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America’s future at 250 remains wide open — as long as we don’t take our values for granted

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Partisan politics have gotten in the way of celebrating our country’s 250th birthday. 

The Democrats have opted out of the festivities because they insist everything we do should be about Donald Trump – and the president, let’s face it, doesn’t exactly disagree with that idea.

Many mourn the decline of comity and consensus, and look back to some golden age — say, the 1976 bicentennial — when all Americans held hands and celebrated the anniversary as one.

Put aside the fact that 1976 was part of an awful decade, replete with bombings, assassinations, and protests.

I believe our disagreements over the 250th birthday party prove that American politics still have a pulse. Our debates about the future may be distempered in their emotional tone and alarmist in their rhetoric, but they still matter — America’s future, now, as always, is wide open.

The most important question, which few have asked, is what exactly we should be celebrating.

It isn’t survival. Mere endurance is remarkable in frail individuals, but nations should stand for something more than just being there.

As it happens, the people who, 250 years ago, produced the document we are celebrating — the Declaration of Independence — left no doubt about the significance of what they had done.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” they began. 

There followed a series of extraordinary assertions. 

All men — today we would say, all persons — “are created equal.” All are endowed with “unalienable” rights. Among these rights are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Government exists not to wage great wars or extract wealth from the population but to “secure these rights.”

And when government fails to do this, “it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.”

That was the Founder’s Creed.

The United States fought a bloody conflict to tear itself apart from Great Britain in an attempt to realize this faith — that government can be........

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