I understand the impulse, even if a year-long “birthday party” is an exaggeration for effect. But the semiquincentennial is far too important to be cast simply as a festival of uncritical patriotism. Rather, it should serve as a shared opportunity to deeply consider the gap between the country we actually are, and a country that has earned the title of “more perfect union.”
A word about the word: “Semiquincentennial” does not roll off the tongue. But as English teachers across the country have long told us, a word is easier to remember when you know its roots. Semiquincentennial means half (“semi-”) of five (“quin-”) hundred years (“centennial”); somewhere, my sixth-grade language arts teacher is smiling. That said, a Gen Z intervention is probably in the offing: “Quarter Milli” says 250 in a way that feels distinctly American.
More important than what we call it, though, is what we do with it. Trump pitched a six-part plan: Launch a “Salute to America 250” federal task force (seemingly separate from the congressionally established Semiquincentennial Commission); create a national state fair, which he teased could be held in the Republicans’ first presidential caucus state of Iowa; hold a version of the Patriot Games for high school athletes; revitalize his plan for a National Garden of American Heroes; invite world leaders and international tourists to the United States; and ask faith communities to pray for the country. On the surface, there’s little objectionable here.
But this isn’t 2015. After four years of a Trump presidency, the nation has enough experience to know there’s more to the story. For example, an invitation for the world to come celebrate with us in 2026 — when the World Cup is being hosted here in North America — is jarring from the man who ordered the colloquially named Muslim ban and professed his distaste for people from “s—hole countries.”
And when Trump says the semiquincentennial is a moment to show “pride in our history,” one would be excused for wondering which history he’s referring to. Is it the sanitized and Pollyanna version at the core of his 1776 Commission? The sort offered in his executive order on race that spurred the culture war over social studies curriculums and book bans?
Trump is absolutely right that the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding is an important moment. How we mark it matters. If it becomes a vehicle to pat ourselves on the back for being exceptional, we will have squandered it. If it is nothing more than a chance to spotlight all the things broken and flawed and hypocritical about our country, we will have lost a critical opportunity. Both approaches give short shrift to all who bled, sweat and died to achieve the nation we have today: The former refuses to recognize the groups who sacrificed the most; the latter denies the transformational achievements of previous generations.
Moreover, if political factions exploit the anniversary to beat on their opponents — and the majority of us remain silent — then we will be complicit in the nation’s retreat to a far less admirable state.
The semiquincentennial marks the founding, but the anniversary belongs to today. A nation endures and improves only because living people insist on it. We commemorate the work and sacrifices of those who came before us; no need to for a “birthday party.” It’s the ideal moment to take pride in the progress the United States has made since its inception, to reckon with the ways — historical and contemporary — that the nation has fallen short, and deliberate on and affirm a shared aspiration of who we will be: a more perfect union, or a house divided.
Perhaps Trump is trying to evoke an imagined “Leave It to Beaver” world, or — worse — a return to 1950s America with all of its naked discrimination. But the 250th anniversary is a time to aspire to a new America, picking up the mantle of the people over time who have compelled the nation’s evolution since the day it came to be.
We are just three years from the semiquincentennial. Today, as in decades past, Americans are mostly a people who want to leave the nation better than we found it. And we are increasingly sick of the incessant political soap opera that pollutes our lives. There is far less interest in a year-long kegger than there is in being a generation that pushes the nation a few steps closer to its promise.
