250 years ago today, 56 people signed their names to a document that changed the world.

They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the radical idea that all people are created equal. Then they went home, and we spent the next two and a half centuries figuring out what that actually meant.

We're still at it.

I've stood at the back of more naturalization ceremonies than I can count and watched new citizens raise their right hands and recite the oath. Some are crying before they even finish the first sentence.

Every single time, I'm reminded that the American experiment isn't a relic. It's a living, breathing promise that each generation is responsible for keeping alive.

That's the part they didn't put on the tickets for the “Great American State Fair.”

This country has never been perfect. We've broken our own promises. We're breaking some of them right now…the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, the idea that no one is above the Constitution. The founders didn't get everything right on the first try. They left enormous gaps between what they wrote and what they practiced. Generations of Americans have spent 250 years closing those gaps, sometimes inch by inch, sometimes in one great rush of moral clarity. That work isn't over. I won't sugarcoat any of this just because it’s America's 250th birthday. But I also won't stand here and tell you the experiment failed. Not while people are still lining up at federal courthouses to swear an oath to a country that hasn't always lived up to its own promises, because they rightly believe that the very idea of America is worth fighting for.

So here's my question for you on this 250th birthday: Will the promise live on?

I plan to spend the next chapter of this fight exactly the way I've spent the last eight years: in Congress, on the House floor, in town halls across IL-06, telling the truth even when it's not convenient and especially when it's not popular.

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However you mark today, I hope you'll take a second to remember that no one handed us our freedoms. We fought for each and every one of them. That fight continues.

Happy 250th birthday, America. We have work to do.

— Sean Casten
PAID FOR BY CASTEN FOR CONGRESS
Casten for Congress
P.O. Box 132
Downers Grove, IL 60515-0132
United States
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