutionary in 1776, and they remain revolutionary today. For more than two centuries, those ringing declarations have inspired people around the world to claim the freedom that rightly belongs to them.

Unfortunately, too many on the left consistently portray a dark view of American history, in which oppressing Indians and enslaving blacks were virtually the only activities worth mentioning. And leftists view America’s role in world affairs as having been mostly negative.

Sadly, those are not just the views of a handful of eccentric cranks. Rather, they are widespread and are even being taught in Minnesota’s public schools. Minnesota’s high school history benchmarks include this divisive approach to the Declaration:

Examine the founding documents and early statutes of the United States, focusing on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Great Law of Peace (Haudenosaunee Constitution) as historical sources, asking who created them, whose voices were absent and whose interests were articulated or excluded.

The new K-12 history benchmarks are full of references to “settler colonialism” and scornful references to “historical memorialization of ‘pioneers’ and frontiers versus dispossession and homelands.”

So it is important for us to celebrate the freedom that Americans have enjoyed for 250 years. Our younger generation, in particular, needs to see a truthful portrayal of our country’s history. American Experiment is proud to lead that effort in Minnesota throughout 2026.