Syndicated columnist Mona Charen in her recent Townhall.com article stated:

The quadricentennial of the Jamestown settlement will be noted this spring. Whether it will be celebrated is a freighted question. Virginia has gone to some expense and effort remembering the founding settlers of 1607. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is serving as honorary chair of what is being called “America’s 400th Birthday.” There will be musical performances, lectures, and seminars. The Queen of England will visit on May 4 and 5.

But emblematic of our troubled understanding of our past and our present discomfort with our national identity, the powers that be in Virginia have decided not to refer to these and other observations as “celebrations.” Instead, they will be called commemorations. “You can’t celebrate an invasion,” declared Mary Wade, a member of the Jamestown 2007 organizing committee. The native people were “pushed back off of their land, even killed. Whole tribes were annihilated. A lot of people carry that oral history with them, and that’s why they use the word ‘invasion’ . . .”

Virginia is expecting many visitors to the reconstructed Jamestown settlement — and it is worth the trip. We’ve taken the children a couple of times. But the timid, apologetic tone of some of the exhibitions detracts from the experience. As Edward Rothstein reported in The New York Times, “The Indians, we read, were ‘in harmony with the land that sustained them’ and formed an ‘advanced, complex society of families and tribes....’”

She concludes the article by saying:

There is every reason to celebrate the 400th birthday of America — for warts and all — there never has been a better country for all its citizens.”