Mike Fredenburg

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were central to transforming the 13 colonies into a nation based on written principles of liberty and self-government. “Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776” by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, early 20th century. The oil painting depicts (L–R) Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

A robot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) is displayed at a stand during a conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 30, 2024. Commentary Science Fiction has long predicted the threats and challenges posed by AI. In the Star Trek universe, particularly in the original series, Season Two, Episode 24, “The Ultimate Computer,” Dr. Leonard McCoy delivers this haunting line: “Compassion: that’s the one thing no machine ever had.

Our Founders did not merely launch a nation; they secured the intellectual architecture of liberty itself. As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, the semiquincentennial, 1776 stands as the undisputed year of our nation’s birth. Yet 1776 was more than the year when America wrested independence from England; it was the year when the intellectual foundations of the First Amendment were first instantiated in the revolutionary state documents of Virginia and Pennsylvania.