The Ripon Society

Born in Philadelphia. Preserved at Gettysburg. Forged in Pittsburgh's mills. Powered by Northeast PA's coal fields.

No state carries America's story like Pennsylvania. Cassandra Coleman of America250 PA on marking 250 years — and building toward the next 50:

America is celebrating 250 years of independence, and no place is more central to that legacy than Pennsylvania.

Our nation was born in Philadelphia, preserved at Gettysburg, forged in Pittsburgh’s mills, and powered by the coal fields of Northeast PA. As Pennsylvania prepared to mark this milestone, America250PA faced an important question: How do we honor that legacy?

Since 2018, we’ve launched more than a dozen initiatives that bring the celebration to every corner of the commonwealth. Each one is designed to open doors — to learning, to participation, and to a shared sense of pride in our heritage as Pennsylvanians.

Through our Semiquincentennial Grant Program, we invested directly in projects that preserve and interpret that heritage. In Montgomery County, restoration work is underway at the Speaker’s House, home of Frederick Muhlenberg, the first Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and one of the architects of Pennsylvania’s early government. By restoring one of the few surviving homes associated with a Founder, the project gives visitors a window into both the everyday realities of 18th-century life and the civic conversations that helped shape the early republic.

READ MORE: https://riponsociety.org/article/from-the-founding-to-the-future/

In memory of Kay Granger — first Republican woman elected to Congress from Texas and first GOP woman to chair House Appropriations. Our Dec. 2006 Ripon Profile: smaller government, less regulation, accountability, local control, free trade, and a strong defense:

Name: Kay Granger

Hometown: Fort Worth, Texas

Current job: U.S. Member of Congress representing the 12th District of Texas.

Hobbies: Painting, reading.

Songs on my playlist: All the songs by the Four Seasons from the Broadway hit “The Jersey Boys.”

Books that I’d recommend: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell and What’s Right About America: Celebrating our Nation’s Values by (surprise!) Kay Granger.

Political Inspiration: The women serving in office in Iraq. They are some of the bravest women I have ever known. They risked their lives to serve their country.

Most important issues facing America: Terrorism, border security.

Why I am a Republican: From 17 years in office, I know that the principles of smaller government, less regulation, accountability, local control, free trade and a strong defense are right for our nation. Republicans are the ones willing to fight for those principles.

SOURCE: https://riponsociety.org/article/ripon-profile-congressman-kay-granger/

The New York Times bestselling author Arthur Herman imagines America 50 years from now — and the future he sees for U.S.-China relations might surprise you. Read his dispatch from the Tricentennial in the AMERICA250 special edition of the Ripon Forum:

“There was the whole issue of what to do about Iran’s nuclear program — that all seems so distant now—and whether the war in the Persian Gulf was distracting from the real threat to the United States and the West at the time, namely China.”

He nodded. “I remember. And everyone was agitated over the on-going war between Ukraine and Russia. I don’t suppose anyone foresaw the day when Ukraine’s high-tech economy would have to bail out a bankrupt Russia, and change the whole complexion of eastern Europe. Not even you.”

“No, I missed that completely,” I had to admit, “I also never imagined that Taiwan would have to bail out a bankrupt mainland China, and that Taiwan Semiconductor would end up making its headquarters in Beijing’s Forbidden Palace as a century of Communist rule suddenly came to an end.”

READ MORE: https://riponsociety.org/article/dispatch-from-the-tricentennial/

TEDDY TWEET OF THE WEEK

“I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

Theodore Roosevelt
Speech in Des Moines, Iowa
November 4, 1910

By 1976, some wondered if patriotism itself had gone out of style. MIT historian Christopher Capozzola revisits the Bicentennial and the fractured mood it tried to heal, in the new special edition of the Ripon Forum:

When Bicentennial planning had begun a few years earlier, President Richard Nixon declared he wanted a big party, and he intended to preside over it. Maybe a World’s Fair? But by the mid-1970s, the mood in the country seemed to suggest that patriotism had gone out of fashion along with coonskin caps and whitewall tires. After the oil shocks of 1973, Nixon’s resignation in 1974, America’s withdrawal from South Vietnam in the spring of 1975, and an ongoing urban crisis that brought New York City to the verge of bankruptcy that fall, Americans began to speak of an “Age of Limits.” In his 1975 State of the Union address, President Gerald Ford admitted that, “I must say to you that the state of our Union is not good.” Maybe a World’s Fair didn’t make sense. And Congress never delivered the money Nixon had requested. America’s Bicentennial would take a different path.

