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Americans made it to our country’s 250th birthday without agreeing on whether the occasion calls for celebration or indictment. Some of our most influential institutions regard the Declaration of Independence as evidence for the prosecution. The men who proclaimed human equality owned slaves, don’t ya know, so the principles they proclaimed were fraudulent and the country they founded must spend its remaining days confessing its illegitimacy.
A Nation Born in a Day: Visions of the American Founding offers a splendid corrective. Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, has assembled nine essays, largely by historians, that recover the achievement of 1776 and explain its continuing claims on us. The collection is an exceptional contribution to the semiquincentennial, masterfully curated by someone whose essential yeoman’s work at ACTA has helped keep serious liberal education alive amid higher education’s ideological enthusiasms.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Law liberty
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Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.