https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/08/1689-or-1776/
K. S. Bruce has written a thoughtful and informed commentary urging America to adopt the “1689 Project” in place of the 1619 Project.
As you probably already know, the 1619 Project is an ugly attempt by the Left to persuade the uninformed that America was founded as a slave nation and is still today a systemically racist one. Bruce proposes 1689 instead because that year marks the beginning of the Enlightenment Era. The year 1689 misses the target, however, as surely as 1619 does. The Enlightenment Era did begin in 1689 and America is the quintessential Enlightenment nation, but 1776 is still the right choice for America’s founding year—which means President Trump’s 1776 Advisory Commission picked the correct year for its report to the nation.
Because the Enlightenment Era began in Britain, 1689 marks the beginning of the British Enlightenment—but the American Enlightenment was a far cry from the British Enlightenment, and by 1776 the differences were deep and wide. 1689 might be a good pick for the year the British should rally around, but let’s leave that decision to them.
Enlightenment thinking spread from Britain, but its fate was very different wherever it traveled. The French Enlightenment took a significantly different direction than the British one, and the American Enlightenment took yet another direction from both the British and the French. Voltaire in France was as different from John Locke in England as Thomas Jefferson was from either one of them.
Bruce notes a key distinction between the British Enlightenment and the American Enlightenment in this way:
Locke’s own writings described “life, liberty and the pursuit of property,” which the American Framers adapted to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”