Across the political spectrum, Americans in 1976 used our Revolutionary heritage to advance their political visions. Native Americans performed a victory dance at Little Bighorn, the site of a massive defeat for U.S. forces on July 4 a century before. In San Juan, New York, and Philadelphia, Puerto Rican nationalists called for a “Bicentennial without Colonies.” Most visibly, the People’s Bicentennial Commission — headed by young radicals fresh from campus antiwar protests — spoke out against corporate power and what they called the “Buy-Centennial Sell-a-Bration.” (PBC protestors even pelted California governor Ronald Reagan with eggs at a January 1976 campaign stop in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.) Conservative voices tapped into the Revolution’s critique of centralized authority to speak out against bureaucratic regulations and an income tax rate that topped out at 70 percent. “We’re a colony declaring independence,” asserted a parents’ group opposed to mandatory school busing in South Boston, Massachusetts.

READ MORE: https://riponsociety.org/article/what-we-saw-at-the-bicentennial/

NEWS from
THE RIPON SOCIETY
"Senator Bernie Moreno Makes the Case for Keeping Chinese Vehicles Out of the U.S."
July 31, 2026

WASHINGTON, DC – With Chinese automakers flooding markets around the world, The Ripon Society held a breakfast discussion yesterday morning with U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH), who discussed his legislation to keep Chinese-made vehicles out of the U.S. market and laid out why he believes the threat they pose is too significant to ignore.

Moreno began by explaining the framework he has used to guide his work in the Senate.

“Everything I do is on the three Cs—which is cars, meaning the auto industry; crypto, meaning digital asset policies, that's a space that I came from; and Colombia, meaning Latin American policy.”

The Ohio Senator then turned to the first of those three Cs — cars — and the origins of his push to keep Chinese vehicles out of American driveways.

“We have in place something called the Connected Vehicle Rule, which I think was a great start,” Moreno said. “What it basically said was, ‘Hey, these cars are different than cars in the past. They're connected to our critical infrastructure, so we're going to make sure that the software and hardware is free of any malware, any China-type of problems there.’”

Moreno explained that his goal is to build on that rule with permanent legislation.

“What I wanted to do is, why don't we put this in a permanent legislation so that we can hermetically seal the U.S. market from any threat from countries that are on the Foreign Entity of Concern list,” the Buckeye lawmaker explained.

“We're saying the U.S. government has designated four countries as Foreign Entities of Concern. Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia. So any car company that's domiciled or controlled by one of those countries, we're going to make certain that we don't allow them into the U.S. market.”

From there, Moreno laid out three reasons lawmakers and consumers alike should be concerned about Chinese vehicles entering the U.S. market, starting with consumer protection.

“There are 92 Chinese brands. Ninety-two just in China, companies you've never heard of in your life. A lot of those, if we open our market, would come here. So, imagine a scenario where you bought one of those cars because they came with a 10-year warranty, free oil changes, free tires, free car washes. You buy that car and a year later, the company is no longer doing business in the U.S. You have no warranty, no spare parts – you have a car that's basically useless.”

If consumer protection wasn't reason enough, Moreno said, the second concern is national security.

“These cars all have lots and lots of cameras. They're connected to the manufacturers... imagine with a Chinese vehicle, by Chinese law, they're required to send that information back to the CCP.

“You can imagine this area where there's millions of Chinese vehicles that could be remote accessed from Beijing and all of a sudden, you're driving and you don't control your steering, you don't control your braking, you don't control your acceleration, and these cars could be used as literal weapons on American roads.”

The third and final reason, Moreno said, is economic.

“I call it industrial su***de. If you bring in what I call automotive fentanyl to the United States, it will wipe out the auto industry, which is about 10% of our GDP,” he said. “Last month, 34% of all hybrids sold in Europe were Chinese. A year ago, that number would've been negligible... I was in Ecuador about a month ago. Zero Chinese cars a year ago. 56% right now, which is wild.”

Moreno said his bill, the Connected Vehicle Security Act, is designed to keep the U.S. market exactly where it stands today.

