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America at 250: Battling over national identity

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by Will Marshall, opinion contributor - 05/08/26 8:30 AM ET

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by Will Marshall, opinion contributor - 05/08/26 8:30 AM ET

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Crews fix the banners in front of the Department of Agriculture on Friday, March 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

President Trump promises “monumental” and “spectacular” celebrations this year to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence. For example, on June 14 — his 80th birthday — the White House will host an Ultimate Fighting Championship match.

For this most combative of presidents, nothing honors America like young men punching and kicking the heck out of each other in the Rose Garden.

Despite Trump’s bombastic notions of American greatness — or perhaps because of them — the nation’s deep political fractures cast a pall on its 250th birthday party. Reaching this milestone should be an occasion for reaffirming the nation’s founding precepts and our never-ending struggle to live up to them. Instead, we’re relitigating the most basic question of national identity: What does it mean to be an American?

During the 1976 bicentennial celebration, there wasn’t much controversy about the answer. Both Democrats and Republicans laid claim to the ideals that animated the American Revolution: individual freedom, equality and popular self-rule. Where they differed was in how they interpreted and applied these overarching principles.

But Trump seems to regard them as pious claptrap, a fig leaf for the one thing he does respect: a ruthless will to power. Vice President JD Vance likewise rejects the “creedal” understanding of American identity, which he sees as anchored more firmly in ethnicity, religion and attachment to place than in arid abstractions about liberty and democracy.

This MAGA preference for blood-and-soil nationalism is a radical departure from American exceptionalism as Republicans defined it in President Ronald Reagan’s day and as most Americans continue to define it.

According to a poll conducted late last year, 78 percent agree that “America is best understood as a nation built around the idea that all people, regardless of the circumstances of their birth or station in life, have equal rights and freedoms.” Only 19 percent say that “America is best understood as a nation comprised of people with a shared heritage and homeland.”

Yet the long-term trends don’t look good. Alongside today’s cultural civil war between red and blue America is a chasm that has opened between young and old. A raft of surveys shows that Millennials and Gen Zers have a diminished sense of national pride compared to their parents and grandparents.

An illuminating new Ipsos poll, for example, found that only 39 percent of Millennials and Gen Zers agree that being an American “is an important part of how I think about myself,” compared to 65 percent of baby boomers. In a 2023 Gallup poll, only 18 percent of Americans aged 18-34 said they were “extremely proud to be American,” compared to 50 percent of adults over 55.

Young iconoclasts are knocking the halos off the nation’s founders. Asked by Democracy Fund if the founders would be better described as villains or heroes, 40 percent of Gen Zers picked “villains” versus 10 percent of boomers. They also evince deteriorating faith in democracy. In a YouGov poll, nearly one-third of young voters agreed that “Democracy is no longer a viable system and Americans should explore alternative forms of government.” Only 5 percent of those over 65 agreed.

The explanation for this generation gap is doubtless multifaceted, but one factor that stands out is the slanted teaching of U.S. history in many colleges. My Progressive Policy Institute colleagues Rick Kahlenberg and Lief Lin examined 100 articles published over three years in American Quarterly, the flagship journal of the American Studies Association. What they found was an unrelentingly negative portrait of America. U.S. history is presented mainly as a cavalcade of crimes, injustices and hypocrisy. Our nation’s grand achievements get only grudging mention.

The Ipsos survey also suggests that we’ve entered a post-Tocquevillian America. The “spirit of association” and civic volunteerism that so impressed French writer Alexis de Tocqueville during his travels to Jacksonian America seem to have withered. Now just 24 percent of Americans feel a strong sense of belonging in their community.

Yet the survey also highlights a deep yearning for leaders committed to greater cooperation and unity and for an honest reckoning with U.S. history, good and bad.

There