America at 250: Why I still believe

I arrived in Boulder, Colorado, as a student in the late 1960s. The Vietnam War was raging, and body bags were returning home. America was deeply unpopular in many parts of the world. 

It was one of the most turbulent decades in the nation’s history. A president had been assassinated. His brother, widely seen as his political heir, was also gunned down. The greatest American never to hold public office, Martin Luther King Jr., was murdered. What had begun as a decade of extraordinary promise seemed to be ending in division, violence, and disillusionment.

Yet those same years also witnessed some of America’s greatest moral and political advances. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act began correcting some of the nation’s deepest historic injustices. 

For immigrants from Asia, Africa, and other non-European parts of the world, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened doors that had long been closed, fundamentally reshaping the demographic future of the United States. I was among the beneficiaries of that quiet revolution.

Looking back more than five decades later, I realize that the contradictions I witnessed were not an aberration. They were, in many ways, quintessentially American.

From its founding, the United States has been an unfinished project — a nation constantly struggling to reconcile its lofty ideals with its imperfect reality. For much of its first century, it remained an enigma to the rest of the world. It was conducting an audacious experiment in representative democracy on a scale never before attempted.

The French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville captured that experiment memorably in “Democracy in America,” a work that was at once an expression of admiration for America’s democratic vitality and a cautionary account of its vulnerabilities. de Tocqueville celebrated America’s civic spirit and local institutions even as he warned of the dangers of excessive individualism and the tyranny of the majority. Nearly two centuries later, many of his observations remain remarkably relevant.

The nation’s first century also witnessed the devastating Civil War, the first truly industrial-scale war in history. It claimed as many as 750,000 lives and posed the greatest threat to the survival of the Union. 

Yet, despite the immense human and political cost, the United States emerged intact, slavery was abolished, and the federal union was preserved. It was America’s first great demonstration that profound national crises could ultimately produce renewal.

That pattern would repeat itself again and again.

The resilience of the American system is not accidental. The founders designed a republic based not on the assumption that leaders would always be wise, but that they would sometimes fail. 

Elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, federalism, and a vibrant civil society have repeatedly acted as guardrails when politics veered off course. Americans have always argued passionately — many times bitterly — about the country’s future. Yet that constant contest of ideas has also been one of the nation’s greatest strengths, allowing the country to adapt, reform, and reinvent itself.

My own years in America reinforced that lesson.

Within a few years of my arrival, President Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate, the first and only U.S. president to do so. The constitutional system worked. The Vietnam War finally came to an end, closing one of the darkest chapters in modern American history. At roughly the same time, Nixon’s opening to China reshaped global geopolitics and helped lay the foundation for China’s rise as an economic superpower.

The election of Ronald Reagan ushered in a renewed phase of Cold War confrontation. Yet within a decade, the Cold War ended peacefully. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed. A conflict that many believed would define generations concluded with far less bloodshed than anyone had imagined.

Over the past century, the United States evolved from an ambitious democratic experiment into the world’s preeminent economic, military, scientific, and technological power. It helped shape the outcome of two world wars, led the Western alliance during the Cold War, fostered an international economic order, and became the destination for millions seeking freedom, opportunity, and a better life, including for millions of Indians.

As America marks its 250th anniversary, many are understandably anxious about the country’s direction. They worry about the erosion of democratic norms, the rise of nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment encouraged by the current occupant of the White House, growing political polarization, and continued involvement in destructive conflicts in the Middle East.

These concerns are real. They deserve to be taken seriously.

Yet, having lived in this country for more than five and a half decades, I remain as optimistic about America’s future as I have ever been.

This nation’s story has never been a straight line. It has zigzagged through moments of triumph and tragedy, progress and regression, confidence and self-doubt. But over the long arc of its history, the pendulum has tended to swing toward greater liberty, broader inclusion, and wider opportunity.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. prophesied, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

One of America’s defining strengths has been its remarkable capacity for self-correction and moving toward justice.

It fought a Civil War to preserve the Union and abolish slavery. It dismantled legal segregation through the Civil Rights Movement. It emerged from Watergate with a stronger constitutional democracy. It has repeatedly expanded the circle of those who could fully participate in American life, even if every advance was contested and incomplete.

Each generation has inherited an imperfect republic and tried to leave it somewhat better. They might not have always succeeded.

When I first arrived in Boulder as a young student, few would have predicted the extraordinary America that would emerge over the following half a century. The country stumbled many times, but it kept moving forward.

I have little doubt that this generation will eventually do the same. America at 250 remains an unfinished experiment. It will continue to disappoint, inspire, frustrate, and astonish. But if its past is any guide, it will also continue its long, imperfect journey toward a more perfect Union.

That, more than anything else, is why I remain optimistic. (By arrangement with The American Bazaar.)

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