89,898 days have passed since a Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, and the United States of America was founded.
At that time, there were 3 million people in America — mainly English — but also sizeable populations of Scots, Germans, Irish and Dutch— who arrived uninvited by the Indigenous Nations already present in this great land. Twenty per cent of the population was black and enslaved. More than 5,000 free blacks and slaves would take up arms against the King and fight for the United States. Today, the United States is a continental nation made up of 330 million people who represent all of the Earth’s people. It is the only country where every language is spoken routinely, every day.
There have been 545 million of us over the duration of the American story. Four hundred and seventy-two million of those people were born on American soil. Seventy-three million took their first breath of air in a foreign land. An overwhelming percentage of Americans are descendants of those 73 million immigrants who helped forge the story of America. More immigrants will arrive in America today, and they too will add to the great unfolding story about the most important ongoing experiment in the history of human civilization.
The American Republic is the oldest and mightiest in world history. The endurance of government “of the people, by the people, for the people” has not come cheaply. More than 1.2 million Americans have laid down their lives so that we might live in freedom. This is our shared inheritance. We are trustees of freedom for our children and grandchildren as recipients of a gift that is beyond our ability to repay. That gift of that freedom imposes a profound obligation and responsibility on each American who stands equally under the law as a citizen in a place where none of us will ever bow to an emperor or king. Here we are citizens. None is above or below another on the basis of their station of birth. At long last, the gap between the high ideals of the nation have been ratified into law if not yet into every heart.
The American story is a human story. It is filled with triumph and suffering. Cowardice and courage stand next to one another in its telling, as do love and hate and justice and injustice. Great achievements co-exist with oppression and subjugation. There have been long and desperate hours in the American story, and uncertainty around the breaking of the next day. Yet, our flag is still here, and it belongs to all of us now.
The 50-star flag that will fly across a continent in four years as America celebrates its 250th birthday represents a free people of a vast and pluralistic federal republic. It is the most complex and modern society in human history.
America is an exceptional nation. Yet, the term “American exceptionalism” has lost its meaning in a haze of jingoism and performative, shallow patriotism where chants of “USA, USA, USA!” ring hollow from the lips of people who cheer against the happiness of their fellow citizens. We are not great because of the achievements of our ancestors. Nor are we guilty of their mistakes, failings and crimes. What we are is duty bound to make tomorrow a little better than today, and add new chapters to an expanding and glorious story about human dignity.