Happy 250th, America!

Our country belongs in the hands of builders

Tomorrow, America turns 250.

The temptation on a milestone like this is to look backward – to treat two and a half centuries as a monument, finished and behind glass. That has never been what this country is. The scaffolding has never come down.

Two hundred fifty years of America is one long build. Every generation inherited something unfinished, decided the next impossible thing was worth attempting, and left the country taller than they found it. Farms became factories. Factories became rockets. Fifty years after we last walked on the Moon, we went back. And the tools always end up in the same hands – the hands of people who want to build.

There will be a lot of flags flying tomorrow, and I’ll be flying mine. But flags are easy. Steel is heavy. Pride is not denial – it is commitment, and commitment looks like building.

So that is how I am spending year 250: building. Two new ventures, hundreds of early mornings, work worth handing forward. It is the most American act there is, and it is open to every one of us, in any field, starting any morning we decide.

Two hundred fifty years in, and the best of this country has not yet been built.

There is a phrase for loving an unfinished country enough to keep building it: American Pride.

So, Happy Independence Day, America – light every deserved firework. We built 250 years of reasons to celebrate.