Twelve months have passed since the quarter-millennial season of the United States of America. Some Generation X and older Americans will fondly remember the enthusiastic event of the American Revolution that ruled the country from April 1, 1975, through December 31, 1976. By honoring our foundation and unifying our citizens, the future milestone needs to imitate the Bicentennial.
During the Bicentennial, colonial-themed marches and traditional recreations were outside. By visiting New York Harbor on July 4, 1976, large ships from 30 different countries paid tribute to our country’s baby. The red, white, and blue American Freedom Train, propelled by a gas motor conveying America’s investigation of the West, visited cities in all 48 adjacent states. The coach bore historical documents and objects including George Washington’s review of the Constitution, John Kennedy’s hand-written review of his inaugural address, the earliest American Bible, stones from the sun, and Paul Revere’s saddlebags.
CBS, ABC, and” Sesame Street” ran Bicentennial-themed, historical, and civic-education programs. There was renewed attention in American history at the state and local levels, and increased formal research on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. The Bicentennial served as a unified expression of gratitude for a country’s first 200 years, which Alexander Hamilton described as” the most exciting in the world” in many ways.
America was in desperate need of that occasion at the time. In 1976, the land was coming out of a century featuring large violence, protests, cultural tensions, Watergate, and Vietnam. A half-century later, America is coming out of a century featuring large violence, protests, cultural conflicts, Covid mandates, and a tragic Afghanistan removal. What was then true, is now true: America needs to honor and reverence the” spirit of ’76” for the nation’s establishment.
The British members are perhaps the greatest leadership group in human history in terms of traditional diplomacy. Other political leaders may have successfully defended their way of life, but our founders ( as they promised in the Federalist Papers ) created a new type of plan, a , novus ordo seclorum, or a new purchase for the ages — a constitutional state that has provided as much or more option, happiness, and, ultimately, liberty as any other society, past or present. A unique group of greats made up the Constitutional Convention. As Daniel Webster put it,” Miracles do not cluster. It’s impossible to anticipate that something that has happened once every six thousand years.
This, unfortunately, is not how the Left sees things. Progressives view the majority of America’s history and its founding as being at least as deserving of celebration as the condemnation of its founding. In the Left’s telling, America was flawed from the beginning, there’s little from the founding to celebrate, the Civil War, which claimed the lives of at least 600, 000 mostly white farm boys, clerks, and tradesmen, didn’t repay the debt for the horrors of slavery that Abraham Lincoln suggested it did, and the 1960s civil rights movement didn’t go far enough.
The Left’s hyper-critical interpretation of American history has seeped into preliminary plans for the Quarter-Millennial. The America250 organization that is planning much of next year’s anniversary includes “diverse” and “inclusive” in its 50-word mission statement but couldn’t find the space for” American Revolution”,” American Founding”,” Declaration of Independence”, or anything else clearly hearkening back to 1776. In contrast, the Bicentennial’s official planning group was called the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, leaving no doubt what was being celebrated.
Washington state’s official America250 committee is emphasizing the darker aspects of our nation’s history. The committee chair, Democratic Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck, complained that” there’s not even a hint of celebration” in the plans. Not everyone is particularly excited about celebrating America, according to state representative Kristine Reeves. She told Heck that Washington’s America250 committee wants the harms of our past put front and center.
Unlike Leftists, most Americans know that any human society is, and always will be, imperfect — and therefore in need of patriots to right injustices. And most Americans are aware that we should affirm our country’s greatest inheritance, rather than make excuses.
American civilization was built by pioneers, entrepreneurs, inventors, religious leaders, and social reformers, and it has been defended by soldiers who freed the slaves and saved the world from tyranny. Thus, the Quarter-Millennial should be a full-throated celebration of our history and heroes: of George Washington, Independence Hall, Yorktown, Lincoln, Appomattox Court House, Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Wright brothers, Jim Thorpe, the Babe, Midway, Normandy, Jackie Robinson, Walt Disney, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Apollo landings, America’s triumph over communism, and much else.
As President Trump’s executive order creating the 1776 Commission put it, we should present our founding in a way that is “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling”. Celebrations should promote the revival of the steam-powered American Freedom Train and the Trump-proposed year-long” Great American State Fair” as well as the connection to Americans ‘ extraordinary inheritance.
Most importantly, our Quarter-Millennial celebration (” Semiquincentennial” is clunky and unmemorable, America’s 250th lacks the gravity of the Bicentennial ) must unite us as Americans. It is necessary to remind our citizens that the Declaration of Independence is a collection of universal truths, and that, according to Abraham Lincoln, all Americans “have a right to claim it as though they were flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration.” In short, the Quarter-Millennial is the best opportunity in 50 years to reorient the citizenry toward the American Founding, and we shouldn’t squander it.
Fonte is the author of Sovereignty or Submission and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Anderson previously held the office of the Bureau of Justice Statistics director between 2017 and 2018 respectively.
