For more than 200 hundred years, America’s first principles—liberty and equality, natural rights the consent of the governed, private property, religious freedom, the rule of law and constitutionalism—have defined us as a nation and united us as a people.
America’s founding principles are not just ideas fit for the 18th century. Just watch our new film, We Still Hold These Truths, featuring citizens who think about the founding principles in their daily lives. Through these one-on-one interviews with parents, entrepreneurs, young professionals, and a very wise Texan, we understand how the free market system creates prosperity, how liberty secures our religious freedom, how the rule of law protects our rights, and how constitutionalism ensures self-government. These men and women live in large cities and small towns, they own businesses and raise families. Some are life-long citizens; and others, new Americans.
None of them have surrendered to the progressive vision of America—where soft despotism replaces virtue and self-government, the constitution evolves to align with a judge’s policy opinions, and there are no eternal truths on which governments are based or by which they are judged. Instead, they find their inspiration in the principles of America’s Founders.
Do you want to start a dialogue in your community, teach a course, or tell others about the meaning of America’s first principles and how these principles guide our politics today? Read We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering our Principles, Reclaiming our Future— the bestselling work by Matthew Spalding. Check out our new Leader’s Guide to We Still Hold These Truths and start spreading the message. The Leader’s Guide is designed for reading groups or seminars and features 11 sessions – one for each chapter of We Still Hold These Truths. Each session opens with a historical story and ends with a discussion of how to apply America’s first principles to current topics and issues. (click here to get your Leader’s Guide today)
It is our task as Americans to restore the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence to their rightful and preeminent place. But before we can rededicate ourselves as a nation to these principles, we must rediscover them as a people.
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