03 Jul 2026 2 min read

What I’m Celebrating On Our 250th Birthday

On America’s unfinished promise, the people still fighting for it, and what remains worth celebrating at 250.

There’s no avoiding it: our country is in a bad place right now. But there is still a lot worth celebrating as the United States marks its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026.

I am celebrating the ideals that have always made this country worth fighting for, even when we have failed to live up to them.

I am celebrating the audacity of the American idea: that a country could be built around the belief that all are created equal, that we are born with rights no ruler can arbitrarily strip away, and that government exists to serve the people – not the other way around. That idea helped inspire democratic constitutions around the world.

I am celebrating the idea that this country could be a refuge. That people could come here to pray freely, speak freely, build freely, and begin again. Too often, including under this administration, we have met newcomers with exclusion, suspicion, and violence. But the promise that your future should not be dictated by where you were born remains one of the most radical and necessary promises this country has ever made.

And I am celebrating the people who keep insisting that America should become better than it is today.

I am also celebrating what this country has made possible when we have chosen ambition over fear: landing human beings on the moon, building the foundations of the internet, and creating vaccines that changed the world. Achievements like these were the result of people, science, public investment, and a belief that government can help us do extraordinary things together.

And I am celebrating the people who keep insisting that America should become better than it is today.

That fight did not begin with us; we are part of a long American tradition of people organizing, striking, and speaking out – often at great personal risk – to demand that this country make good on its promises.

Those protests are like the above-water portion of an iceberg – the easiest part to see, but the larger and more important part is what’s below the surface.

Today, that tradition lives in the millions who have taken to the streets to oppose this authoritarian president – a group that includes most of you reading this newsletter. The three largest single days of protest in American history were in response to this administration: the No Kings protests of June 2025, October 2025, and March 2026. Those protests are like the above-water portion of an iceberg – the easiest part to see, but the larger and more important part is what’s below the surface. They show the spirit of Americans unwilling to quietly surrender their country: a people who organize, who dissent, who protect one another. They remind the powerful that this country does not belong to them.

That is what I am celebrating on our 250th birthday.

The idea of America. The accomplishments of America. The promise of America.

And the people who, again and again, keep fighting to push America closer to achieving its lofty aspirations.

Follow Alex Rikleen on Bluesky at @rikleen.bsky.social.

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