When Richard McLellan and Joseph Olson founded the Mackinac Center in 1987, they set out several clear aims in its governing documents.
The Mackinac Center existed, they wrote, to “conduct public policy research on matters affecting the people of the State of Michigan and to propose approaches to public policy issues consistent with traditional American values of maximum individual freedom, limited government and a competitive economic system.”
So from its inception, the Mackinac Center has existed to celebrate and promote “traditional American values.”
Some years later, the late Joe Overton, senior vice president at the Mackinac Center and father of the Overton Window, encouraged our team to celebrate the Fourth of July. He added these words to our employee handbook:
“All staff are encouraged to celebrate Independence Day with passion and verve, remembering it as the signatory day of a document embodying the most sublime of political ideals, an apogee in mankind’s quest for liberty of thought and action, the restoration of which is the vision of our organization.”
America celebrates 250 years in 2026. Both President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have called for celebrations throughout the year to mark the occasion. Similarly, the Mackinac Center will use 2026 as an opportunity to promote traditional American values.
No document better captures the timeless principles America was built upon than the Declaration of Independence. Two hundred and fifty years ago, 56 men (farmers, lawyers, merchants, physicians, clergymen) staked their lives, fortunes and sacred honor on those values.
All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights — chief among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The rights of mankind include the right to conduct trade with all parts of the world, the right to trial by jury, the right to legislative representation, freedom from taxation without consent, security in one’s person and home, and the right to encourage legal immigration.
The Declaration included powerful observations about how government best operates. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. If a government destroys those rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. An independent judiciary is crucial to a free society. Legislative bodies should remain close to the people they represent. Multitudes of government offices and swarms of officers are an affront to liberty. The military must not be independent of civil power.
Though the founders fell short, in obvious and significant ways, of their proclamation that these promises were available to “all men,” the nation has moved closer to these ideals in the last 250 years.
The Declaration of Independence assumed a people capable of self-government — people committed to individual liberty, accountable government and economic freedom. In this anniversary year, the Mackinac Center will work to strengthen the foundations of our prosperity. We are confident that a free people, guided by timeless truths, will continue to prosper.
