India, July 8 -- At 250 years, the United States appears less like a completed political project and more like a continuing argument that has never settled its own meaning, where universal ideals and uneven outcomes persist within the same institutional framework and shape one another over time

What has happened to Thomas Paine remains unresolved, and that uncertainty matters when trying to understand the United States at its present stage. The United States of America yesterday (July 4) marked its 250th birthday, a moment when one of the world's leading liberal democracies appeared less as a coherent model and more as a divided system, a family business struggling to awaken from its long slumber. How the United States has acted against ...