Everything Up for Grabs

I fondly remember—through those mystic chords of memory—my undergraduate course on the Civil War and Reconstruction. Professor Mann commanded an unparalleled knowledge of American history, and he possessed the timing of a consummate performer.

General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox received a cursory overview; the real drama began immediately afterwards. The professor was visibly emotional as he detailed the aftermath of the South’s surrender.

A group of destitute Confederate soldiers, walking home through the Shenandoah Valley, hold a family at knifepoint in the middle of the night to steal shoes. Millions of formerly enslaved human beings, now emancipated, prepare to navigate a new life in a shattered republic. And, with Lincoln dead, his vision of a restored union faces an uncertain future with Congress.

“Everything,” Professor Mann said softly, “is up for grabs.”

And now, with a new cast of characters, the tides of human history swell again with violence and uncertainty.

The America of 2026—our semiquincentennial birthday—is up for grabs.

On the surface, the country’s troubles are simple politics. The conniving of ambitious men never changes, and headlines already speculate on the leading candidates in the 2028 presidential election. The familiar noise of midterm advertisements consumes our televisions once again, and pundits endlessly interpret the tea leaves of special elections hither and yon. A casual observer sees only the typical showbusiness for ugly people grind on another cycle.

But the tectonic plates upon which politics lie now shift, unleashing the tsunami of party realignment.

A Republican president supports gun control and strangling states’ rights without hesitation; Democratic leaders now dare to support the Second Amendment and eliminate tariffs. All the while, increasingly assertive voices wade against the waves, battling to channel their parties in different directions. Once-staunch Trump supporter—and once-proud agitator—Marjorie Taylor Greene now condemns Republicans for refusing to support Representative Thomas Massie against the president’s personal attacks; meanwhile, self-described socialist Zohran Mamdani bucks the New York establishment to decry free markets in favor of the “warmth of collectivism.”

Beyond politicians, voting coalitions themselves are splintering and coalescing into new blocs. The college-educated with higher incomes reliably broke towards the Grand Old Party in decades past; now voters with a four-year (or advanced) degree supported Kamala Harris in 2024 by a double-digit margin. This rise of highly educated, wealthy Democrats risks alienating the traditional Democrat blue-collar voter, with the affluent more likely to prioritize “moral-value-related issues (e.g., abortion, climate change, LGBT rights) over kitchen-table issues.” The Republican Party, for its part, now counts the white working class as a reliable base. But this source of strength is threatened by diminishing voting clout—by 2032, “non-college whites will probably comprise only about one third of the American electorate.”

So we witness public figures planting flags and claiming political territory, because people no longer look to traditional institutions or traditional party platforms for their cues. Thus emerges the modern American seduction to partisanship and strongmen—an amygdala-driven fear response to bring order to the chaos. Because we are frightened, the stakes appear life-or-death. Our side must win, or all is lost. Elections lose legitimacy because we believe that the inhuman beasts aligned against us are cheating and destroying our very way of life.

In such a world, the monsters who scream the loudest garner the most attention and create the narrative. In such a world, the truth itself is up for grabs.

To save our country, we must cling to the rock upon which the ferocious waves beat: the rock of principle. As Calvin Coolidge so powerfully declared on the occasion of our country’s sesquicentennial:

“If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.”

Ruling oneself with principle is to hold a compass in a tempest. As elected officials and media personalities prostrate themselves before the outrage industrial complex and desperately vie for the news cycle, grounded citizens can remain anchored in the storm. Whichever party controls the government, we must remember that every person—by virtue of being a human—possesses the natural right to their life, to their liberty, and to their pursuit of happiness.

And we need to hold dear to these principles of freedom: Americans’ belief in classical liberalism and the ideals of the Enlightenment—the foundations of our republic—are fading. The separation of powers and our Constitutional order are inconveniences when fear prevails; ensuring that our tribe gains and holds power at all costs becomes the only objective for a society that feels adrift. Over the long term, America can only be strong, politically and morally, when we adhere to our founding principles. We must not sacrifice our ideals in exchange for the authoritarian promise to return to a glorious, picturesque past that never existed. Ceding more power to an unrestrained Executive branch that circumvents the rule of law, and Congress, through hundreds of “Executive Orders” is not progress. It is the basest and most ancient form of despotism.

Everything is up for grabs—the meaning of “Republican,” “Democrat,” “conservative,” “liberal,” “American,” and the meaning of the United States’ 250^th birthday itself. Do we celebrate our country’s unchecked military hegemony across the globe, our ability to bully and cow friends and foes alike, our large stockpile of nuclear weapons? This is a meaningless, tribalistic commemoration worthy of thoughtless Neanderthals.

America 250 should be celebrated for what it is: two hundred fifty years of aspiring to the unfathomably beautiful ideals in the Declaration of Independence. Two hundred fifty years of a nation that deliberately structured itself in congruence with human nature. Two hundred fifty years of answering one of the most meaningful questions that can ever be asked: how do a free people govern themselves? And, of course, we celebrate the bounty of creation that flowed from 1776—the timeless political discussion of The Federalist Papers, the entrepreneurs who dared to experiment and create, the men and women who fought against authoritarianism during World War II.

This is not an occasion marked with a pedestrian triumphal arch declaring “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

No, this is an occasion to ensure America’s founding ideals are not up for grabs. However tomorrow’s political coalitions vote and whatever tomorrow’s elected officials choose to shout, these are of only secular importance. America 250 is about celebrating the timeless truth of liberty. If we maintain our principles as our North Star, and honor our country’s birthday in the spirit of Mr. Coolidge, we can reclaim the meaning of America’s semiquincentennial.

“No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp.”

- President Calvin Coolidge | July 5, 1926