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As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the new five-part documentary series The American Experiment reexamines the improbable achievement that was the nation’s founding, and the radical question at the center of the revolution: Can a people govern themselves? Featuring an extraordinary range of voices including former vice presidents and cabinet officials, current and former members of Congress, a former Supreme Court justice, leading historians, tribal chiefs, military experts, and thought leaders across the political spectrum, the series presents uniquely bipartisan, wide-ranging, and deeply informed conversations about the origins and future of American democracy. Tracking the years leading up to the Revolution through the drafting of the Constitution and the first American presidency, The American Experiment explores how a nation built on an untested idea has continued to wrestle with the foundational contradictions of slavery, liberty, individual power, and minority representation — and how American democracy has been built, challenged, and reimagined over the course of two and a half centuries. Cinematic in scope and urgently relevant, The American Experiment reveals how the debates that defined the country’s founding era still shape the United States, posing a pivotal question at a moment of profound division: Can this extraordinary experiment endure?

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00:00How do you understand the nation if you don't look at all the challenges the nation has faced?
00:08A great nation doesn't hide from its past, but looks at it, learns from it, and has been made better
00:14by that past.
00:17The American Revolution was really a key turning point for all of human history.
00:28It is brutal. It is ugly. It's American against American.
00:33It's a struggle within ourselves for the very soul of who we are.
00:39They saw the tyranny of monarchy, and they wanted nothing to do with it.
00:46They had such a deep conviction about independence and that they were willing to step forward and risk everything.
00:53Our citizens were fighting for independence and this radical idea at the time that sovereignty lies with the people.
01:02They use the word experiment because it's unclear if it's going to work.
01:05This is a leap of faith into the unknown.
01:09Could a government based on the people without a king survive?
01:13The role of government is to defend liberty.
01:16We become a republic because Washington refuses to be king.
01:20We were a nation founded on ideals that are about liberty and freedom.
01:24Why do millions of people from all over the world come to America?
01:28Because here anybody can become anything.
01:31The American experiment is democracy.
01:33The original debates among the framers are more relevant than they've been at any point in my lifetime.
01:39This is a pivotal moment to choose.
01:41Who do we want to be?
01:43Are we for some of us?
01:45Or are we for all of us?
01:48Or are we for all of us?
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