NEWT GINGRICH: A Year Long Celebration Of America’s Birthday

As we begin to wrap up 2025 with Christmas presents and New Year’s Eve parties, it is naturally time to think ahead to 2026.

Of course, this is the year we will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This was the founding of America as a country endowed by its Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Walter Isaacson’s remarkable new book, “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written,” captures how important 1776 was – and how vital the Declaration was in defining the rights of free people. Anyone who doubts that the American decision to rebel and define rights as coming from God rather than kings, emperors, or powerful or rich people should spend an afternoon with Isaacson’s remarkable work.

When I did a Newt’s World podcast episode with Isaacson, he kept returning to the theme that 2026 could be the year in which patriotism and our shared history could bind us together, reduce the depth of partisan hostility, and help America move on as a unified nation. It could return us to the work of developing a better future for all based on its extraordinary past.

The first step in this process of reconciliation and renewal is to recognize that we should celebrate our national birthday every day for a year – not just on the Fourth of July.

Some of the time should be spent focused on the Founding Fathers and the remarkable epic of a free people defeating the British – the greatest empire of its time. The heroism and wisdom of the Founding generation is an extraordinary saga worth communicating to every American of every age.

It is especially important to learn about the origins of America and the principles which led the Founding Fathers to stake their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on an eight-year struggle for freedom. Because, the nature of America is slowly starting to slip away through a combination of two unrelated but equally dangerous patterns.

We tend to forget that while our normal dialogue is focused on geographic immigrants – people who have come from beyond our borders – there is a second and even larger group of temporal immigrants. Temporal immigrants are children. They were born in America but that does not mean they know anything about America.