Our last pages / June 26, 2026
How did birthday events become so politically charged?
An American flag flies at a rally.
(Photography Dedan / Shutterstock) In 1973, three years before the United States celebrated its 200th anniversary, the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission (ARBC), an official government agency responsible for organizing the country’s anniversary events, was already making headlines for its openly pro-Nixon partisanship and openly corrupt self-dealing. William Randell, professor of literature, wrote about the scandals of The nationwarning that the bicentennial could be used for nefarious purposes: “The patriotic impulse, if we are not on guard, risks being exploited for partisan and commercial purposes. »
Shortly thereafter, the ARBC was dismantled and replaced with federal funding for local and state memorial projects. But just as in this year of the half-fiftieth anniversary, where semi-official ceremonies took place religious revivals on the National Mall and UFC fights on the White House lawn in 1976, the official bicentennial celebrations, crude and corporatized, were not the only sight to see in Washington.
A year after denouncing the ARBC’s chicanes, The nation introduced the People’s Bicentennial Commission (PBC), an initiative led by anti-war activist Jeremy Rifkin to highlight more relevant aspects of the revolutionary legacy. The PBC began in 1973 with a “Boston Oil Party” organized by Rifkin at the height of the oil supply crisis; Activists threw empty oil drums into Boston Harbor to protest the oil industry’s stranglehold on American life.
The PBC was able to “capitalize masterfully on the spiritual void at the heart of the bicentennial,” observed writer Robert Karen in The nation in 1974.”[I]He feeds on the chatter of the bicentenary. He sees the upcoming celebrations as the greatest opportunity to tear down the flag from the American left.”
The PBC muddled traditional celebrations and ridiculed the Nixon administration’s attempts to co-opt the national celebration for conservative purposes. But he also refused to ignore the radical legacy of the Revolution. “We weren’t happy with people on the left saying America was terrible,” Rifkin, who has spent decades since then as a globe-trotting clean energy consultant and activist, told me recently, “because there was another tradition from the beginning, and that was people like Sam Adams waging war against big business and geopolitical control. It’s an activist tradition that says this is a nation of the people, not a handful This is why we launched the People’s Bicentennial Commission.
Tackling inequality and plutocracy, Rifkin and his fellow activists organized readings of the Declaration of Independence intended, as Karen puts it, to draw “broad analogies between the tyranny of King George and that of King Richard and corporations.” Karen quoted Rifkin calling for an end to corporate sponsorship of bicentennial events: “Corporations are not fit to celebrate the bicentennial of a revolution. They are conservatives in every sense of the word. If they really want to celebrate the bicentennial, the best thing they can do is abolish themselves.”
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The nation took a similar stance when the bicentennial year finally arrived. In the first issue in 1976, an editorial called for popular resistance to corporatized commemoration. “The peddlers are making their plans,” the article warned. “It’s only a matter of time before their overpriced, non-nutritious red, white and blue cornflakes dominate the market. Before it is irrevocably polluted, the Bicentennial should be salvaged.” The magazine urged its readers to resist “ideological bombardments,” such as statements about “the sacred marriage of American democracy and American capitalism.”
Instead of frankly acknowledging the true radicalism of the American Revolution, much of the bicentennial rhetoric risked ignoring “the spirit of anticolonial rebellion,” the editorial continued. Worse still, “the entire 200 years of American history will be splattered with a thick layer of whitewash.”
The truth, however, was much more complicated:
The achievements of this nation have been great, but equally great have been the pains, sufferings and gross injustices that have followed its growth across the continent and the world at large since the signing of the Declaration against George III. The rights to vote and equal life under the law expanded far beyond the hopes – and desires – of at least many of the revolution’s founders. American capitalism produced an economic empire far more formidable than the anticolonial rebels could have imagined. But the consequences were devastating for those who were trampled and exploited by the American advance as well as for the environment in which they lived.
Fifty years later, some of these rights have been removed; the economic and environmental destination is more stunning every year. At home and abroad, the pain, suffering and injustice inflicted and ignored by a government seemingly only of, by and for the people is sometimes difficult to understand. A would-be tyrant who shames King George III and Nixon is using the 250th anniversary of the republic to reap millions in bribes and celebrate the worst aspects of American tradition.
It would be pretty easy for the rest of us to let the MAGA flag-bearers do the partying. But Trump’s hijacking of the 250th should not go unchallenged. Let us remember, as Jeremy Rifkin and the PBC reminded an earlier generation of naturally jaded Americans, that telling the truth about the country’s past and present is a kind of patriotism.
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Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Editor and Editor, The nation
