Special Issue: America at 250
The debate over our national experiment is as old as the country, and as new as this issue of The Nation.
Illustration by Victor Juhasz.
“We ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
—BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Bruce Springsteen, who for well over half a century has chronicled the unsteady progress of the American experiment, refers to our history as “an ongoing blessed, sacred argument about what course the country should take.” This argument is not merely a reflection on the positioning of Democrats and Republicans: It’s a more fundamental disputation about what this republic stands for. And it informs the essays that make up our special issue marking the 250th anniversary of an American journey that The Nation has chronicled since 1865.
From the very founding of the United States in the sweltering Philadelphia summer of 1776, the argument has raged between those who embrace Thomas Paine’s expansive promise that “we have it in our power to begin the world over again” and those who have sought to make this country a soft reflection of the monarchy—and the oligarchy—against which its revolutionary combatants revolted.
It is the cruel fate of our republic, in this 250th-anniversary year of its Declaration of Independence, that the White House is occupied by a modern-day King George III, Donald Trump, who makes no secret of his lust for the gilded trappings of royalty and monarchical abuses of power. Springsteen speaks for so many of us when he says, “The America that I love, the America that I’ve written about for 50 years, that’s been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration.”
With no sense of irony, Trump and his cabal have endeavored to obscure the actual history of the United States: whitewashing our heritage to deny not just the soul-crushing wrongs of an enslaving, segregating, discriminating, and oligarchical past, but also to deny the inspired achievements of generation upon generation of radicals who strove to make real the promise that we all are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This issue of The Nation rejects the false narratives of reactionary presidents, senators, and justices. These essays on the past, present, and future of our country examine the awful choices made by compromised and self-serving leaders. Yet they also lift up the redemptive civil-rights, economic-justice, environmental, and peace movements that have countered the royalists and the racists with a politics that pursues a more perfect union. In the spirit of these struggles, we join the sacred argument, seeking nothing less than to elevate the call to action, carried forward from Paine to Frederick Douglass, from Sojourner Truth to Fannie Lou Hamer, and from Woody Guthrie to Bruce Springsteen when he asks “all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
Support The Nation’s June Fundraising Campaign
With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.
As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.
We can play this critical role because of support from readers like you. This June, we’re raising $20,000 to power The Nation’s independent journalism in the run-up to November’s immensely consequential elections.
It’s in our power to build a more just society, and your support at this critical moment brings us closer to that bold vision. I hope you’ll donate today.
Onward,
Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
