Introducing Reason's America 250 Issue |
America 250
Introducing Reason's America 250 Issue
America was a bicentennial basketcase. For the sestercentennial, we're in shambles. But there are still many reasons to celebrate.
Katherine Mangu-Ward | From the July 2026 issue
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(Photo: Queen Elizabeth II visits Boston for the Bicentennial on July 11, 1976; David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe/Getty)
In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here.
Joanna AndreassonIn July 1976, Queen Elizabeth II stood at the Old State House, the building where the Declaration of Independence was first read to the people of Boston. Two hundred years after the colonists told her great-great-great-great-grandfather to bugger off, the British monarch was greeted with a 21-gun salute, a luncheon at City Hall, and cheering crowds. She had a good line for the occasion: If Paul Revere and Samuel Adams could have known a British monarch would someday stand beneath that balcony, "they would have been extremely surprised." But, she added, perhaps they would also have been pleased to know the two countries had come together again "as free peoples and friends."
The Bicentennial has a rosy glow in the national memory: red, white, and blue bunting, tall ships, commemorative quarters, little boys in tricorn hats, and lots of patriotic pageantry. But 1976 was not a moment of serene national self-confidence. America was a........