“I hear America singing,” Walt Whitman declares — each American “singing what belongs to him or her and to none else.” The new issue of National Review celebrates the 250th birthday of our nation. Have we lived up to the Founders’ vision?
Or, to adapt the catchphrase of the late Ed Koch, How’re we doin’?
Our special section on America at 250 kicks off with Gordon S. Wood: “In the Declaration of Independence, . . . the Founders put down five significant words that came to define America’s culture — ‘all men are created equal.’ No phrase could have been more radical, more momentous.”
Robert P. George, observing that our “bonds are weakening,” calls for a revival of Burke’s “little platoons,” the “building blocks of virtue, from families to voluntary associations, that work together to form an informed and virtuous citizenry.”
Yuval Levin argues that Americans underrate our achievement as a durable republic. “We still share the apprehension of the Founders that our politics hangs on a knife’s edge. . . . This political hypochondria contributes to the perverse apocalypticism of our time.”
Richard Brookhiser writes of what he’s learned from the Founders. One potent lesson comes from Jefferson, “who believed in both rights and the people. Among those rights was self-rule. And the people, Jefferson believed, mostly exercised it wisely. . . . If either of his convictions is wrong, then America is wrong.”
Mary Katharine Ham writes about a troubling decline in the reading of entire books. “The Founders knew that microdosing literature and philosophy wasn’t a recipe for keeping a republic. When you put the power to govern in the hands of the citizenry, you want the citizenry informed.”
Charles C. W. Cooke considers what it means to be an American in light of immigration. If America is “a creedal nation, . . . then we must emphatically insist that all newcomers be well versed in that creed. The alternative to this . . . is civilizational nihilism.”
Daniel J. Hannan offers some tough love from across the pond. “Brits feel that we have a special stake in the future of the U.S., and that we are commensurately entitled to opinions about its politics. Of course, lots of countries recognize that America carries mankind’s loftier ambitions. . . . But Anglosphere nations feel it more strongly.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes of the American principle of religious liberty. “Christianity didn’t merely accompany the American experiment. It formed it. It constrained power in ways no other civilizational inheritance had managed before. And it continues, even now, to shape our arguments about liberty, justice, and authority.”
Meir Y. Soloveichik considers the ramifications of George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I.: “Mere toleration was insufficient. In Europe, Washington was implying to American Jewry, you were tolerated, but the watchword of America is not religious toleration. We are going much further than that; we are embracing equality.”
Bringing us home is Allen C. Guelzo, who celebrates America by celebrating the quintessential American game. “Americans are what Frederick Douglass praised as ‘self-made men,’ and baseball has been an open door for self-making.”
And there’s more:
- In NR’s popular series Our Spacious Skies, Caroline Downey attends the Army–Navy game at West Point, which has special meaning for her family and for America at 250
- Our stellar Books, Arts & Manners section carries the American torch forward, in reviews by Matthew J. Franck, Amity Shlaes, Ross Douthat, and more
- If you’re looking for laughs (okay, maybe the humor is a little dark), Rob Long and James Lileks bring it
- In “A Love Letter to Shoeboxes,” Christian Schneider seems to see what’s hidden in the back of our closets
The March 2026 issue is great reading. If you don’t already subscribe, right now we have great offers on digital access. Prefer just print? Try this. And the best of both worlds, a print-and-digital bundle, is just $65.