“In the U.S., probably say it's zero. And so, what my legislation does, the Connected Vehicle Security Act, is it’s going to keep it at exactly zero,” he said. “We got it out of committee 28 to zero. We're up to about 50 co-sponsors in the Senate. We have a companion bill in the House. I'm extraordinarily confident that we're going to get this bill across the finish line by the end of September.”
Moreno closed by putting the scale of the challenge in perspective.

“China is exporting more cars per month than we make here in the United States of America,” he said. “The excess capacity is absolutely overwhelming.”

To read more and view Senator Moreno's remarks to The Ripon Society, please visit https://riponsociety.org/2026/07/moreno-makes-the-case-for-keeping-chinese-vehicles-out-of-the-u-s/

The Founders weren't perfect. They were vain, contradictory, and occasionally petty — and they built the most successful self-government in history anyway. Historian Dory Wiley on the leadership lesson we've forgotten in the latest Ripon Forum:

Practical Politicians: Flawed Men Who Served Something Larger
There is a temptation at moments like this one to bronze the Founders — to lift them beyond criticism or emulation alike. This is a disservice to them and to us. Adams was vain and difficult. Jefferson was deeply contradictory. Hamilton was brilliant and reckless. Washington was a man of fierce pride who had to learn, slowly, to subordinate that pride to the public good.

What made them great was not the absence of these qualities, but the presence of something stronger: at critical moments, they placed the republic above themselves. Washington refused a third term. Adams enforced a treaty that cost him re-election. What we need today are leaders who ask not what the office does for them, but what they owe the republic. That disposition is the engine of compromise. When self-interest is the highest value in the room, no institution is ever truly safe.

READ MORE: https://riponsociety.org/article/flawed-men-enduring-principles/

From the February 1979 Ripon Forum: Rep. John B. Anderson (R-IL) told the GOP to ditch rigid ideology and lead as "healers," not dividers. Advice that still holds up today:

The secret of winning elections is not to fight blindly for a narrow ideological purity. This may open up the gates of Heaven, but those of the White House will remain firmly shut. Jimmy Carter has so disaffected a number of groups that once supported him — blacks, labor, women, Jews, farmers — that while some of these may not be natural Republican constituencies, they are certainly ready for a change. Bill Brock has with some success tried to persuade black leaders that the GOP is not to be written off; indeed, Richard Thornburgh in Pennsylvania won an unexpected victory in the gubernatorial race in part because his moderation attracted more than half the black vote. (For that matter, up until the 1930's, blacks voted predominantly Republican, owing to the lasting aura Abe Lincoln gave the party.) Labor, too, has given consideration in the past to individual Republican candidates. The fact that the 1980 GOP convention will be held in Detroit should be taken as an opportunity, if not an explicit message, that the party leadership supports a broadening of our base. We don't have to align ourselves with one group or the other, one class or the other. If the Democrats care to be divisive, we should be quite content to be cast in a role as healers.

READ MORE:https://riponsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1979-02_VolXV_No2.pdf

250 years in, America faces a defining choice: coast on the past or continue to lead in the future. McCain Institute Executive Director Evelyn Farkas makes the case for the latter in The Ripon Forum AMERICA250 Special Edition:

Internationally, if we work more closely with our NATO alliance members, our Asian allies, Israel, and other partners around the world, we can outcompete and counterbalance China and other autocracies. As Senator McCain said, “we are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil.” The fact that we share these ideals and values makes our alliances durable and meaningful. Polls have demonstrated that the American people support a strong America that appears to be prevailing internationally. Americans want to be generous, so long as they believe there is a level playing field and that rule of law will ensure fairness and counter corruption.

The United States will overcome this dangerous point in American history and emerge even stronger in our next 250 years by strengthening our alliances, deepening our commitment to shared values, and harnessing the power of rapidly advancing technology. It will require leadership – turning power to a new, younger generation of builders and innovators, rebuilding community and a spirit of social service. There is a crying need for a new America to lead the world into this next half century, harness all that is good and productive in our citizens, and lift up all boats at home and on foreign shores.

READ MORE: https://riponsociety.org/article/america-at-250/

TEDDY TWEET OF THE WEEK

“If the man does his duty as a man, if he is fearless and honorable, upright in his dealings with his fellows, if he does his duty to his family, to the state, that is all that we have the right to ask about him.”

Theodore Roosevelt
Speech at the Exposition Building, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
April 3, 1903