As fireworks light the sky this July 4th and we mark the 250th anniversary of American independence, we celebrate more than a birthday. We honor the most successful experiment in human freedom the world has ever known – an experiment that delivered unprecedented abundance, opportunity, and dignity to ordinary people.
No nation in history has lifted the average citizen to the standard of living enjoyed by everyday Americans. Our system of liberty and limited government created wealth and mobility unmatched anywhere on earth.
Despite being a young country by global standards, the United States has produced more patents and technological breakthroughs than any other nation in history. That is the fruit of a culture that rewards merit, risk-taking, and individual initiative. It is why people from every corner of the globe still see America as the land of freedom and opportunity – the place where they can build a better life for their families through hard work and faith in tomorrow.
I know first-hand what makes America exceptional because I’ve lived it.
I grew up in the slums of Harlem and a trailer park in Oklahoma. Neither of my parents graduated high school. I delivered pizzas to put myself through college, served as an officer in the U.S. Army, built a successful business career, and raised five children alongside my wife of 40 years.
I’m not exceptional; I’m a citizen of an exceptional country, and I serve an exceptional God. My story is not unique because it is extraordinary. It’s unique because this could only happen in the United States.
The American Dream saved my life. It’s why I’m running as the only Republican-endorsed candidate for governor of Minnesota. I want my grandchildren, and every child in our state, to have the same opportunity to succeed through hard work, personal responsibility, and freedom.
America is the greatest country in the history of the world. But we are a nation under attack from within. Take my home state of Minnesota. It used to be a state on the rise, named one of the best places to live in the United States. But that’s not the case anymore, as corrupt politicians and a concentrated group of Somali immigrants who hate everything this country stands for stole billions of dollars from American taxpayers. Over the years, we have watched crime overtake the Twin Cities, and our schools continue to decline in free fall.
Today, many of the institutions that shared our American greatness have become “the enemy within.”
For decades, socialists and Marxists have comprised roughly 40% of faculty in American colleges and universities. They have infected three to four generations of students with Marxist, anti-American ideology. Tragically, these same students have not received a holistic education of our nation’s virtues and achievements. The result is predictable and devastating: only 19% of Americans aged 45 and younger can pass the U.S. citizenship test. Our young people have been taught America’s sins in exhaustive detail while hearing almost nothing of its unmatched virtues. Consequently, we now have the least patriotic generation in our history.
We also face the lowest church attendance in our republic’s history. A secular worldview has displaced the biblical understanding of human nature, rights, and responsibility that shaped our founding. The consequences are everywhere: the lowest marriage rates and birth rates in American history. Young people are willing to dismiss the First Amendment to stifle debate and discussion.
At the same time, we are absorbing large numbers of immigrants who show little-to-no interest in assimilating into the language, culture, and values that made America exceptional. That approach is not sustainable. A nation cannot remain itself if it stops requiring newcomers to become Americans in more than name only.
Our public schools deliver the lowest academic performance in generations. Vocational education has been devalued. And the United States now suffers the highest rate of children living in single-parent households in the entire world – a crisis that drives more social, academic, and economic disparity than any other single factor.
Worst of all, Western civilization itself – the source of individual rights, the rule of law, and the scientific method – is under relentless cultural attack from within our own institutions.
This cannot continue.
To restore America to its foundational strength, we must take decisive action.
We must reaffirm the teachings of the Founding Fathers and the founding documents – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights – and recover their clear Judeo-Christian orientation regarding human dignity, limited government, and ordered liberty.
We must require every student to pass the U.S. citizenship test at three critical junctures: the transition from elementary to middle school, from middle school to high school, and as a condition of high school graduation. Civics ignorance is a national security issue.
We must purge woke indoctrination from public school curricula, restore robust vocational education in our high schools, and implement school choice nationwide so parents – not bureaucrats – decide what is best for their children.
And we must change state and federal policy to financially incentivize marriage and stable two-parent families instead of subsidizing fatherless households. The data could not be clearer: The collapse of the family is the greatest threat to opportunity and social mobility in America today.
This July 4th, as we celebrate 250 years of American independence, we do not gather in despair. We gather in resolve. The same principles that summoned ordinary farmers and merchants to defy an empire still live in the hearts of millions of Americans. The same God who blessed our founding can bless our renewal – if we humble ourselves, remember who we are, and act with courage.
That belief is what inspired me to run for governor. I will fight every day to preserve the freedoms, values, and opportunities that made my own story possible. I know what this country is capable of. Minnesota can once again be a place where families thrive. The American story is not over. Its greatest chapters can still be written. But only if we choose, right now, to defend the inheritance we received and to pass it on, stronger and more faithful, to the generations that follow.
Happy 250th Birthday, America. Let us make the next 250 years even greater.
Kendall Qualls is a businessman, U.S. Army veteran, and candidate for the Republican nomination for governor of Minnesota.
