America recently celebrated its 250th birthday. And what an extraordinary 250-year run it was, with America accomplishing more in that span than other countries have over the course of an entire millennium.
But as we enter our 251st year, there are emerging doubts regarding America’s future. With some today claiming that America’s best days are behind it, and that we are now a declining nation, whose time on top is ending. There are even those that relish the chance to see America diminished.
Though if our first 250 years taught us anything, it is that if Americans had listened to the doubters or the doomsayers then we never would have broken free from the British Empire in the first place, or tamed the vast wilderness or put a man on the moon.
Time and time again, America has defied the odds, and throughout history those that have underestimated or bet against the American people have done so at their peril.
Over the past century alone, America’s decline has been predicted many times before, only to be proven spectacularly wrong. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, they claimed America was on the verge of collapsing, only to see America emerge stronger and more prosperous than ever in the 1940s. In the 1950s, during the Cold War, they claimed America was losing technologically to the Soviets after the launch of Sputnik, only to see America race ahead in the 1960s and never look back. The turmoil and malaise of the 1970s was followed by the economic boom of the 1980s. And in the 1990s, the prognosticators said that Japan would soon eclipse America as the world’s largest economy, a prediction that by the decade’s end looked utterly foolish.
Now, they say that China will overtake us. Or that American manufacturing is dead. Or that America is losing its technological edge. Or that we are too divided as a nation. Or this, that, or another thing has America hurtling down a hopeless and unrecoverable path. Or that we are simply not as strong as our American ancestors.
Nonsense! As that quintessential American Benjamin Franklin might have said.
The very same American spirit and mindset that built our country remains with us today. It is not only part of our history but practically embedded in our DNA. That indomitable will, restlessness, grit, absolute belief, ingenuity, audacity and boundless optimism that led our forefathers to venture out into a wild, hostile and undeveloped continent and start a new nation from scratch, and that led successive Americans to grow it to become the greatest superpower on earth, is still alive and well.
And those saying that America is finished, do not understand America, or its people. America is never finished. That is what makes it so great. It is always and forever a work in progress. It is why Americans never settle and are never satisfied. It is why no other nation possesses such an uncanny capacity for self-renewal. And it is why Americans know that as great as our past has been, our future can be even greater still. In fact, we see it as our duty to make it so.
Thus, we do not view the past 250 years as America’s high-water mark, but instead as a challenge to be accepted. A peak to be eclipsed. A record to be broken.
Indeed, with all due respect to hot dogs and apple pie, there is simply nothing more truly American than that.
So then, like our great America forebearers, let us not fear the future ahead. But instead let us boldly build it again, as Americans always have. And once more prove all the doubters wrong, by bringing America to such ever greater heights that in 250 years from now, subsequent American generations will wonder how they will ever be able to top it.
While we all root that they will.
Cheers to the next 250 years.
America is just getting started.
Raleigh “Lee” Steinhauer of Winter Garden is the founder and president of The Steinhauer Group, a strategic government and legal affairs firm. He does legal work for the Apartment Association of Greater Orlando and the Greater Orlando Builders Association.