People attend Freedomfest in Las Vegas, Nev., on July 8, 2026. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

LAS VEGAS—There were few American flags at FreedomFest 2026.

Attendees of the annual event, held between July 8 and July 11, didn’t talk much about the tri-colored cloth bedecked with stars and stripes; they focused instead on what they say it represents.

Billed as the “World’s Fair of Liberty,” the 2026 FreedomFest celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

For attendees, the flag stands for individual liberty and limited government the Founders spoke of in that seminal document. Kelsey Grammer, keynote speaker and award-winning actor, summed the Declaration’s thesis this way.

“I'd like to be in charge of my own destiny and my own soul,” Grammer said.

The group that descended upon Caesar’s Forum in Las Vegas is commonly known as the Libertarian Party. It declares itself founded on the principle of individual liberty, as its name suggests.

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The event’s activities included a business pitch competition, the Anthem Film Festival, the Punching Up Comedy Festival, and dozens of breakout sessions—all designed to promote and highlight people’s efforts to live free with minimal government influence.

Jose Padilla took the top prize in the business pitch competition for his plan to create an artificial intelligence-powered paralegal. The lawyer from San Antonio, Texas, stood backstage with his oversized check waiting to talk with Steve Forbes—the well-known publisher and a contest judge.

Padilla said capitalism provides opportunity, but it’s up to the individual to make his or her own luck. According to Padilla, government best serves business by reducing its influence over the free market.

Jose Padilla is announced as the winner of the Principled Business Pitch competition at Freedomfest on July 10, 2026. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Michelle Bernier is chief of staff for Principled Business, the organization that sponsored the competition.

“I believe that entrepreneurship is a maximum expression of liberty,” she told The Epoch Times.

Independent management consultant Carlos Urbizo told a breakout session that the history of Latin America is filled with examples of the failures of government intervention, even well-meaning intervention.

“We don’t have free market capitalism in Latin America. We have never had democracy the way you understand it here. So if you don’t have those two institutions, you got problems,” Urbizo said.

Diogo Costa, president of the conservative think tank Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), says Urbizo’s concerns are valid, even in free countries like the United States.

Costa said in a panel discussion that totalitarian governments are using social media to influence young Americans disillusioned with the perceived failures of the free market.

Diogo Costa. Courtesy of FEE.org

Costa said that people 28 years of age and younger are embracing “Democratic Socialism.”

They see it as a remedy for the high cost of living, when in reality, collectivism, the basis of socialism, causes the problems they contend with, Costa said.

“It is already in the bottlenecks that regulation creates and reduces supplies and makes rent more expensive,” Costa said. “It makes the American dream less affordable.”

One national security expert agrees.

Casey Fleming, CEO of corporate intelligence firm BlackOps Partners, has worked in national security and counterintelligence for more than 20 years. He said the first step in turning America back to the principles of individual liberty and free enterprise envisioned by the Founders and represented in the flag is to disengage with the nation’s enemies, starting with the Chinese Communist Party.

CEO of Blackops Partners Casey Fleming attends Freedomfest in Las Vegas, Nev., on July 9, 2026. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

He said social media platform TikTok is a Chinese communist military platform designed to mold minds.

“In between the kitty cat videos and the dance move videos, they’re programming the children to hate America, to love socialism,” Fleming told The Epoch Times.

Mark Joseph, a film producer, agrees with Fleming’s assessment of social media’s effect. He no longer uses TikTok or similar social media platforms.

He noted that the same technology that makes TikTok possible now also provides a digital megaphone to anyone with the wherewithal to use it.

In the past, he said, anyone who wanted to be heard had to navigate a media business structure with gatekeepers who could decide who could share their viewpoints.

“The gatekeepers are gone. Now, you have to be your own gatekeeper,” Joseph told The Epoch Times.

Grammer believes a key to restoring that reverence for personal liberty is to remind ourselves of the fire in which those principles were forged. He said public schools have failed generations of students by neglecting the stories behind much of America’s history.

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, poets are given the opportunity to express their patriotism in The Great American Poetry Competition. A U.S. flag with 15 stripes and 15 stars, like the one that was flown at Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, frames the Battle Monument in Baltimore, Md., on Sept. 12, 2014. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Grammer told the FreedomFest audience a dramatized version of a true story about the inspiration for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” America’s national anthem.

During the battle for Fort McHenry in 1814, a British officer pointed to the U.S. flag flying over the fort and told Francis Scott Key—the anthem’s composer—that by morning the flag would be gone, along with the United States.

Throughout the night, Key saw the flag fall only to be raised again. Grammer estimated that up to 40 men likely died that night holding up the flag.

Grammer pointed out that those men didn’t sacrifice themselves for a banner. They died for the country it represented and the generations to come who would enjoy the blessings of individual liberty and limited government.

“I think when a young person hears a story that way, they won’t think it’s cool to burn this flag,” Grammer said.

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