Gaining Experience from World History

History is the experience of people tackling challenges from which we learn what works and what does not. 

William R. Hawkins | July 4, 2026

While it is certainly proper to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the American success story did not start in 1776. It took over a century and a half for the colonies to grow to the point where they could stand on their own feet and march forward across a continent. It took a special kind of people to cross the Atlantic, settle a wilderness, and develop it into a global superpower.

Two years before he wrote the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson penned “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” where he established the basis for the colonists’ claim to self-government. They had earned it. “America was conquered, and her settlements made, and firmly established, at the expense of individuals, and not of the British public. Their own blood was spilt in acquiring lands for their settlement, their own fortunes expended in making that settlement effectual; for themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have right to hold.” This is based on John Locke’s case for private property; “Every man has a property in his own labour, and so he may acquire a property in what he mixes his labour with.” Human action fundamentally alters natural resources, creating value from individual effort. Indeed, without such action, idle resources have no value. The colonists did not simply take the land; they transformed it, making it useful and productive, and thus gaining the right to profit from their efforts. That “frontier spirit” continues as we work towards colonizing the moon, exploring Mars, and think about reaching Saturn’s moon Titan.

Yet, in the dark corners of our society, there are those who proclaim that America is a “failed experiment,” that its very success is a delusion. We should reject our triumphalism and turn inward to a happier life of less action, less affluence, and more contentment with the simple things. Socialism is gaining ground as the alternative to the capitalism that built the modern world. It truly would bring the material progress of centuries to an end with the deranged promise that our (reduced) needs can be met better........

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