Gen 250

Every anniversary is really an argument about the future. A country turning 250 can spend the year admiring its founders, or it can spend the year asking who is going to do the equivalent work next—and then hand them something to do. America250 has, to its credit, mostly chosen the second option. And the most interesting thing about the Semiquincentennial year has not been the fireworks. It has been the sound of people under twenty-five being asked, in public and on the record, what they think this country should build. That is not a small shift. For most of the last two decades, young Americans have been discussed rather than consulted —a demographic to be polled, worried over and marketed to. The 250th has produced programs that treat teenagers and twenty-somethings as participants with obligations, not audiences with opinions.