What’s It All Mean?

BILL ASTORE

NOV 14, 2025

Next year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s founding. There’s going to be the usual fight over what that anniversary should mean to Americans, and what lessons we should draw. For example, the Ken Burns series on “The American Revolution” starts this Sunday night on PBS. I’ll be watching it. If it comes close to his series on the U.S. Civil War, it should be interesting and informative.

There are so many lessons we could take from the American revolution (or war of independence). Speaking as a retired military officer, I might stress the citizen-soldier tradition, the ideal of the Minuteman, the rejection of tyranny, the suspicion of large standing armies, the desire for independence and liberty, the courage to affix one’s name to a declaration that could end with your head swinging in the air.

I don’t know what lessons Trump & Crew will be selling, but something tells me they won’t be salutary. Lots of flag-waving, of course, along with American exceptionalism.

We know America was founded as an imperfect union. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness wasn’t granted to slaves. Or indigenous peoples. Or women for that matter. (Let’s not forget women couldn’t vote for president until 1920.) The founders were mostly white men of property, with some holding “property” in slaves. For African-Americans, the “revolution of 1776” certainly didn’t prove revolutionary for them.

I would stress the idea of striving toward a more perfect union, recognizing the early republic was, in so many ways, imperfect. And that’s putting it gently. I’d stress as well what Benjamin Franklin said. As a form of government, a representative republic is better than most but also difficult to keep. And there’s the rub: today our representatives, our public servants, serve the owners and donors, the power brokers, rather than the people. A revival of the republic isn’t going to come from either major political party—they’re both beholden to money.

So how can we end this “tyranny” without a bloody revolution? Is a national revival possible without years and years of domestic conflict and strife? Meanwhile, can America reject its embrace of militarism and imperialism? Can it advance the rule of law as represented by the U.S. Constitution? Can we be touched, as Abraham Lincoln wrote, by the better angels of our nature?

1776-2026. 250 years of glorious imperfection. We can be better. We can do better. Let’s strive to live up to the promise of America.