Dear America, You turn 250 on July 4th and that number deserves more than a moment's pause. It represents something genuinely rare in the arc of human civilization: a nation founded not on ethnicity or geography or hereditary power, but on a set of principles. Liberty is the birthright of every person, government derives its just authority from the consent of the governed, and each generation inherits the obligation to hand something better to the next. Today, 250 years later, that experiment continues.