The Patriot Post® · Celebrating America at 250: We Know How, but What About Why?

America knows how to throw a party, and this 250th anniversary of our founding is no different. Whether it’s Sunday’s wild celebration at the White House, the tour of a long-dormant Union Pacific steam locomotive dubbed the “Big Boy” thrilling rail enthusiasts, or a giant fireworks show with the backdrop of Mount Rushmore, the commemoration isn’t short on what John Adams decreed 250 years ago “ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Well, Mr. Adams, with that small sampling among thousands of celebrations, we have your wishes covered, and then some.

Yet what will America think of itself when it wakes up on July 5 to find the party’s over? Too often, we focus on everything we’ve done wrong.

“Serious debate has taken place over how July 4, 2026, should be understood: as a grand celebration, a restrained observance — or a guilty reckoning, with every patriotic cry muffled or rebuked and replaced by a sermon on our national failing,” stated Wilfred McClay at the City Journal. “True, some of these conflicts also surfaced during the bicentennial in 1976, when the radical People’s Bicentennial movement sought to challenge the triumphalist tone of the official celebration. But 50 years later, what was once radical has become mainstream.”

He’s not alone in noticing these reflections. “Listing our sins during patriotic celebrations is a ritual as ingrained in our culture as fireworks on Independence Day,” adds Rick Moran of PJ Media. “‘Reminding us’ of our sins (as if we could ever forget) is now a political power play used to rally minorities and other ‘oppressed’ groups to the left-wing banner.” Yet Moran also states that America’s founding was unique among nations, most of which emerged from conquest by a powerful tyrant rather than from a focus on the liberty of the people therein.

As someone who remembers America’s 200th and is enjoying the run-up to the semiquincentennial, it seems to me there was much more media hoopla 50 years ago for the historic anniversary. Many of us received a nightly minute-long history lesson stressing the importance of the events that led up to our Declaration of Independence, but the trend toward negativity in our recent study of history seems to negate that message.

But writing at National Review, Michael McShane notes, “For all the talk about controversy around teaching history and civics, parents overwhelmingly agree on a set of topics that civics classes should cover. More than seven in ten parents said that schools should teach the rights and responsibilities of citizens, the U.S. Constitution, the three branches of government, major events in U.S. history, the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, state and local government, elections and voting, civil rights history in the U.S., how to evaluate news and information sources, and how to discuss political or social issues respectfully.”

The problem isn’t in the topics, but the execution, as only a third of school parents believe their children are getting enough of an education in civics and American history.

Fortunately, there are educational institutions trying to address this, as John Sailer points out in City Journal, citing the University of Florida and the University of Texas as two institutions leading the way. But he also notes that liberal historians “would love to strategically map who these f***ers are, and figure out what the weaknesses are, and design a research agenda that just goes through them and tries to knock them out.” Ironically, this comes from a so-called “center on ‘academic freedom’” housed by the American Association of University Professors, whose concept of freedom seems to be that you are free to agree with a 1619 Project perspective on American history.

“If you were naive and read that the American Association of University Professors, using a grant from the Mellon Foundation, had a project to defend academic freedom, you might think they intended to defend academic freedom,” opines Hot Air’s David Strom. “On the other hand, if you were familiar with Critical Theory, you would raise your eyebrows and assume that they were in the censorship business, because these people deploy words as weapons, relying on people associating the ordinary meaning of words with what you say, thus giving the liar power to shape a false reality.”

There are many interpretations of American history, some of which are more politically correct but less truthful than others. Yet when you begin to deliberately sabotage the stories of our Founders because what they did at the time isn’t considered politically correct now, that’s far more a whitewash of history than our side is accused of.

“But it’s essential that young people are taught that story in all its glorious, improbable, unbelievable and painful, tearful, blood-soaked reality for many Americans,” states Moran. He concludes, “There won’t be an America 250 years from now unless kids are exposed to the ideas of the Revolution and how radical they truly were for those times.”

We should never forget that the American experiment is a unique one as it turns its calendar to year 251 and beyond.