If You Don’t Want Woke Bureaucrats To Ruin America’s 250th Birthday, Start Planning Now

We are four years away from celebrating our nation’s 250th birthday, a remarkable milestone for innumerable and ineffable reasons. The odds were stacked against us, are stacked against us, starting from our own successful overthrow of the world’s most powerful king to the barbarism of the Civil War, through economic crashes, dustbowls, the scourge of slavery, the rise of Hitler, and the Cold War. Yet America lives on.

The miracle of America deserves annual celebration, as commanded by Founding Father John Adams, and does so much more so on her remarkable 250th birthday. It is a celebration for all the world, for all the world is better because America was born. 

It would take extensive preparation and patriotism to do it justice. We know the celebration will center in Philadelphia, and that a website has been created, but the site is already sprinkled with stories emphasizing left-wing causes.

America deserves to have her leadership throw a great celebration that celebrates our unity more than it accentuates our differences. I don’t know if such a celebration is even possible.  

A House Divided

We are uniquely divided in America right now because it is the belief in America herself that divides. Too many elected Americans, officials who took an oath to uphold the Constitution, have such incredible disdain for the nation, her history, her values, her legacy.

Just look at when the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling by the Supreme Court ruling received reactions from members of Congress unthinkable a decade ago. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law professor, called the court illegitimate, Rep. Maxine Waters, a member of Congress since 1991, said “to h-ll with the Supreme Court,” and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a graduate of Thomas Jefferson’s own University of Virginia law program, declared the Supreme Court a “weapon.”

This is the language of political insanity. So full of anger and contempt toward America and her institutions for daring to defy their own political aspirations, the most vocal Democrats propose to practically abolish America altogether. Pack the Supreme Court. End the Electoral College.

Even the executive branch charged with upholding the law is in complete defiance. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said as much. So did the Department of Justice, and that is the epitome of irony. When the Pentagon (the one with all the guns and the tanks) promises to disobey SCOTUS and the concept of the rule of law, then we are not one nation, indivisible, and certainly not under God.

We are a house divided. Even if we could unite around the great jubilee of 2026, the events would be a monster, the bastard child of political wokeness and white liberal guilt – a shapeless, unbeautiful eyesore full of shame and self-loathing. 

A concert on the Mall? What music? Not American greats like George Gershwin or Aaron Copeland, because someone would protest because they are white men. A rock star like Pink? She wants half of America to “never f-cking listen to my music again” because of Dobbs. I guess we can always count on Bruce Springsteen to sing some “I hate America” themed songs, but not for Republicans, as he told then-Gov. Chris Christie. 

What Kind of Monument Could We Agree On?

Imagine the 2026 committee proposing a new monument on the National Mall. It’s laughable.  A monument to whom? About what? Not the Founding Fathers. Some of them had slaves. Not the Constitution, it was written by some people who had slaves.

Not freeing the slaves, because even Abraham Lincoln didn’t do enough to end slavery, prompting a California school to rename a high school. Nothing from America’s past quite lives up to the impeccable standards the modern leftist holds deeply in his (her, zir, they, tippy tum tum) heart, and so therefore nothing is to be celebrated. Sackcloth and ashes usque ad mortem. 

I can see the monument born from the brain trust of the 250th-anniversary planning committee, the “Columbus Genocide Indigenous People and Slave Memorial for Harvey Milk and Korematsu and Climate Awareness.” It would be a glass cube, but inevitably someone at The Atlantic would pan its right angles as symbols of the western patriarchy. 

No proper 250th monument could ever be built. Besides, there aren’t enough foreign-born, Marxist-trained, gender-fluid, non-white sculptors for the selection committee’s contest.  

As a side note, the beloved World War II Memorial on the National Mall, which receives millions of visitors a year and over 200,000 World War II veterans on Honor Flights, was universally panned during its construction. The Boston Herald called it “vainglorious, demanding of attention and full of trite imagery.” The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t hold back, writing “its pompous style was favored by Hitler and Mussolini.”

It’s also worth noting it took years to approve and construct. We’ve got four before the 250th, and there’s nothing in the works.

 What Do You Celebrate about America?

Yet it’s not too late to give America the proper celebration. Here’s a first step: the 2024 presidential election. We must have a debate question: If you win in November, the nation’s 250th birthday will fall during your presidency. What do you celebrate about America? What virtues or spirit of America would you put forward for national recognition?

I’d be curious how every candidate would answer it. Word vomit from Democrats, I imagine, to hide the fear of appearing patriotic or out of concern that celebrating America is tantamount to embracing her inevitable flaws. 

Conflict has always been a part of America, as it is a part of any family. Sometimes I think we are headed for a national divorce, a breaking point, past the point of no return. A rallying cry around the 250th could unite us while also identifying those unworthy of elected office, unworthy of America’s promise, and undeserving of a taxpayer salary.

A national project about America will bring out what is good about America: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We need a massive, four-year operation, bringing some national focus, some wholesomeness, and some patriotism back to our nation.  

We have four years. Let’s start planning today.  

Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF.

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases