Response to the 1776 Report
Message from the JMC President
On January 18, 2021, two days prior to President Biden’s inauguration, the 1776 Commission issued a report “summarizing the principles of the American founding and how those principles have shaped our country."
The report has elicited both criticism and praise in many quarters, and members of the JMC network can be found on all sides of the discussion.
Our role is not to present a position on those controversies, though we encourage the discussion. This moment does provide us at the JMC with an occasion to remind the world, and ourselves, of our most fundamental institutional commitments, and to renew our dedication to them.
Those commitments are disclosed in the very name of our organization. We are a “Center for the Teaching of America’s History and Founding Principles.”
We believe that America’s history and the challenges we currently face cannot be understood without recognizing that America indeed has founding principles that, regardless of race, religion, culture, or any other distinction, are the ultimate ground of our unity as Americans.
Our history cannot be rightly assessed—what we have achieved and what we have failed to achieve—without measuring it against our founding principles, including Thomas Jefferson’s revolutionary assertion that all men are created equal, and therefore endowed by nature itself, and not by governments, with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Those principles, expressed in our Declaration of Independence, are central to who we are, and they must be taught to each generation, if we are to survive as a nation.
One need not be the supporter of any particular party, document, or initiative to grant the importance of teaching the history and founding principles of our nation. That history and those principles are the property of us all.
The American experiment in ordered liberty, while far from flawless, has been an amazing success story.
We believe that the faults in our story are not because of a failure of our founding principles, but because of our failure to fully live up to them. That means learning the principles ourselves and passing them along to the next generation to continue our progress toward realizing those ideals.
In that spirit, we at the Jack Miller Center will continue to do what we have always done: to foster the study of our founding documents, the teaching of our history, and a culture built upon deliberation, debate, and the free exchange of ideas. We invite others to join us in this work and these commitments.
Sincerely,
Michael Andrews, PhD
President
Jack Miller Center
[email protected] (mailto:
[email protected])
[link removed]
About the Jack Miller Center
The Jack Miller Center is a 501(c)(3) public charity with the mission to reinvigorate education in America's founding principles and history. We work to advance the teaching and study of America's history, its political and economic institutions, and the central principles, ideas and issues arising from the American and Western traditions—all of which continue to animate our national life.
We support professors and educators through programs, resources, fellowships and more to help them teach our nation's students.
www.jackmillercenter.org
============================================================
©2020 Jack Miller Center, Inc. All rights reserved.
3 Bala Plaza West, Suite 401, Bala Cynwyd, PA 190046
** Update your preferences ([link removed])
| ** Unsubscribe from list ([link removed])
** Jack Miller Center Facebook ([link removed])
** Jack Miller Center Twitter ([link removed])
** Jack Miller Center YouTube ([link removed])
** Facebook ([link removed])
** Facebook ([link removed])
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Website ([link removed])
** Website ([link removed])
** YouTube ([link removed])
** YouTube ([link removed])
