America Will Turn 250 in July as a Deeply Divided Country, But Our Spirit Remains Unbroken
President Donald Trump recently suggested canceling a planned concert for America’s 250th birthday after a slew of aging liberal performers backed out.
It’s really, really hard to blame him.
Nothing says national unity like a bunch of wealthy, has-been celebrities refusing to show up for the country’s big bash because a president they don’t like is involved.
Trump wrote Saturday on his Truth Social account:
“We should have a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250, instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain. Cancel it…”
President Trump floats scrapping America’s 250th anniversary concert for a massive MAGA rally after multiple artists pull out of the Great American State Fair lineup. Freedom 250 organizers later confirmed the president will personally kick off the celebration with an opening… pic.twitter.com/omudkAINvl
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 31, 2026
To be fair, we’ve seen a lot of MAGA rallies over the past decade, and Trump’s enthusiasm is something I wish there was more of ahead of such an important date.
But a huge party for America that was embraced by most people would be preferable to what would amount to just a politician’s rally, no matter how much conservatives might support the politician in question.
Still, any gripe about a MAGA rally in lieu of the concert — and the melodrama behind the whole event — is really beside the point.
America turns 250 next month, and for the first time ahead of a such major milestone, it feels like we’re not all celebrating the same country.
When we turned 50 in 1826, Americans celebrated a young nation that was growing fast and looking ahead — after whipping the British twice.
When America turned 100 in 1876, the country was still recovering from the Civil War, yet the Centennial was celebrated amid westward expansion.
Even the Bicentennial in 1976 brought Americans together after Vietnam and Watergate had divided the country and birthed counterculture movements that saw veterans spat on.
Back even then, most people arguably believed they were part of the same America, or at least they strived to be.
Today, that’s harder to say because millions of Americans don’t agree on basic questions and answers, or the same objective reality anymore.
What does it mean to be American? Should we be proud of our history?
With a huge swath of Americans no longer knowing which bathroom to use, we have some big issues, and a concert absent of Martina McBride and Brett Michaels is the least of them.
As a country, we’ve in many ways become a collection of divided people who either live in or near cities that protect enclaves of immigrants who refuse to assimilate while they rob us blind through fraud.
If you oppose the fraud or the people committing it, the people of Minneapolis or another city might throw themselves in front of an ICE vehicle to prove their opposition to you and their loyalty to their cause.
Obviously, America did not lose itself overnight. Jimi Hendrix played an unforgettable rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock.
The aforementioned hippies and counterculture radicals of the 1960s — many who saw that rendition live — became teachers, journalists, and politicians after their revolution failed to install communism.
Maybe their revolution never failed, and now we’re seeing it finally succeed for them. Hopefully not, but time will tell.
In any event, a country cannot survive if it has no idea what it is, where it came from, or who it belongs to, and the radicals have always known that.
For decades, leftists with any influence at all have worked overtime to convince us that our history is shameful, our borders are unenforceable, our culture doesn’t or should not exist, and that our traditions deserve contempt and death.
In reality, very few people will ultimately remember who performed at any concert celebrating America’s birthday.
Few people will remember who dropped out, either.
The good news is that millions of Americans haven’t given up. They still fly the flag and stand for the anthem, and teach their kids to love this country, even when the culture they live in tells them it is irredeemable.
They’re busy raising families, running businesses, coaching baseball teams, attending church, working and paying taxes, and trying to leave something better behind for their children than what they inherited.
They’re doing the same things ordinary Americans have been doing for generations, all while facing pushback at every turn and being smeared on social media.
Many of America’s best are Western Journal readers, and I have known that since I wrote my first post here a decade ago.
That’s why I’m more hopeful than ever as this country approaches its 250th birthday.
For all of our faults and divisions, for all we could be pessimistic about on this upcoming and very special Independence Day, America still has its heart, and I have no doubt it still will for its 300th trip around the sun.
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