Our Founding Fathers are still with us.The story of America that they started in 1776 is only just beginning—and they will be with us all the way.That’s because their legacy lives on not just in our laws, our Constitution and their fundamental proposition that all men are created equal with the same unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—rights that are God-given, not government-given.Their legacy also lives on in the spirit with which they wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago.
That spirit animated our Founders’ bold vision of the future; their drive to take decisive action to make that vision happen; and their willingness to risk it all, including "their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor," to accomplish their goal.It didn’t die with the revolutionary generation.AMERICA’S NEXT 250 YEARS DEPEND ON PASSING FAITH AND FREEDOM TO OUR CHILDRENIt lives on in what we can call founders’ fire.
That same combination of bold vision, relentless drive and the willingness to see risk as opportunity is baked into our American culture.It’s the core of what is called American exceptionalism.Because no other country or society has embraced that founders’ fire to the same extent or made it part of the original creation of a nation and a people.In fact, it predates our founding.
It grew up with the very first settlers on this continent, with their "errand into the wilderness" to create a new church under God, a new society and a new life for themselves, by taking on the risks and challenges of an unknown land in order to build what John Winthrop and then Ronald Reagan called a shining city upon a hill.MIKE PENCE: THE NEXT GENERATION NEEDS FAITH IN GOD AND CONFIDENCE IN THE AMERICAN IDEALThat founders’ spirit grew and thrived along the American frontier, turning a vast continent into a land of opportunity for all, an "empire of liberty" in Thomas Jefferson’s phrase.We — and no one else — decide as individua...