This Fourth of July, We Offer Two Simple Challenges

Good morning, the following essay was originally sent on Sat., July 4, 2026. This version includes links to the historical documents and additional resources referenced in the essay.

As America approaches its 250th birthday, it is worth pausing over a simple question: why do we celebrate July 4, 1776, as the beginning of the United States?

As Bret Baier writes in his new book The Case for America: An Argument on Behalf of Our Nation, there are other plausible dates. The first shots at Lexington and Concord were fired in April 1775. The Constitution was ratified in June 1788. George Washington took the oath of office in April 1789. But July 4 endures because it marks the moment when thirteen colonies announced themselves to the world as one people, joined not by bloodline or geography alone, but by a set of ideas expressed in words powerful enough to shape a nation.

Those words mattered. The Declaration of Independence, and later the Constitution, gave political form to the radical claim that a free people could govern themselves. The Declaration’s central promise—that “all men are created equal,” and are endowed by their Creator with “certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—was not a description of America as it fully existed in 1776. It was an aspiration, a standard, and a promise.

As former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice points out in Baier’s book, the case for America has never been that we are perfect. The case for America is that we keep striving. We keep returning to the founding promise, even when we have failed to live up to it. We argue, dissent, correct, reform, and begin again. That has always been part of the American story.

The remarkable thing is not simply that those ideas were written down. It is that, 250 years later, a critical mass of Americans still subscribes to them. There is a name for transferring belief in an idea across generations: culture.

Abraham Lincoln understood that challenge early in his public life. In his 1838 Lyceum Address, he warned that America’s greatest dangers could arise from within if citizens lost their reverence for the Constitution, the laws, and the institutions that make self-government possible. George Washington, too, understood that the Union itself was one of the main supports of liberty. Both men saw that America depends not only on laws written on paper, but on a culture strong enough to teach each generation what those laws mean and why they matter.

That is the work before us at 250 years. We are heirs to a remarkable inheritance. We did not win the Revolution. We did not draft the Declaration. We did not frame the Constitution. We received these blessings, and now we must decide whether we will pass them on with gratitude, honesty, and confidence.

The importance of passing along our history is illustrated over 2,000 years ago. Quadratus, one of the earliest Christian apologists, defended the faith by appealing to eyewitness testimony, as Dr. Jeremiah Johnston details in The Jesus Discoveries. “In his preserved words, Quadratus noted that some of those healed by Jesus were still alive when he was writing. This appeal to living memory—eyewitnesses whose lives had been changed—added weight to the Christian movement and anchored it in verifiable history.

“These early defenders did not shrink back. They signed their names. They spoke the truth to power. They addressed emperors with clarity and courage…”

This sounds remarkably familiar to our nation’s history. We have the eyewitness testimony all around us. We can read their words and documents. We can visit where it all happened. Passing along this work begins close to home.

Transferring American culture—our belief in the ideas that made America possible—starts with families, conversations, lessons, and stories. It starts when parents and grandparents take seriously the responsibility of helping children understand not only what happened in American history, but why it matters.

One way to do that is to read. Read the Declaration aloud. Read Lincoln’s 1838 Lyceum Address. Read Washington’s Farewell Address. Read broadly enough to understand that the American experiment has always included struggle, imperfection, courage, contradiction, and renewal. Do not settle for slogans. Spend time with the words themselves.

As David Rubenstein, a leader in patriotic philanthropy, explains in The Case for America, visiting historic places in person has a much greater impact than simply viewing them online. While it is easy to find photos and information about landmarks like the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, or the Smithsonian on a computer, those experiences do not affect people in the same way. When people visit these places, they are more likely to learn about them beforehand, engage with guides or exhibits during their visit, and continue thinking and reading about them afterward. As Rubenstein notes, our brains treat real-world experiences differently, making them more memorable and meaningful.

We must walk the battlefields. Visit the monuments. Stand where history happened. Take children and grandchildren to places where America becomes more than a chapter heading or a date on a calendar. History has a different power when you can put your feet on the ground where others sacrificed, debated, built, failed, and tried again.

That is true across the country: at Mount Rushmore, the Washington Monument, Yellowstone, a battlefield, a courthouse, a state capitol, or a small local marker we have driven past for years. These places help us imagine the real people who built, defended, tested, and renewed the American experiment.

This Fourth of July, we would offer two simple challenges. First, read something from America’s founding or from the generations that have wrestled with its meaning. Lincoln’s Lyceum Address would be a good place to start. It should be far better known than it is.

Second, take someone younger to see a piece of American history. Go there. Talk about what happened. Ask what it means. Let the next generation know that this country did not happen by accident, and it will not endure by accident either.

Fireworks are a fitting celebration of our independence. They are also an invitation. When the sky lights up this Fourth of July, take a moment to explain why we mark our anniversary this way—and why the light we inherited now depends on us to keep it alive.

Submitted to you with thankful hearts that we are privileged to live in America,

Chuck Fuller
C.E.O.
The Results Company

Kirk J. Bradley
Chairman, President & C.E.O.
Lee-Moore Capital Company

Sources, References, and Suggested Reading

This essay draws upon several primary historical documents and modern works exploring America’s founding, constitutional order, and civic traditions. Where appropriate, quotations, paraphrases, and references have been attributed throughout the essay. Readers interested in exploring these ideas further are encouraged to consult the following primary sources and recommended works:

Primary Historical Documents

• Declaration of Independence
• US Constitution
• George Washington’s Farewell Address
• Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address
• Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
• Common Sense by Thomas Paine
• The Federalist Papers
• Fragments of Quadratus