The Birthday That Should Have United America

I am publishing a four-part series to highlight our 250th anniversary, Each article stands alone, but together they will tell a larger story about our American experiment and reinforce the themes of American democracy, especially in the midst of the damage to our country as described in The Trump Files.

Here is the list of four blog posts whiich will be published here over the next four days. This the 2nd post in the series.

1. Wolf Blitzer’s Powerful Reminder of American Citizenship
2. The Birthday That Should Have United America
3. What a person from the 2060s would say about the 250th Anniversary of our country
4. Rooted in Silence: My Family’s Legacy of Immigration, Adoption and Identity

Preface

I reflect on the significance of America’s 250th birthday, emphasizing that it should be a celebration of constitutional democracy. However, they argue that political figures, particularly Donald Trump, have distorted this milestone by prioritizing personal power over democratic principles. The narrative highlights historical grievances outlined in the Declaration of Independence, drawing parallels to current political practices that undermine constitutional restraints. Ultimately, the author urges a return to foundational values during this anniversary, proposing that true patriotism lies in upholding democracy over individual leaders, ensuring freedom for future generations.

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Birthdays are supposed to bring families together.

When I was younger, that had been true in my family and others for as long as I can remember. We gather around a table in our house on Jennings Pond Road, tell old stories, laugh about the past, and, if we’re fortunate, remember the people who are no longer there to celebrate with us. A birthday is more than marking another year. It is a chance to remember who we are and what binds us together. When I was young, I also joined with others to celebrate July 4th, either by marching in a parade, watching the parade in my home town (Natick, MA), or participating in many events in Honnewell Forest.

I had hoped America’s 250th birthday would feel something like that. Instead, it feels different.

Two hundred and fifty years is an extraordinary milestone. Very few nations have sustained a constitutional democracy for a quarter of a millennium. We have endured civil war, economic depression, world wars, struggles over civil rights, and periods of profound political division. Through each crisis, Americans have argued passionately, sometimes bitterly, but the Constitution has remained our common ground.
This Fourth of July should have been a moment to celebrate that remarkable achievement.

They Ruined America’s 250th Birthday

Historian Anne Applebaum¹ recently wrote on her Substack site that Donald Trump and JD Vance have, in effect, ruined America’s 250th birthday by turning what should have been a celebration of constitutional democracy into a celebration of political power. Whether one agrees with every aspect of her argument or not, I think she has identified something deeply troubling. Rather than inviting Americans to celebrate the institutions that have sustained the republic, our political conversation has too often become centered on personalities, grievances, and displays of executive power.

As someone who spent much of his professional life teaching, I find that deeply saddening.

When colleagues taught the American Revolution, they never described it simply as a war against Britain. It was a revolution against the concentration of power. The colonists rejected the idea that one person could stand above the law. They pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” not to replace one king with another, but to establish a government in which power would always be limited by law.

George III represented concentrated authority.

The Constitution represented limited authority.

That distinction has always been the genius of the American experiment.

For nearly two and a half centuries, Americans have struggled—often imperfectly—to preserve it.

Donald Trump has repeatedly challenged those constitutional boundaries. He has questioned election results, attacked judges who ruled against him, sought to undermine independent institutions, and attempted to redefine birthright citizenship through executive order. These actions are not isolated controversies. They reflect a broader understanding of presidential power that places personal authority above constitutional restraint.

JD Vance has often provided the intellectual defense for that understanding. Where Trump frequently acts on instinct, Vance has argued that constitutional limits and long-standing democratic norms should not prevent a determined president from carrying out his agenda. Together they have encouraged Americans to see constitutional constraints less as safeguards of liberty than as obstacles to political victory.

That is why this Fourth of July feels unlike any I can remember.

The issue before us is not ultimately Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal, or even Trump versus his critics.

The deeper question is whether our first loyalty belongs to personalities or to principles.

Grievences

For years, I believed the Declaration of Independence not simply as our nation’s birth certificate but as one of history’s most remarkable indictments of the abuse of political power. Jefferson’s list of grievances against King George III was more than a complaint against one monarch. It became a warning to every future generation about what happens when leaders begin placing themselves above the people they govern.

