The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, yet the founding is controversial now in ways it has not been in decades. The American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance.
In the sixth volume of this series, scholars of American history and international relations survey how the United States defined its place among the community of nations following independence. As they noted in the Declaration, the revolutionaries understood that the success of their movement depended on "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" and assistance from allies abroad. At the same time, disputes over foreign entanglements and neutrality fiercely divided Americans in the early republic.
Looking at the founding-era debates over America's "empire of liberty" can inform the foreign policy questions we face today.
About the AuthorLevin, Yuval: -
Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of
National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at
The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at
National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at
The New York Times.
White, Adam J.: -
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School's C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
Yoo, John: -
John Yoo is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley; and a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
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