Independence Day on the Eve of the Semiquincentennial

National Review Online

Friday, July 04, 2025

 

Across the horizons of time, America is a young nation, indeed. Our English cousins inhabit a kingdom that has lasted more or less continuously for a thousand years. Egyptian and Chinese civilization have existed since the dawn of recorded history, and even before it. The Hebrews began their many wanderings when Abraham departed Ur of the Chaldeans to follow the voice of God. And yet the United States of America is today a mere 249 years old.

 

Of course, as Mark Twain may have said, “Do not complain about growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.”

 

As we wake up this morning, so close now upon our Semiquincentennial next summer, Americans can look out with pride at what their country was, and still is, and will yet be — though now at a somewhat more middle age.

 

For it was two and a half centuries ago, exactly, that “the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,” did something quite extraordinary. They, “in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies,” declared to the nations of the earth “that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”

 

It was and is an astounding, epoch-altering, world-historical event and declaration. And it’s at this point, of course, that readers might expect a little throat clearing: a few “to be sures” insisting that no one is saying that America is perfect.

 

We shall do no such thing. The mundane fact that the United States of America is not perfect says nothing about us other than that we are members of the human race and of fallen mankind. What is not in any way mundane but is in fact extraordinary about us as a nation are the principles we hold in common. These principles — these truths — as Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Sherman, and Livingston asserted, are self-evident and declare “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and “that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

 

Moreover, as Calvin Coolidge said in Philadelphia at a celebration of America’s sesquicentennial, “if there is any failure in respect to any of these principles, it is because there is a failure on the part of individuals to observe them.”

 

Americans ought to be supremely confident in these self-evident and God-bestowed truths that make up our founding creed. And we can be sure that these principles, as Coolidge told us, hold a “finality that is exceedingly restful.”

 

“It is often asserted,” the 30th president of these United States declared, “that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.”

 

“But that reasoning,” Coolidge said, “cannot be applied to this great charter.”

 

If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.

 

In the 249 years that America has been an independent nation, empires have risen, ruled, and fallen. Fascism, communism, and Nazism surged forth to challenge God-given liberty, and have been defeated by free men. France has meandered through five republics and two empires. But America has endured and grown strong — and we have done that as a free people under our constitution with “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

 

Happy birthday, America. And get ready: Next year will be one to remember.