To call this Saturday the nation’s 250th birthday is to indulge a comfortable fiction. 1776 was a declaration, not a birth certificate – and the founders wrote its claims of human equality while this nation enslaved human beings. A truer account of American freedom runs through 1619 and Juneteenth, when Americans forced the country, at last, to begin making its promises answerable to reality.
So I’m not in the mood to celebrate “America 250”, and I’m not alone. The affection is thin this summer: the Pew Research Center found that 69% of Americans were dissatisfied with the country’s direction early this year. That is not ingratitude. Sometimes a sour mood is simply clear vision.
