This volume examines the 250-year American experiment with liberal democracy, highlighting both its shortcomings and its remarkable achievements. The essays explore how the nation’s founding ideals of liberty, equality, justice, and self-government shaped American institutions and inspired the expansion of political and economic rights over time. Although the volume addresses the exclusion and oppression experienced by many groups, it also emphasizes the role of constitutional limits, democratic institutions, civic associations, social movements, and citizen activism in correcting injustice and extending freedom. Drawing on perspectives from economics, political science, history, sociology, and political philosophy, the contributors consider how Americans have challenged abuses of power, created new forms of self-governance, and renewed the country’s commitment to liberal ideals. Taken together, the essays present the American democratic project as incomplete but resilient, and explore how civic engagement, institutional reform, and self-governance might help sustain and renew it.