The New Year celebrations today usher in a rare occasion for the nation: It’s the once-in-a-lifetime semiquincentennial, the 250th birthday of America’s formation as an independent country in 1776. The bitter partisan battles that have alienated Americans in ways not witnessed since the Vietnam War are a reminder that few “democratic” experiments have endured this many years. Will American liberty and civility survive the commemoration of the historic endurance of the “land of the free”?

US History 101

Political rancor has steadily increased during the last decade. Black Lives Matter riots and Tesla vandalism punctuated headlines. Open borders resulted in an influx of illegal entrants; efforts to deport them have yielded extremist attacks against ICE and other law enforcement agents. Assassination attempts on President Donald Trump elicited widespread applause, as did shameless celebrations of Charlie Kirk’s murder. And countless people praised Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of the UnitedHealthCare CEO, and portrayed the shooter as a perverse social justice hero. But using liberty to encourage murder is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

The growing mutual antipathy between the American left and right led popular podcaster Joe Rogan to proclaim in 2025 that the nation is well on its way to civil war. The Daily Caller reported:

“This might be like step seven on the way to a bona fide civil war … As soon as you start — like regular people — celebrating somebody getting murdered in front of their wife and kid on television, in front of the whole world … man, you’re in dark territory.”

America has been on the brink of failure before, surviving a bloody civil war in which hundreds of thousands of citizens died. The Great Depression strained the government, and some voters called for abandoning the democratic experiment in favor of totalitarian protection against economic collapse. Later, the Vietnam War pitted rival factions against one another in acrimonious protests and acts of violence.

A Republic of Liberty

America is not technically a democracy, though it is often mistakenly called one. The Constitution’s Framers deeply distrusted mob rule: government by the fickle “demos” of majority opinion, which throughout history has devolved into acts of genocide and other abuses. The United States is a constitutional republic, which ensures the fundamental liberty of each individual by allowing We the People to democratically elect representatives to a government constrained by the rule of law from violating individual rights.

The American experiment has held up comparatively well. Greece, generally credited with originating the first democracy in 507 BC, lasted only about 200 years and never saw its semiquincentennial. Often overlooked is that Greece did not protect civil liberties the way our republic does. Citizenship was the foundation of that ancient democratic era; non-citizens could be enslaved. No nation in history has secured liberty as the United States has.

In its list of the ten oldest democracies in the world, oldest.org places America as the oldest surviving democracy today. The site lists nations with democracies protected by constitutional republics or constitutional monarchies, but no “pure democracy” has survived long. It is the “constitutional” foundation that safeguards liberty and security for all.

When Johnny Tremain Was Our Hero

I clearly recall America’s patriotic bicentennial celebration in 1976. I was in middle school and was not enthusiastic about waving flags, but the exuberance was contagious. Parades, American flags, and history lessons about our nation’s fight for independence expressed pride and gratitude. Commemorative beer steins, posters, and other bicentennial memorabilia proliferated. Wooden “Spirit of ‘76” nickels were distributed widely to schoolchildren. The Vietnam War had ended the previous year, Watergate was in the rearview mirror, and Gerald Ford was president until Jimmy Carter took the national helm that fall.

Sadly, semiquincentennial 2026 looks less rosy. It is hoped that Americans will come together to celebrate gratefully, rather than resentfully denigrate, our nation’s history. But speaking as a conservative walk-away from the 20th-century Democratic Party, my cynicism may be understandable.

Rogan is correct to be shocked that many Americans rejoice over the cold-blooded murders of men with children. Slavery is revisited as if it is still ongoing, while the abolitionist movement is deplatformed. The Founding Fathers have been repainted as a misogynistic patriarchy. The “liberty” we know today is far different from what the Founders risked life and fortune to protect.

Optimism for 2026?

Still, I remain hopeful. The Middle East is currently stabilized. An end to the ill-considered Ukraine war is within view. Globalists, DEI, and open borders are in retreat. The lines are clear between those who seek to preserve the constitutional principles and institutions that have endured for 250 years and those who want to destroy everything in the name of imagined grievances and rebuild society into an imaginary utopia. I have some hope that a majority of Americans will embrace sanity over hateful nihilism.

An organization called America250 is upbeat and positive about the nation’s prospects for 2026:

“The journey toward this historic milestone is an opportunity to pause and reflect on our nation’s past, honor the contributions of all Americans, and look ahead toward the future we want to create for the next generation and beyond.

“America250 is striving for ‘350 by 250’ — our goal to engage all 350 million Americans by our nation’s 250th anniversary.”

My prayer for 2026 is that Americans will set aside their differences long enough to value their commonalities, especially the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that seem to have taken a back seat to woke victimhood and gender dysphoria. Hopefully, too, the economy will hold together, the national debt will subside, and the fiat currency will resist hyperinflation.

If patriotism loses its luster, America won’t survive to celebrate its tricentennial with a wooden nickel – “The spirit of 2076!”

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