“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country” — or so typing manuals back in the 1970s had students peck out. Thankfully, the typewriter has been replaced, but that sentiment is ever so relevant today.
America is sick. Almost everyone agrees . . . still, we point our fingers in different directions.
This year, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the greatest political words ever written and the birth of this very consequential country in which we live.
“The American Revolution is the most important event since the birth of Christ,” documentary filmmaker Ken Burns contends, adding, “in all of world history.”
Yet, where’s the celebration? I mean, I see ads for “America 250” t-shirts on Facebook, but . . . the country is not coming together as one for a big event to honor and appreciate the United States of America, this experiment gone largely very, very right.
For us and the world.
Old-timers like me remember the bicentennial in 1976, fifty years ago. It was YUGE!
The whole country seemed to celebrate. Not because the nation was perfect and everyone agreed on everything — the civil rights movement was in progress, the Vietnam War barely over, a myriad of other festering issues divided us — but because folks perceived they had the ability to change it.
And that America was worth the effort.
Let’s find ways to commemorate year 250 of this grand experiment. As corrupt and partisan as our politics has become, we still have the ability to make change. Peacefully. Democratically.
And America is still very much worth the effort.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “Semiquincentennial Blues”
Semiquincentennial doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily as bicentennial. I still remember that day. I had to work at the county hospital because officials were concerned about large numbers of casualties from people gathering along the Hudson River to watch the boats. We had to be ready to handle a mass casualty event. That didn’t stop us from celebrating the event, however.. Fifty years ago we basically had a mass media that brought people together. Today we have specialized sites and people are cloistered. I’ll never find anything on Facebook, since I refuse to use it. It’s harder to get together as a nation when we live in different universes. We can always hope, however.
The American colonists petitioned the Crown for something like a decade before rebelling. How many decades now have liberal Americans been petitioning and trying to vote for a restoration of their liberties?
Like most other organs of the state, the formal and informal system whereby officials are elected has been captured by grifters. The allowed possibilities in elections are filtered. I do not believe that Americans can joint restore their system democratically so long as they continue to feel assured that they can. Only if a large share of Americans are again prepared to rebel extra-legally — and with that preparedness frighten our rulers into acquiescing to more proper elections — might democratic solutions be possible.