Imagine inviting Theodore Roosevelt to America's 250th birthday celebration.

Unlike some of our other guests, Roosevelt would not arrive angry. He would arrive thrilled.

Flags? Excellent.

Parades? Outstanding.

Fireworks? More.

Marching bands? Even more.

Bald eagles? Still not enough.

Theodore Roosevelt never encountered a patriotic spectacle that couldn't be improved by adding additional patriotic spectacle.

Within minutes of arriving, he would be enthusiastically shaking hands with strangers. Within an hour, he would be delivering speeches. Within two hours, he would somehow be in charge of the event.

Nobody would remember electing him.

This would not matter.

The thing many modern Americans forget about Roosevelt is that he genuinely loved the United States. Not in a sentimental way. Not in a nostalgic way. He loved it the same way a builder loves a project or an explorer loves a map. America was energetic. America was ambitious. America was unfinished.

Most importantly, America was doing things. And Theodore Roosevelt adored doing things.

This was a man who boxed in the White House, charged up San Juan Hill, hunted grizzly bears, explored the Amazon, wrote dozens of books, founded national parks, challenged monopolies, and once delivered a ninety-minute campaign speech after being shot in the chest.

When the bullet struck him in Milwaukee in 1912, Roosevelt reportedly opened his coat, examined the blood, determined he was not immediately dying, and proceeded with the speech.

"It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." Most politicians would have sought medical attention. Roosevelt sought an audience.

The man approached life the way a terrier approaches a squirrel. Aggressively.

Which is why modern America would confuse him.

Not because he would think the country is failing.

Quite the opposite.

Theodore Roosevelt would spend most of the 250th anniversary wondering why everyone seems so convinced that it is.

The celebration would begin pleasantly enough. Roosevelt would admire the military flyovers. He would enjoy the fireworks. He would approve of the historical reenactors, although he would privately conclude that at least half of them were insufficiently vigorous.

Then someone would hand him a smartphone. This is where things would begin to unravel.

At first Roosevelt would be delighted.

Instant communication? Access to unlimited information? The ability to exchange ideas with citizens across an entire continent? Magnificent.

A triumph of civilization.

Then he would spend ten minutes on social media. His mood would deteriorate rapidly.

Theodore Roosevelt once observed:

"Complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is called whining."

This sentence alone would eliminate approximately eighty percent of modern internet discourse.

Roosevelt would scroll.

And scroll. And scroll.

Millions of people explaining why everything is terrible. Millions more explaining why nothing can be fixed. Millions arguing about problems while contributing absolutely nothing toward solving them.

By the end of the afternoon, Roosevelt might become the first person in history to declare war on a website.

This was not because he disliked criticism.

Roosevelt loved criticism.

He criticized politicians.

He criticized businessmen.

He criticized labor radicals.

He criticized journalists.

He criticized Congress.

He criticized foreign governments.

He occasionally criticized his own political allies.

What he could not tolerate was passivity. Problems existed to be solved. Obstacles existed to be overcome. Difficulties existed to be confronted.

Roosevelt did not believe problems existed so that people could sit around admiring them.

This was, perhaps, his greatest strength.

It was also occasionally his greatest weakness.

One suspects Roosevelt would spend much of the anniversary listening to Americans explain why the country is in decline.

He would hear concerns about political polarization.

Economic inequality. Government dysfunction. International competition. Social fragmentation. The cost of housing. The cost of education. The cost of everything.

And after listening politely for a while, Roosevelt would likely ask a simple question:

"What exactly are you complaining about?"

The room would become very quiet.

Not because Roosevelt believed these problems were imaginary.

But because he would immediately place them beside the challenges faced by earlier generations.

When Roosevelt was born in 1858, the nation was hurtling toward civil war. During his childhood, hundreds of thousands of Americans would die fighting one another. During his adulthood, industrial cities exploded into existence, monopolies dominated entire industries, labor violence erupted across the country, and the United States emerged as a global power almost accidentally.

America was never easy.

America was never stable.

America was never comfortable.

Theodore Roosevelt knew this better than most.

And yet he remained relentlessly optimistic.

This is what often separates Roosevelt from modern political figures.

He did not view challenges as evidence of decline.

He viewed them as opportunities for action.

The phrase he loved most was "the strenuous life."

In a famous speech from 1899, Roosevelt urged Americans to embrace effort, struggle, and ambition rather than comfort and complacency.

"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life."

Today, that speech would probably be interpreted as a fitness podcast.

For Roosevelt, however, it was practically a religious creed.

Nations became great through effort.

Citizens became strong through effort.

Civilizations advanced through effort.

The answer to adversity was never retreat.

It was engagement.

More effort.

More ambition.

More action.

Consequently, Roosevelt would spend much of America's 250th birthday becoming increasingly exasperated by the national mood.

Not because Americans complain.

Americans have always complained.

The Founders complained.

Lincoln complained.

Grant complained.

Mark Twain practically built a second career out of complaining.

What would frustrate Roosevelt is the growing tendency to confuse criticism with accomplishment.

He would encounter people who believed cynicism itself was wisdom.

People who viewed pessimism as sophistication.

People who treated despair as evidence of intelligence.

Roosevelt would find this unbearable.

He had little patience for fashionable hopelessness.

One can easily imagine him standing before a crowd, waving his arms dramatically, and declaring that the republic had survived far worse.

After all, look around.

The country survived the Revolution. The Constitution survived repeated crises. The Union survived the Civil War. The economy survived depressions. The nation survived two world wars.

Americans walked on the moon. Americans built the modern internet.

Americans created technologies that would appear miraculous to nearly every previous generation in human history.

By this point, Roosevelt would be speaking very loudly. He always did.

The audience would begin rolling their eyes. He would continue anyway. Because this was another defining characteristic of Theodore Roosevelt.

He genuinely believed America was capable of extraordinary things.

Not because Americans were uniquely virtuous. Not because history guaranteed success. But because success required confidence. Action required confidence. Progress required confidence.

And confidence, in Roosevelt's view, was itself a civic virtue.

This is where the speech would become slightly insufferable.

It would also become strangely persuasive.

Because beneath the bombast and self-assurance lies an argument that still resonates.

A nation that has accomplished this much should not spend all of its time acting defeated.

Theodore Roosevelt would not ask Americans to ignore their problems.

He would demand that they confront them. He would not ask them to abandon criticism. He would ask them to pair criticism with action. He would not tell them everything is fine. He would tell them to get to work.

The distinction mattered enormously to him.

As the fireworks burst above the Capitol and the country celebrated its 250th year, Roosevelt would probably leave Americans with a final message.

It would not be subtle. It would not be nuanced.

It would almost certainly be delivered at excessive volume.

America has survived because generation after generation refused to surrender to pessimism. They built things. They fought for things. They argued about things. They improved things.

Now it is your turn.

Stop refreshing your feed.

Stop predicting collapse.

Stop explaining why everything is impossible.

Go do something.

Then, because he was Theodore Roosevelt, he would probably pause, grin, and offer one final piece of advice:

"Now get off your phone and climb a mountain."/

And, for one brief moment, even the people rolling their eyes would be tempted to listen.