Happy Birthday America — You Are Worth Celebrating

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On its birthday, it’s worth looking at the United States of America through fresh eyes — for example, those of the tens of thousands of soccer fans who came from across the globe to support their countries in the World Cup. Many of them visited the US for the first time and reacted with an almost childlike joy to what they discovered.

Their social media posts rejoicing over ubiquitous air conditioning, free refills, and ranch dressing quickly went viral and, to the Fox News hosts amplifying them on their shows, the fact that those highfalutin Europeans with their universal health care and free college educations loved Bass Pro Shops was evidence of American superiority.

Ironically, the same folks who reveled in this praise are less excited about Guatemalans who love the US so much that they want to come cross-border in search of a better life.

It also is worth noting that, if any of those tourists who are spending a portion of their six weeks of annual vacation yelling themselves hoarse at soccer matches and drinking American bars dry had found themselves in a hospital with a $50,000 medical bill, those Instagram posts would have sounded very different.

And that gets to the heart of the enigma that the United States remains even after 250 years.

A lot has changed since July 4, 1776. What was then a fledgling nation that needed allies just to survive has become a global superpower. The path there was paved with victories against all odds and acts of great heroism, the deeds of brilliant minds, innovation, and entrepreneurialism, but also internal strife, injustice, and great atrocities. And that’s the one thing that has remained constant in all that time: Above all, the US is a land of contrasts and contradictions.

From its inception, there has always been a gap between aspiration and reality. Many of the nation’s founding ideals were not practiced by those who drafted them, and some have still not been achieved.

The US is a country of abundance that makes it the greatest place to live for those who are very well off (and pretty awesome for hard-drinking European soccer fans on vacation). However, the vast majority of Americans do not equally benefit from this unfathomable wealth, which those at the top are unwilling to share.

As a result, compared to its peers, the safety net in the US is full of holes, and millions of people are one calamity away from destitution.

The world’s brightest students aspire to attend one of America’s elite universities while many kids in the public education system barely learn to read and write.

We could go on and on.

None of that takes away from the fact that the United States is worth celebrating.

However, Democrats are increasingly reluctant to do so, as various polls conducted around the semiquincentennial (we didn’t make it up, that’s actually what it’s called) have shown.

Young people in particular, who tend to be more progressive, are reluctant to say that they are proud of America.

We believe that is in large part because they apply impossible purity tests to the country and its Founders, and they base their views on what the US should be and not what it is.

However, it is impossible to meet that purity bar.

Yes, according to the left’s standards for how people should conduct themselves, the Founding Fathers were barbarians and hypocrites.

While they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that it is self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights, including liberty, they did not practice what they preached.

Many of them owned slaves, and it took nearly a century and a bloody civil war before slavery was ended and Black people got the right to vote. To be more precise, Black men got to vote. Women had to wait another 50 years for the privilege.

There was no DEI and there were no LGBTQ rights.

For their time, however, they were the radical progressives. What they set in motion, at the risk of their own lives, was unprecedented and the foundation for everybody’s rights today.

Therefore, they must not be judged by today’s standards but rather appreciated for their vision.

Along the same lines, America should be measured by what it has achieved and by its promise and not by where it is now.

That doesn’t mean that slavery or the genocide of the continent’s indigenous people should be forgotten. Those were terrible crimes against humanity… and not the last ones in US history.

But for 250 years, the country has kept moving forward (while occasionally backsliding) toward achieving the ideals the Founding Fathers outlined.

And while Donald Trump may pose the latest threat to their vision of America, he will eventually just be another stain on the country’s history.

Because let’s not forget that, right after those famous words about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they laid out what should happen to wannabe dictators:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

And that brings us to Republicans, who have claimed the mantle of patriotism for themselves, and 90 percent of whom claim to be proud to be an American.

But which America do they mean? Certainly not the one that welcomes immigrants. Or the one in which the wealthy don’t enjoy special privileges and cannot buy political influence. Or the one in which women have the right to choose. Or the one in which religion stays out of the government and vice versa. Or the one in which citizens can take to the streets to protest that two of their own have been gunned down by masked federal agents.

Because they are fighting those versions of the United States (and many others that reflect the vision of the Founders).

The truth is that these “patriots” only love their version of America — the one that existed when it was “great.”

Of course, if you could ever get an answer out of them as to when that was, you’d find out that it was at a time when people like them had more power and everybody else had fewer rights.

In other words, we don’t think that either Democrats or Republicans are getting it right.

Neither are those soccer fans, by the way, although they’re on the right track when they praise how friendly the people are that they encounter.

Don’t get us wrong, ranch dressing and air conditioning are awesome, but they don’t make America great.

It is its people that do — those whose ancestors were here 250 years ago and those who just arrived.

Take them out of their various political and cultural affinity groups, and they are well-meaning and kind.

Perhaps because so many of them left their own countries in search of greater opportunities, they take risks and drive innovation.

They gave their lives in the pursuit and defense of freedom in the Meuse-Argonne offensive and on the beaches of Normandy. Unfortunately, that bravery and willingness to put it all on the line has also been exploited by less scrupulous leaders in places like Vietnam and Iraq. But that’s not the fault of the young men and women who were drafted or signed up.

That, too, is an example of the paradox of the United States of America: So often, good people allow themselves to be manipulated by bad ones.

Still, even if it sometimes stumbles or takes a step back, the nation keeps moving forward.

And that is worth celebrating.