When Teen Chaos Meets a Country Afraid to Say No

Live updates: Trump to headline Mount Rushmore’s celebrations; heat forces changes to National Mall event plans

People across the country are preparing to celebrate America’s 250th birthday this weekend — a process that has been made more challenging as event organizers scramble to deal with the extreme heat. President Trump is headed to South Dakota late on Friday, where he’s expected to make remarks at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial and…

How Americans Are Feeling About the U.S. as the Country Turns 250

With the country's landmark Semiquincentennial anniversary approaching, polls show that many Americans are harboring negative feelings about the state of the U.S.––and its future.

What do people in the US hope for the country's future?

As the US celebrates its 250th birthday, the BBC asked people across the country for their top aspiration.

America is squatting in its own ruins

Modern people tend to see knowledge as something humanity achieves collectively and then keeps forever. Once a scientific advance or moral truth is discovered, we assume it becomes part of the species’ permanent inheritance.That is false.Tradition is not a museum display. It is not a costume we wear on patriotic holidays. It is a discipline.Truth may be eternal, but our knowledge of it is not. Knowledge can be lost when a civilization stops practicing it. As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, we must understand that remembering our traditions and values is not enough. To keep them alive, we must embody them in what we do.Ancient Rome is remembered as one of the most powerful civilizations in history and also one of the most technologically advanced. The Romans developed special concrete and engineering techniques that allowed them to build extraordinary structures and civic infrastructure.When Rome fell, those techniques still existed in one sense. They had been discovered. But they were lost to time because the people who possessed the knowledge could no longer practice it or pass it on. The scientific truth remained objectively real, but without the civilization that had maintained it, the knowledge faded as if it had never existed.People lived in the ruins of ancient wonders, taking shelter in buildings they could not build or maintain. Without the continuity of tradition, science had no practical meaning.Moral truth faces the same danger.The Old Testament shows a repeated cycle of Israel receiving divine revelation and then forgetting what had been handed down by God Himself. Again and again, the nation falls away from the commandments of the Lord until a prophet pulls an old scroll from its rack and reminds the people of what they once knew.The Israelites cry out and rend their garments in repentance. They practice the truth for a time. Then, the practice fades, and knowledge fades with it.RELATED: A real nation knows who is in and who is out Blaze Media IllustrationDespite receiving direct divine revelation, Israel — and humanity itself — could not maintain the practice of God’s truth. That is why the Lord sent his Son as a perfect example and living sacrifice, an eternal embodiment for all nations to see what the righteous life looks like in practice.This weekend, America will celebrate its 250th anniversary. But saying that we honor our traditions and culture is not enough.Most Americans have spent little to no time reading what the founders actually wrote. Their understanding of our national traditions comes from a heavily curated version of history they learned in school. There will be plenty of talk about celebrating the country’s past. What we need is a revival focused on living that tradition in the present.Sentimentality is nice. It will not save the country.Today, most Americans, including many conservatives, say the religious liberty guaranteed by the First Amendment means Muslims cannot be prevented from moving here and building entire cities dedicated to their way of life. The average American believes Hindus have a First Amendment right to immigrate and build giant statues of their demonic gods in Texas.This is absurd.States often required public officials to be professing Protestant Christians well into the 1840s, decades after the Bill of Rights was adopted. Even Catholics were often considered too foreign to hold office. None of this was viewed at the time as a violation of religious liberty. The idea that religious liberty was intended to allow Muslims or Hindus to control the public square is a lie.The entire “tradition” of religious liberty many people think they are honoring is false.The Supreme Court recently provided another example by ruling that the 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens. The 14th Amendment was one of three amendments added to the Constitution after the Civil War to address the legal framework for freed slaves.Its purpose was to clarify that people born into slavery became citizens once they were free. That intent was made clear by the people who authored the amendment. It did not create citizenship for American Indians, for example, or other groups added later through law and policy.The idea that birthright citizenship for illegal aliens is some grand American tradition is entirely false. Yet a conservative Supreme Court just enshrined it in the Constitution.This is what happens when a people inherit words without preserving the practices and assumptions that gave those words meaning. They recite “religious liberty” and forget the civilization it was meant to protect. They invoke “equal citizenship” and forget the specific injustice the 14th Amendment was written to remedy. They honor the shell while abandoning the substance.A nation does not preserve itself by remembering slogans once a year.

America at 250: Uniparty fiddles while the country burns

America is the greatest country on earth. That is thankfully still true. But instead of comparing it with other nations, what if we compare it to its […]

USMNT defense turns biggest question mark into World Cup strength

If no one truly knew how good the U.S. national team was before the World Cup started, then no one had even the slightest clue of how good its defense was. 

Old flame! The Statue of Liberty is the greatest gift one country ever gave another

Lady Liberty is visual shorthand for our dynamic country and its promise of freedom. She isn't merely a stodgy statue mired in another era — she is timeless.