Transcript (en)

America is approaching her 250th birthday. We're taught in schools to think of the American founding as though it were unimaginably far away, sealed off behind glass. But 250 years is smaller than it seems. President John Tyler was born during the first Congress in 1790. He was born in the very infancy of this republic. President Tyler's last living grandson died only last year. That is how near the founding still is, and how recent this great experiment in self-government remains. And if the founding is that near, then our duty is that much clearer. We're not the curators of a dead tradition. We are the stewards of a living republic. Our republic was founded on a daring claim that free people could govern itself. Not that a free people could drift forever. Not that a free people could live off inherited greatness while its leaders refuse every hard question. Not that a free people could dissolve every boundary, mock every limit, and still expect to remain free. No, the American founding rested on a harder truth.