A reflection on the country’s 250th birthday
Today the US celebrates its 250th birthday. It is notable that the US marks as its founding not the anniversary of the victory of the continental army at Yorktown, nor the adoption of the Constitution, the seating of the first Congress or the inauguration of the first president, but, rather, the day when the delegates of the Second Continental Congress formally approved the Declaration of Independence. That moment marked the birth not just of a new country, but of a new idea—that an assumption of basic human equality could serve as the foundation for a state, and that the state should be a safeguard of the rights such equality demands—namely rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Thinking about America, celebrating America, then, means engaging with the ideas that is has introduced into the world over its 250 years of existence, starting with its founding idea of fundamental equality. We should engage with these ideas not uncritically—just as we should not think about the US, or any country, uncritically—but with a realistic appreciation for the good they have brought into the world. This is particularly true this July 4, when we reflect on America’s past and present, and all that it offers the world that is worth celebrating and preserving.
In the spirit of this, I would like to take the occasion of this milestone in America’s history to reflect on one specific subset of its global influence—how America has advanced science, health, and human flourishing. In doing so, I will start—as America started—with ideas. Many of the conditions that shape health are not medical at all, but ideational: self-government, individual liberty, pluralism, the rule of law, free inquiry. America did not invent these ideas, but it staked a national experiment on them at scale, and the world’s health has been shaped by that political and intellectual choice.
How has this influence unfolded over the last 250 years? I will answer by addressing four of America’s core ideas—the principle of liberty and self-determination, the principle of free inquiry, the principle of material prosperity as a central good, and the principle of openness and personal mobility.
Read more here