What if we had a birthday party for the USA — and nobody came?

America has always been more of an idea than a place.

There was certainly a country called the United States of America, but that was more of a government entity. When I was growing up, many of us were relatively naive about the imperfections of that government.

I think now that it was mostly because we were so blinded by our devotion to the core mythology of America to see the grasping and evil politicians behind the machinery of government.

We excused the reality of what our politicians often did because we were in love with the idea of America as a place of freedom and justice and decency.

When the country celebrated its 200th anniversary of independence in 1976, we were still in love with the shared idea of America. Even though it came just after the disasters of Watergate and Vietnam and oil embargoes, most people still believed in America as an idea.

In a month, the United States will celebrate its 250th anniversary, but things feel very different.

As we approach July 4, 2026, I no longer sense the shared belief in an ideal that we once took for granted. And I fear that the ideas which once burned like a holy fire now resemble dying embers that threaten to go out completely.

Is the idea of America — the good parts, the parts worth celebrating — slowly dying?

The question isn’t whether America has flaws. It always did.

The America of 1976 wasn’t some perfect paradise that later collapsed. The scandals and corruption and injustices that existed then were real. The politicians weren’t saints. The institutions weren’t pure. The mythology was never entirely true.

What was different was that most people still believed there was something beneath all of that worth preserving.

They believed the country was more than its government.

They believed America represented an aspiration toward freedom, self-government and human dignity. They believed the ideals were bigger than the politicians who betrayed them more often than they wanted to admit.

That shared belief made it possible for millions of people with different opinions and different interests to feel that they were participating in the same national project.

Today, that’s no longer true.

The political left often speaks about America as though it were fundamentally defined by oppression and injustice. The political right increasingly speaks about America as though its defects can be cured only through destroying its political enemies at any cost.

Both sides seem to spend more time describing what they hate than what they love. The result is that fewer people seem capable of articulating a positive vision of what America actually is.

Not the government.

Not a political party.

Not a president.

America.

The idea itself.

That’s what troubles me as we approach this anniversary.

A healthy nation can survive corruption.

A healthy nation can survive economic hardship.

A healthy nation can survive foolish leaders.

What it cannot survive indefinitely is the loss of confidence in its own reason for existing.

Every society depends on a shared story.

Every civilization depends on a set of ideas that persuade people they belong together and are building something worth preserving.

When those ideas die, the institutions usually survive for a while. The buildings remain. The flags still wave. Elections still happen. The machinery continues operating.

But something essential has already begun to disappear.

A nation ultimately exists because enough people believe it should exist and that it stands for something they believe in. That is why the approaching 250th anniversary feels strangely sad to me.

The anniversary itself isn’t that important.

What matters is the absence of excitement surrounding it. The silence. The indifference. The sense that many Americans no longer see the country as a beautiful idea worth celebrating.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe the old fire still burns beneath the surface and simply expresses itself differently now. I’m very skeptical, but I hope that’s still true.

Because a civilization that loses faith in itself rarely discovers a better future.

More often, it slowly falls apart — and historians are left to notice that the ideas the nation took for granted were holding it together all along.