A Birthday Worth Defending

Eric Metaxas has written the book Americans should read before the nation's 250th birthday. The reaction from its critics explains why.

DR. ROBERT W. MALONE

JUN 6

For a generation, Americans have been taught to approach their own country’s birthday as a dark day in history. The founding, we are told, was irredeemably compromised. The men who created the nation were hypocrites who spoke of liberty while tolerating slavery, and the proper response to 1776 is not gratitude or admiration, but discomfort.

Eric Metaxas rejects that view, and thank God for that.

Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World arrives at exactly the right moment, as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary. It does something that much of our educational, cultural, and political establishment has spent decades discouraging. It celebrates the American founding.

Metaxas argues that what emerged in 1776 was not merely a successful rebellion against British rule. It was a genuinely revolutionary event that changed the course of human history. Unlike the French, Russian, Chinese, and countless other revolutions that promised liberty and delivered tyranny, the American Revolution produced a constitutional republic built on individual rights, self-government, and the radical idea that legitimate power comes from the consent of the governed.

Very little in our culture today encourages Americans to understand what was achieved in 1776, much less take pride in it. Metaxas reminds readers that the American story is not one of perfection. It is the story of an imperfect people who created something extraordinary. A nation that forgets how it was founded will eventually lose what made it worth preserving in the first place.

At its heart, this book is a reminder that our inheritance is real, that it is worth defending, and that Americans should not be ashamed of it.