America's 250th anniversary is here. How do we secure the next chapter of the American Dream? We sat down with four leaders to discuss national renewal — from protecting human flourishing and ensuring technology serves rather than diminishes our humanity, to the peaceful transfer of power and fighting government union overreach. These visionaries share their reasons for hope and the vital role of philanthropy in preserving our founding principles.
On how America’s founding principles impact the mission of Archbridge Institute
Archbridge Institute lifts barriers to human flourishing. . . We are doing different work in the policy sphere, politics, economics, and business to maximize human potential and flourishing. . . The Declaration of Independence, when it mentions life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that’s precisely what the American dream is.
On American exceptionalism
Many immigrants come to this country, such as myself, to look for those opportunities and those better lives, because we don’t find it anywhere else. I think people in other countries can be as entrepreneurial and as freedom-loving as Americans. But they can’t act on it because there are so many other barriers in their way, because there’s no cultural ethos that allows them to push the frontier, to excel at their craft, to pursue flourishing in meaningful ways — which is what the United States allows.
On the founding principle that matters most
The pursuit of happiness was enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. . . I think what Jefferson and the founders meant by happiness is . . . flourishing, the sense of fulfilling our human potential. I think that sense of the pursuit of happiness in a better life—it’s more than just the concept of liberty, which certainly underpins that pursuit.
On our challenges and reasons for hope
For me, it has been seeing so much pessimism and negativity around the idea of the American dream or around the impact that the United States has in the world. What I think has given me hope are the series of surveys that we do trying to assess what’s the real state of some of these ideas. … It doesn’t let me slip into that pessimism about the future. Warren Buffett said it first—you never bet against America.