America 250: The Work of Freedom Belongs to Us All
This year, America celebrates its 250th birthday. As we come together to celebrate, it is worth asking not only what our nation has been, but also what our nation is still capable of becoming.
I asked friends and acquaintances a simple question in hopes of finding inspiration for writing this article: What is America to you? The answers were as varied as the people who make up this country. Some were full of hope, others critical, some were deeply personal, some historic, and others came in the form of songs that spoke to the individual. That variety, though, is not a weakness; it is the point. America has never been one voice, one class, one background, or one story. America is and has always been many voices learning, often imperfectly, how to live together in one republic.
And yet, for somewhere in the midst of all those differences, one truth kept coming back to me: entrepreneurship. Which led me to see that, from our founders to the immigrants of today and everyone in between: the American spirit is that of self-determination.
The belief that ordinary people, just by their existence on this earth, should have the freedom to build a life, to live free, and to pursue whatever it is they think will make them happy. That is the Promise of America that has attracted generation after generation to this land, and it is the promise that sustains those of us who have never known anything else as our home.
It’s also the Promise we are at risk of losing.
Today, profiteers, oligarchs, billionaires, mega-corporations, even our own politicians, have worked to divide the American people along any line they can – young against old, urban against rural, worker against worker, neighbor against neighbor. They want us suspicious of each other, exhausted with chaos and misinformation, and isolated. They want us to believe that the American spirit is one of “rugged individualism” instead of what it really is – one of Unity. There is no America without the unity of We the People, and that is what they are counting on. But we must not allow it any longer.
We must start talking and working to understand each other across the generations. We have younger Americans who hear the word socialism and associate it with the ability to work a full-time job and be able to have a home and family of their own that they can support, but for our younger generations today, that middle class life is a fantasy. And our elders hear the word socialism and immediately think of Cold War threats and loss of freedom. We’ve allowed labels to mean more than the definition behind the labels, but if we get past the label, we realize that most of us all want the same things regardless of our definitions of whatever arbitrary label is being used to sow more division in the moment.
Most Americans want the same basic things: security, opportunity, freedom, and the chance to build a decent life.
And that is the common ground upon which We the People must stand as we work toward a better future for us all.
We do not honor our founding by pretending our nation has always been perfect and lived up to its ideals. We honor it by continuing to work towards an America that does live up to those ideals. Our founders risked everything for liberty, many lost everything, including their lives. Their courage should not be remembered as a museum artifact but should be a challenge to us all – to work together for an even more perfect union for all People.
The question before us now is whether we will allow an elite few who, the wealthiest who have insulated themselves from all accountability and who become increasingly powerful, to turn self-government into a performance and our town squares into battlegrounds. Or will We the People remember that this country belongs not to the loudest, richest, or most connected, but to the People.
We must demand public servants who serve the public. We must demand whole truth instead of spun truth used to manipulate us all. We must reject politicians that sow fear and must choose the harder Patriotic work of finding civic trust, having honest conversations, and we must share in the responsibility of getting this nation back on track so that it can thrive for the next 250 years.
America was never meant to be easy, but it was meant to be for us all.
In our 250th year, it is our duty not to worship the past or surrender to disappointment, but to recover the American habit of believing that tomorrow can be better than today if we have the courage to make it so. That is the spirit that built this nation. That is the spirit that can renew it.
We the People have work to do. But if we do it together, if we stand United, America’s next 250 can be the moment when this great nation lives up to the ideals upon which is was founded for every single one of us. United We Stand.