I was maybe ten years old, standing on my grandparents’ porch in the Texas Hill Country, eating watermelon and watching the town’s 4th of July fireworks explode in the sky overhead. My grandfather, standing next to me, told me I could spit the watermelon seeds right there into the yard. I looked up, not believing we could really flout proper manners in such a dramatic way, but he grinned and then leaned back and spat a watermelon seed as far into the yard as he could. I laughed at the sight of my reserved grandfather doing something so improper – and then tried my best to beat his distance.
My grandfather was tall, bookish, and soft-spoken. I was aware that he’d been in a war, but he never spoke of it and neither did anyone else, so it was only many years later, after his death, that I saw his medals and heard the stories.
During World War II he flew “The Hump,” one of the most dangerous airlifts in history. This was the aerial supply route over the Himalayan Mountains. It was hundreds of miles of rugged terrain with weather conditions so extreme that planes flew at their operational limits without pressurized cabins, leaving crews to suffer from hypoxia. So many planes were lost – along with the men in them – that the route was known as “the Aluminum Trail,” because of the wreckage of hundreds of downed aircraft left across the mountains.
When I learned all of this I was stunned that a man as gentle as my grandfather had done something so unthinkably courageous while serving in such a terrible war. But then, as I traced through my family tree, I realized that generation after generation of my kin had served, right back to the Burge who was with General George Washington at Valley Forge and died in active service later in the war.
I didn’t know the particulars of each of their stories but I was moved to realize how deeply my family was woven into the fabric of America. My family came to America from England in the 1600s and that alone took courage enough to endure the hardship of ocean crossing only to land in a brutal wilderness where starvation, disease, and conflict killed so many. And over the next fifteen generations they helped transform that rugged continent into the most powerful nation the world has ever seen.
This is something I once didn’t fully understand - let alone appreciate.
Spending so many of my childhood years overseas, as a kid I was mostly self-conscious of all the ways I didn’t quite fit in when I returned to America; I didn’t know the right music, the TV shows everyone was watching, or the latest trends girls were wearing. What’s more, I was told that it wasn’t important, that it was better to be a citizen of the world than a person firmly rooted to a particular place. So it was only with age that I was able to realize how profoundly American I am. And the older I’ve become – and the more I’ve traveled – the more I’ve been able to see just how singular America is among the nations of the world.
The definition of superpower is America. It has unmatched military might and immense economic power, but it also has reached into the lives of people in every corner of the earth. Whether they realize it or not, billions live every day in a world shaped by American hands. The technology they use, the medicines that heal them, the aircraft and cars that carry them, the scientific discoveries that change their lives, the movies and music and books that fill their evenings, the innovations that drive their economies, and even the ideals that form the bedrock of what the world today simply calls “human rights,” are indelibly American. For two hundred and fifty years America has bent the course of world history and no nation has done more to define the modern age. This globe-spanning influence is not a mere fluke, it is born of a people audacious enough to believe they could build something unprecedented and courageous enough to turn that belief into reality.
America is not perfect - no country is - but it is great. Americans enjoy extraordinary prosperity, unparalleled freedoms, and some of the strongest legal protections for individual rights anywhere in the world. We can and should always strive to improve America, but we should never lose sight of how truly exceptional it already is. Measured against the nations of history and the world today, there has never been another country quite like it.
It was distance that gave me perspective and taught me that what I had once taken for granted is, in fact, a remarkable inheritance. This realization changed my writing, drawing my focus again and again to America out of both deep gratitude and gnawing concern. You really begin to understand the value of an inheritance when you realize how it can be lost. So, since starting this Substack, I’ve written a lot about America. I’ve written about the liberal delusion that has gradually unmoored society, how the education system has turned into an indoctrination system, why everything is fascist now, how the immigration industry functions as a weapon of destruction, how hyphenated Americans should embrace their unique story rather than deny ours, the lie of the proposition nation, America’s cosmic frontier, how loving thy neighbor means opposing mass immigration, and how America is a nation, not a notion.
Today we are at a unique moment in American history when much can be lost – or saved. It depends, as American history always has, on the American people. I’m reminded of the line of Alexis de Tocqueville: “Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”
As we Americans celebrate our 250th year, we must remember that art. Liberty is not meant to be a trite slogan but a way of life. True freedom requires an enduring foundation of virtue, justice, and an unwavering faith in what America can accomplish. So in an age that tries to tell us America is just an idea, we have to recover a deeper truth: America is the inheritance of the American people. It was entrusted to us as a gift to steward and we need to live up to that legacy.
We need to remember the art of being free.
“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves… the fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on… this army.”
- George Washington to his troops on July 2, 1776.