Reading those grievances today is an unsettling experience. I don’t believe that Trump has read the Declaration of Independence  When he was interviewed by journalist, Terry Moran, and asked about the Declaration of Independence displayed on the Oval Office wall, Donald Trump described the document as a “declaration of unity, love, and respect”. He had no idea what it was about. He never read it.

I am not suggesting that America in 2026 is colonial America in 1776. History never repeats itself so neatly. But the Declaration offers enduring principles against which every generation can measure its leaders. However, as an aside, the Boston Globe has published a fictional version of what the Boston Globe might have published on July 4, 1776.

The Declaration includes a long list of grievances outlined by Jefferson as fact-based complaints. I’ve selected a few grievances that Jefferson wrote in the Declaration and I’ve juxtaposed them with grievances many Americans have voiced against Trump and his allies. Here are a few selected from the Declaration.

• Jefferson wrote that the king had “refused his Assent to Laws.” We have witnessed repeated efforts to govern by executive decree when constitutional limits proved inconvenient.
• He accused the king of “obstructing the Administration of Justice.” We have watched judges attacked personally whenever their decisions conflicted with presidential wishes.
• He condemned the king for making judges “dependent on his Will alone.” We have seen increasing demands that public officials, attorneys, military officers, and civil servants demonstrate personal loyalty before constitutional duty.
• Jefferson protested the maintenance of “Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” Today we have witnessed unprecedented  about using military power within the United States against fellow Americans and deploying federal force for domestic political purposes.
• The Declaration objected to a ruler who had “affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.” That warning reminds us why civilian government must always restrain the use of military authority. Trump has used the military as his own  inm
• Jefferson denounced a government that sought to “deprive us…of the benefits of Trial by Jury.” Today the rule of law itself has become a partisan battleground, with courts praised when they serve political objectives and condemned when they uphold constitutional limits.
• Perhaps most striking of all, Jefferson accused the king of attempting to establish “absolute Tyranny over these States.” The founders understood that tyranny rarely begins with crowns or armies. It begins when citizens gradually accept that one leader’s will should supersede constitutional restraints.

That is why the Supreme Court’s recent reaffirmation of birthright citizenship carried such symbolic importance. It reminded us that the Constitution—not the president—defines who belongs in America.

As I reread the Declaration this Independence Day, I find myself asking the same question I asked my students for so many years: What were the founders trying to protect us from?

Their answer was never simply King George III.

It was the concentration of unchecked power in any leader, at any time, under any political banner.

That lesson is 250 years old.

It may also be the most important lesson America needs to remember today.

That question became especially poignant only days before the nation’s birthday when the Supreme Court reaffirmed one of the central promises of the Fourteenth Amendment. By rejecting the effort to narrow birthright citizenship, the Court reminded us that presidents do not possess the authority to rewrite the Constitution by executive decree.

I found myself thinking less about the legal arguments than about what that decision represented. It was as though the Constitution itself interrupted the political noise to remind Americans why it exists.

Its purpose is not to make governing easier.

Its purpose is to prevent power from becoming absolute.

That reminder could not have come at a more appropriate time.

For months I have been writing about these themes in The Trump Files and in the Skyler Fusaro Letters. Both projects ask the same fundamental question: What happens when citizens begin to value the ambitions of leaders more than the institutions that protect their freedom? History offers sobering answers. Democracies rarely disappear in a single dramatic moment. They erode gradually, as constitutional limits come to be viewed as inconveniences instead of essential protections.

Yet history also offers reasons for hope.

The Constitution has survived previous assaults because enough Americans, regardless of party, eventually remembered that their highest loyalty belonged not to presidents but to the republic itself.

That may be the real lesson of America’s 250th birthday.

Fireworks will light the sky. Bands will play patriotic music. Families will gather in parks and backyards across the country. Those traditions matter, and I will celebrate them with gratitude. My wife and I will be at the Marietta square for a parade, and then fireworks in the envening.

But the greatest birthday gift we can offer the United States is something quieter and far more enduring.

It is a renewed commitment to the constitutional principles that have carried this nation through triumph and tragedy for 250 years.

If we can recover that commitment, perhaps future generations will look back on this anniversary not as the birthday that divided America, but as the moment Americans remembered that their democracy was always more important than any one leader.