ON THE EVE OF OUR NATION’S 249th birthday, a Gallup poll finds that only 58 percent of Americans feel “extremely” or “very” proud of their country. This is a new low in the twenty-five years Gallup has been asking this question, and the reasons are not hard to divine. We are led by a monomaniacal vulgarian who revels in cruelty, demonizes half the nation, tells vicious lies, tramples good taste, offends allies, sucks up to foes, tramples on law and human rights, and endangers all we hold dear—all while enjoying lockstep fealty from the Republican party. It’s no wonder that those outside the MAGA heliosphere may not be feeling the spirit of 1776 right now.
Here is my proposed antidote to anti-patriotism. We are clearly in a rough patch, but rather than despair, we can draw upon our rich history for inspiration.
I cringe when I hear MAGA types beating their chests and declaring that this is “the greatest country in the history of the world.” Two reasons: 1) Boasting is crass; and 2) it’s offensive coming from the lips of those whose mission is to destroy the things that made us special. They are not patriots, properly understood, because they hate so much of what makes America great. We must refuse to let them soil patriotism.
America has been responsible for appalling savagery in the past 250 years. There is no sugarcoating slavery, Jim Crow, the treatment of Native Americans, discrimination against other minorities, or misbegotten imperial adventures. But as Immanuel Kant said, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”
America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. And here are a few of the reasons.
We are the oldest democracy on the planet, having set the template for self-government and rule of law that has been such a gift to humankind. Our freedom, vast territory, culture, and institutions give the freest possible rein to human creativity and flourishing.
We have been a haven for the oppressed for centuries. My grandparents fled the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires to find freedom and security here just as millions upon millions of others did. Search the history of almost any American and you will find ancestors, often quite recent, who uprooted themselves to partake of the bounty and freedom on offer here.
Most were not famous names, but boy are there a lot of renowned refugees who found their way here: Albert Einstein, Vladimir Nabokov, Nikola Tesla, Enrico Fermi, Arturo Toscanini, Kurt Weill, George Balanchine, Marc Chagall, Madeleine Albright, Alexander Kerensky, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Igor Stravinsky, Kurt Gödel, Irving Berlin, Martina Navratilova, I.M. Pei, Joseph Pulitzer, Levi Strauss, Rudolph Valentino, Isaac Stern, Andrew Carnegie, Sergey Brin, Henry Kissinger, Oscar de la Renta, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Arthur Rubinstein, Gloria Estefan, and Thomas Mann. Even Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter, became an American citizen (for a time). The list could go on and on.
They brought their talents to our shores and accomplished great things because this pulsing, energetic, inventive, and risk-taking republic provided the platform for greatness, undergirded by political stability. The United States has long led the world (by a lot) in Nobel Prizes. This can’t be explained by population alone. Our world-class universities are part of the story, but our capacity to attract talented immigrants is equally important. Some 40 percent of Nobels awarded to Americans have gone to immigrants, most recently Dr. Katalin Karikó, who received the 2023 prize in physiology for her work on mRNA vaccines. She joins a distinguished list including Syukuro Manabe for physics, Ardem Patapoutian for medicine, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (a married couple) for economics, Gérard Mourou for physics, and many others who immigrated to the United States, where they accomplished their prize-winning work.
Are you grateful for air conditioning this July Fourth? Thank an American, Willis Carrier. Are you planning a road trip? You can enjoy any of sixty-three national parks that are free to the public because the United States invented the national park, starting with Yellowstone. For more than a hundred years, they’ve been a source of awe and delight, and have been copied around the globe. For a great view (or if you need to be rescued), you might travel in a helicopter, the brainchild of Igor Sikorsky, an immigrant from Russia.
Many of the conveniences of modern life were invented in the United States. Let’s hear it for airplanes, the telephone, the personal computer, the internet, recorded sound, the elevator, anesthesia, the cell phone, the polio vaccine, the smallpox vaccine, and other medical marvels.
America has also given the world jazz, hip-hop, standup comedy, Hollywood, community colleges, root beer, basketball, baseball, Broadway musicals, skyscrapers, public libraries, summer camp, and the ice cream cone. The United Nations is basically an American idea supported disproportionately over the years by American contributions. Ditto for the IMF and the World Bank. Until recently, Americans could be proud of our humanitarian work in the world’s poorest nations, to whom we were the most generous donor.
Over the years, the United States was the world’s foremost first responder when other nations were struck by tsunamis, earthquakes, famines, or aggression. In addition to the Marshall Plan, NATO, and PEPFAR, American might ensured that Berlin remained a free city when the Soviets imposed a blockade, supplied Israel with lifesaving munitions when Egypt and Syria launched a joint attack, defeated the aggressive Serbs and negotiated a Balkan peace, presided over the Camp David Accords, relieved a famine in Somalia, liberated Kuwait, saved the Yazidis from Mount Sinjar, and much else. Though we fought a brutal war against imperial Japan and suffered terrible war crimes at their hands, our occupation was benign and fair. We transformed an enemy into a thriving democratic ally.
OUR WORST NATIONAL STAIN also gave rise to our most inspiring mass movement: the civil rights struggle. We were challenged to live up to our stated creed, and though the resistance was bitter and ugly, the nation did respond and did heed our better angels. Forty-three years after Selma, we elected a black president.
Populism, nativism, racism, and frankly, stupidity, are sprinkled liberally throughout our history. But they are subtexts, not the main story. We will transcend MAGA as we transcended the Know Nothings, the Confederacy, the anarchists, the McCarthyites, and the Wallaceites (both Henry and George)—not to mention the abuses of the British Empire more than two centuries ago. On Independence Day, I will sincerely celebrate a nation that, despite its demagogues and fools, was capable of producing an Abraham Lincoln, a Franklin Roosevelt, a Frederick Douglass, a Wendell Willkie, a Martin Luther King Jr., a Learned Hand, a Dwight Eisenhower, and a Herbert Hoover (that’s right, for saving millions from starvation after World War I).
Adam Smith said “There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation,” and we’ve had too many recent occasions to rue that reality. But this week we need to remember the nobility of this nation. There’s a great deal of that too.