Happy 250, America!
Celebrating the original No Kings movement
I’ll keep this brief, but I couldn’t let America’s 250th birthday pass without comment.
Many nations and constitutions don’t last 250 years, and there seems to be a lot doubt that we can hold together much longer. We are as divided and angry as I’ve ever seen us.
I’m not that old, but I do remember the bicentennial in 1976. The national mood was entirely different with celebrations that were actually by large numbers of people and grassroots festivities around the country. Somewhere I’ve got a picture of all the kids at my church, me among them, dressed in colonial garb that included tricorn hats for the boys and bonnets for the young ladies. That was pretty typical of 1976.
But this year, the national mood is pensive and angry. The celebrations have largely fizzled, thanks in large part to a president who hijacked the America 250 initiative created by Congress and steered resources toward his newly-created Freedom 250. Like everything else, Trump made America’s birthday about himself and threw a wet blanket on the party. America’s 250th is a pale imitation of its 200th.
It’s ironic that America celebrates its 250th with a man at the helm who closely resembles George V. As someone pointed out, our current president checks a lot of the boxes on the list of the Founders’ complaints about the English king in their epic breakup letter:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection…
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us…
A movement that promised to make America great again has done the opposite. The economy is slowing, corruption is rising, we are no longer respected by other nations, and American pride has fallen to a new low.
I say all that to say this: Things have been worse and we’ve survived. Things were pretty dark in the years following 1776. The British burned the White House in 1814. Our internal divisions were worse in the 1860s and probably the 1960s as well. The Great Depression made us question the basis of our entire system,
If we’ve never seen America in worse shape, it’s because we haven’t lived long enough to have experienced our countries previous bottoms. Our history tells us that we can work through it. This too shall pass. The course correction has already started.
My message today is to go celebrate America. Don’t confuse love of country with love of Trump or affirmation of what our government is doing.
As Teddy Roosevelt said, “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
My country, right or wrong, but those of us who love America should celebrate our nation while at the same time working to improve it and live up to the ideals of the Founders, the idea that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
A lot of us have lost sight of what America was intended to be, so let me recommend that we all take a few minutes over the next few days to read the Declaration of Independence and think about what our forefathers were fighting to be free from.
Read the Declaration of Independence here: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
Or if you’d prefer, listen to a reading of it here on Spotify (I also recommend the History That Doesn’t Suck Podcast generally):
Happy Independence Day and Happy Birthday, America. Let’s make ourselves worthy of the legacy that the Founders gave us.