Overview
- The columnist congratulates the United States for building durable liberal institutions based on individual liberty, separation of powers and the rule of law while warning those achievements are under pressure.
- The piece highlights intense political polarization and episodes of violence that have frayed public trust and made celebration of the 250th anniversary fraught.
- The author says the President is focused on strengthening the federal executive at the expense of other institutions and warns this shift concentrates power in ways the founders sought to prevent.
- The column stresses the gap between founding ideals and practice by naming slavery, exclusion of women and minorities, and long struggles for rights as central contradictions that shaped U.S. history.
- The writer points to a long decline in civic participation and a return of 'capitalismo de cuates'—collusion between government and big capital—which could deepen inequality and weaken checks on power.