{"id":455,"date":"2026-07-29T13:45:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=455"},"modified":"2026-07-29T13:45:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:45:29","slug":"gorsuch-says-americans-must-study-history-warts-glories-and-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=455","title":{"rendered":"Gorsuch says Americans must study history, \u2018warts, glories, and all\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on Tuesday called American democracy \u201cvery fragile\u201d and said no person or group \u201cshould have too much power,\u201d while observing that young people need to study an unvarnished version of the nation\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump urges SCOTUS to overturn $83.3 million defamation verdict<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI just don’t think you’re ever going to fix\u201d the decline of civics education and related issues \u201cunless people understand our history and learn our history, warts, glories, and all,\u201d Gorsuch said.<\/p>\n

Gorsuch spoke virtually to a forum organized by the Ronald Reagan Center on Civility and Democracy, which brought together an audience of some 120 mostly college-age people at the center\u2019s offices just a block from the White House.<\/p>\n

The justice spoke from Prague, Czechia, where he is lecturing in the national security and separation of powers summer program of George Mason University\u2019s Antonin Scalia Law School. Gorsuch said he had visited a segment of the Berlin Wall over the weekend \u201cand it brought back a lot of gratitude for the work President [Ronald] Reagan did to bring freedom to so many people across the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gorsuch was interviewed by Frederick Ryan, Jr., the chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, who highlighted the justice\u2019s new children\u2019s book, Heroes of 1776: The Story of the Declaration of Independence (co-written by his former law clerk, Janie Nitze).<\/p>\n

Neither Gorsuch nor Ryan referenced any recent controversies over presentation of U.S. history in schools or in museums such as the Smithsonian Institution, where President Donald Trump recently ordered signs be posted at the National Museum of American History that warn visitors of \u201cinaccurate information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gorsuch also did not directly address the Supreme Court\u2019s recently ended term, which included many high-profile cases and sometimes tense relations among the justices. He said that Americans need to \u201cassume the person with whom you disagree loves this country every bit as much as you do,\u201d adding that he will never convince his more liberal colleague Justice Sonia Sotomayor to become an originalist or a textualist, nor will she convince him to abandon those analytical approaches.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know she loves this country,\u201d Gorsuch said. \u201cShe knows I love this country. We know we’re coming at it from the right place internally. And then we sit down\u201d and talk.<\/p>\n

Gorsuch appeared more comfortable discussing history. He said many of the delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia\u2019s Independence Hall \u201cknew that they were forfeiting their lives and potentially their freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA third of them had their homes burned,\u201d he said. \u201cMany of them lost their fortunes or gave it away to the cause of freedom, dying impoverished, and even didn\u2019t live to see the success of that revolution. And all of those kinds of virtues are virtues that were absolutely right. If we’re going to sustain our democracy, we renew our commitment to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He said a little later that \u201cmost Americans sat on the sidelines in the revolution,\u201d while some 20 to 30% remained loyal to the British crown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ask young people, \u2018What would you have done against those great odds? Would you have been one of the 40% that actually stood up and supported the patriot cause and risked your life, your liberty, your fortune, your sacred honor?\u2019\u201d the justice said. \u201cI just ask you to choose and choose again to participate in the American experiment. Before you do, learn. Learn your history, because otherwise you’re bound to make the same mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked by Ryan what gives him confidence that America will have another milestone birthday in 250 years, Gorsuch said, \u201cWell, I am an optimist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of what gives me enormous hope and optimism are the young people who I encounter \u2026 who really care, who have learned or are learning American history, who do recognize that people with whom they disagree are persons, too, and entitled to the same rights and decency that they afford themselves,\u201d the justice said.<\/p>\n

The nation has \u201ca perfect mission statement\u201d in the Declaration of Independence and its three central ideas, that \u201cwe’re all created equal. That we have God-given rights that don\u2019t come from government, each of us. And that we have the capacity and the right to rule ourselves,\u201d Gorsuch added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to choose and choose and choose again to make these our goals, our ideals, those three big ideas in the Declaration,\u201d he said, \u201cand recognize that the Constitution that was developed to realize them may not be perfect, but boy, it\u2019s better than a whole lot of things around the world today or through history.\u201d<\/p>\n

He mentioned the Roman Republic, where \u201call it took was people choosing something different, and you wind up with tyranny pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are all in it together,\u201d Gorsuch said, \u201cand if we don’t stay all in it together, it will crumble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Eliminate the summer recess<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on Tuesday called American democracy \u201cvery fragile\u201d and said no person or group \u201cshould have too much power,\u201d while observing that young people need to study an unvarnished version of the nation\u2019s history. Read more Trump urges SCOTUS to overturn $83.3 million defamation verdict \u201cI just don’t think you’re ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nGorsuch says Americans must study history, \u2018warts, glories, and all\u2019 - American Service Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=455\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gorsuch says Americans must study history, \u2018warts, glories, and all\u2019 - American Service Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on Tuesday called American democracy \u201cvery fragile\u201d and said no person or group \u201cshould have too much power,\u201d while observing that young people need to study an unvarnished version of the nation\u2019s history. 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