As America’s 250th Anniversary Approaches, Columbus, Ohio Celebrates… Somalia

Which is a sign of the health of the union as the big day draws near.

Do you remember 1976, fellow old folks? I do. Ι was fourteen years old, and living in Washington, D.C., and spent the summer exploring the Air and Space museum and other attractions of the nation’s capital, as well as the big bicentennial celebrations on the National Mall, where every state had a booth showing off the marvels that, each claimed, were best enjoyed within its own peerless and paradisal confines. The one I remember most was Mississippi’s, which was offering samples of fried catfish — not, indeed, a delicacy with which most Beltway denizens had any familiarity.

Gerald Ford was president, and his placid, pipe-smoking mien helped everyone calm down after the national traumas of Watergate and Vietnam (which is not to say that he ably handled the final acts and aftermaths of either one). Most everyone agreed that it was a time to come together and celebrate our remarkable nation and the free society it had created, the envy of the world. Yes, the American people were as fractious as ever, and we were even in the midst of a presidential campaign, but no one seemed to have much of a problem with the idea of celebrating national unity.

Τhat was 50 years ago. Today, the political and cultural elite classes despise the president and have tried to destroy him numerous times, in all manner of ways, and it is not incidental to that effort that his primary slogan and guiding philosophy is “Make America Great Again.” The seeds of the national crisis had already been planted in 1976, but many, and likely most, of the Americans who celebrated the bicentennial would nonetheless be shocked by how mainstream hatred for the United States has become in the United States itself.

The situation has gotten so bad, and the anti-Americanism so commonplace and mainstream, that several days before the nation’s 250^th anniversary, a significant American city flew a foreign flag. Only people on what the establishment media insists upon calling the “far right” seemed to mind.

Fox News reported Wednesday that “the city of Columbus, Ohio, home to one of the largest Somali populations in the United States, is facing backlash on social media over a post celebrating the raising of the Somali flag.” As well it should. The Columbus Rec & Parks department posted on X: “Happy Somali Independence Day! As we celebrate the unification of the Trust Territory of Somaliland and the State of Somaliland into the Somali Republic in 1960, City Hall will be raising the flag of Somalia.”

Of course! What else should an American city celebrate during the first week of July other than “the unification of the Trust Territory of Somaliland and the State of Somaliland into the Somali Republic in 1960”? In 2026, 250 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, I can’t think of anything. Can you?

Columbus was duly lambasted: “The post was quickly picked up by conservatives on social media, with many wondering why the city of Columbus would celebrate Somali independence so strongly, particularly given the proximity to the 250th anniversary of American independence.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller got right to the point: “Columbus, Ohio raising the flag of Somalia for America 250.” Journalist Mark Hemingway offered an apposite observation: “No American government building should ever be raising another country’s flag. Ugh.”

A lawyer and political commentator, Mehek Cooke, wrote: “City Hall is not a foreign embassy. As an Ohioan, I am repulsed by the anti-Americanism here. Our leaders treat foreign nationalism as sacred while treating American patriotism as controversial. America’s public buildings should honor America.”

And Ohio Republican state Rep. Brian Stewart noted that “if Somalia is such a failed state that we need to take in tens of thousands of its citizens as ‘refugees,’ then we really don’t need to be celebrating its supposed ‘independence’ with patronizing posts on social media. One more way in which we encourage the refusal to assimilate.”

Indeed. And after decades of encouraging a refusal to assimilate and teaching hatred of America to young Americans, the celebration of our nation’s 250^th anniversary has become a contentious, partisan act. So celebrate heartily, and remind the caliphs of Columbus and others whose allegiance lies elsewhere that this is still the land of the free and the home of the brave, and is going to remain so despite their best efforts.