The U.S. Navy is turning 250. Celebrate with a shipbuilding revival.

Stephen E. Flynn is a political science professor at Northeastern University and founding director of the university’s Defense Industrial Base Institute.

The U.S. Navy celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding Monday. Nearly nine months before issuing the Declaration of Independence, with the Colonies already at war with Britain, the Continental Congress recognized the urgent need to build a fleet to secure Americans’ freedoms and support the fledgling nation’s prosperity. Now, in an echo of this Colonial past, the United States urgently needs to recommit itself to shipbuilding.