There are moments when a newspaper should do more than report what is happening in a community. It should also create space for that community to pause, reflect and recognize something larger than the news of the week.
America’s 250th anniversary is one of those moments.
That is why we created America 250, a commemorative issue marking the semiquincentennial of our nation’s founding.
I’ll admit something candidly. We didn’t arrive at this idea without hesitation.
In a time when the country feels deeply divided, even something as simple as celebrating America can be misunderstood. It can be seen as political. It can be misinterpreted as taking a side.
That’s not what this is.
This is about something older, and I would argue more enduring, than any political moment we’re living through.
It is about the idea of America.
Two hundred and fifty years is a milestone worth recognizing. We felt it was important that our newspapers create a space to reflect on that milestone; to celebrate not just our country, but the communities that give it life.
America has never been a simple story.
From the very beginning, we were divided. Not all Americans were afforded the blessings of liberty. Those divisions were not only between those who were free and those who were enslaved, though that contradiction remains central to any honest telling of our history.
The country was also divided between patriots and loyalists, between those who believed independence was necessary and those who remained loyal to the Crown. Neighbors questioned neighbors and families were split. There was fear, suspicion and uncertainty over who could be trusted and where people’s loyalties truly lay. While we call it the Revolutionary War, it was also very much a civil war.
In other words, political division is not new to America. The stakes were different, and in many ways far more immediate, but the question of whether Americans could live together despite deep disagreement has been with us from the start.
Even at the founding, the contradictions were clear.
Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a passage condemning the slave trade, calling it a “cruel war against human nature itself.” That language was removed to secure unity among the colonies, particularly at the insistence of South Carolina and Georgia.
That omission matters. It reminds us that the country was founded by brilliant but flawed people making difficult compromises.
Slavery was not invented by America. It existed for millennia before the United States was born, across continents, empires, cultures and civilizations. The founders inherited that evil and, in many cases, participated in it. What was new and ultimately revolutionary were the principles they placed at the center of the American experiment: that rights come not from kings or governments, but are inherent to all people.
Those principles were not fully honored at the founding. But they created the moral foundation on which slavery could eventually be challenged, condemned and abolished. The same words that exposed the founders’ hypocrisy also gave later generations the language to demand that America live up to its own promise.
Nearly a century after our founding, the failure to resolve those contradictions tore us apart during the Civil War, with brother against brother and North against South. And yet, in the generations that followed, Americans whose ancestors had once fought each other stood shoulder to shoulder in World War I and World War II.
Our founding documents were also cited by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who called the Declaration a “promissory note” to which every American was entitled.
In that sense, America has always been defined by aspiration.
It is not a country built on a single ethnicity, language or lineage. Unlike much of the world, to be American is not to belong to a single tribe. To be American is to engage in a shared idea and an ongoing debate about what freedom, equality and justice truly mean.
That debate has never ended. It shouldn’t.
But it also shouldn’t prevent us from recognizing what is remarkable about this country.
French observer Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting in the 19th century, was struck by something unique: Americans didn’t wait for distant authorities to solve their problems. They formed associations. They built institutions. They relied on one another.
That spirit is still alive today, especially in the communities we serve.
That spirit lives in local self-government. It lives in town boards and school boards, where neighbors make decisions about local priorities. These offices may not attract the attention of Washington or Albany, but they shape daily life in ways that are often more immediate and more personal.
Not every problem needs to be solved from the top down. In fact, America has often been at its best when communities have trusted themselves to do more, when citizens have shown up, served, debated, volunteered and taken ownership of the places they call home.
You also see the American spirit in volunteer fire departments, local nonprofits, youth sports leagues, houses of worship, civic organizations, local businesses and the countless ways neighbors come together to support one another.
That is the America we see every week in the communities we cover. And that is what this special section is meant to celebrate.
Celebrating America is not a declaration that our country is perfect. It is not a demand that we all see the world the same way. It is not a political statement.
It is an invitation to pause, to reflect and to recognize that there is still something deeply meaningful in the American experiment.
There is something especially fitting, and frankly beautiful, about the fact that the Project Editor for this commemorative issue celebrating America is Vim Wilkinson, an immigrant from Malaysia. What better testament is there to the American idea than that? This country has always been strengthened by people who came here from elsewhere, chose to build their lives here, and then helped shape the civic and cultural life of their communities. That an immigrant would help guide a special publication honoring America’s 250th anniversary is not a contradiction. It is the point. It is part of what makes this country remarkable.
And that is the America we are proud to celebrate here.
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