The American Revival

"When our nation was born in 1776, we were a nation of underdogs.

Our Founding Fathers stood up to the most powerful empire in the world, declared their independence, and then somehow turned assertion into reality.

In order to make America great again, we have to know the story of what made America great the first time around.

That's the story of our nation, that's the story of our history - and it's a story we've forgotten.

If you think about who were the most intellectually groundbreaking thinkers of the 18th century, they actually weren't our Founding Fathers. Most of them were actually on the other side of the Atlantic, in Europe. But the European society into which they were born was different from ours in a big way. It was a culture that valued expertise over curiosity.

But our Founding Fathers? They were different. They didn't believe in those boundaries. They didn't even believe in acquiescence to expertise.

It was a culture that valued education, that valued autodidacts - people who taught themselves - exploration, a fundamental curiosity about how the world works.

And an unyielding confidence that, even if you weren't an expert in something, you could still figure it out with the right combination of self-education & curiosity.

So what's the message for us?

Your generation - I will say, our generations - need to revive that special combination of curiosity & self-confidence.

That special sauce that allowed America to succeed as an insurgent was that unmitigated curiosity & the totally unjustified confidence of our Founding Fathers.

We should expect more of one another as citizens. We should expect more of ourselves. We should expect more of our leaders.

These are the stories of American history that we deserve to revive, our children - our grandchildren - deserve to hear. That's the story of American Exceptionalism."