On July 4th

I.

It's July 4th in Virginia, half past noon. It's too hot today to stay outside long, and there's a storm coming tonight — we can hear thunder in the distance, though right now skies look clear.

We set off our little fireworks on the gravel road last night, July 3rd, anticipating that storm. Dad and I announced the names of the fireworks — Rose Blossom, Wild Side — then set them off, the rest of the family sitting on the porch. They were remarkably beautiful, these fireworks we bought from a tent in a Walmart parking lot.

Two and a half centuries ago this country's founders — political theorists, revolutionary leaders; many lawyers, businessmen, and farmers; most of them slaveowners — adopted a resolution declaring America to be its own nation. In the very same breaths that they declared this country sovereign, they articulated its most fundamental values:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a 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.

July 4th means many things to Americans in the light of history. Some Americans are the descendants of those revolutionaries; some are the descendants of those they enslaved; some are descendants of those they fought against and killed, to overthrow their government or to take their land. Some are descendants of people who were half a world away during the signing of the declaration. As for me: though their skin color may have been the same as mine, those founders were not my ancestors.

Yet we call this our country.

The project of the past two and half centuries has been to realize the full meaning of those principles that they declared — to give all Americans those inalienable rights, not by God's hands but by our own. Today I am grateful.

Today I am grateful for those who came before me.

Today I am grateful for the vision of those revolutionaries — grateful that I live in a country whose first fundamental document enshrined those principles. I am grateful for those who built this nation, who, for all its flaws, and all their flaws, left behind the foundation for progress.

Today I am grateful for the centuries of people before me — reformers, advocates, journalists, organizers, yes, politicians — who created the country I get to live in today, a country far more moral than the one that began. I am grateful for those who were martyred for its principles, for those who lived fighting for progress they never got to see.

Today I am grateful for those who have protected this country — those who were killed in its great wars, in the revolution and in World War II. Some of them were my age when they were killed.

I am grateful for this land — the Blue Ridge mountains to the California Sierras, from the Boston Port to the San Francisco Bay. I am grateful that I get to be alive to be a part of its ecology, live among its beauty, be its steward. I am grateful for its fertile soil, though it was once stained with blood.

If you asked me, I would probably tell you that I love my country,¹ that I am proud to be American — but what I mean by that is perhaps easily misconstrued.

America is the Ur-nation. I claim that it is not a nation, typically defined — at least, not an ethnic one. There's a Ronald Reagan clip that summarizes it well:²

It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago. A man wrote me and said: "You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American."

(Reagan Archives)

This mythological vision of our own identity is, as far as I am aware, unique among countries. Being an American is in this depiction a choice. It is not something you simply are, like ethnic belonging — you do not need to have historical ties to this country to be a part of it.

This is the necessary conclusion of America's values, fully realized. If all are to be equal, if all are to be free, all must be welcome. So American identity must be something harder to pin down — something that takes cognitive effort to understand, maintain, embrace.

What does “being American” mean to me? This has been a consideration for me throughout my life. I don't have strong ethnic roots or religious traditions to latch onto; my family is not nationalistic.³ I was left in the lurch in that sense, with no anchoring identity, no tie to my past, no built-in meaning-making. Being American meant very little to me until I chose to try to make something out of it.

It is very easy to fall victim to the trap of moral critique. In light of this country's past — the oppression and bloodshed that defined its early years; the moral failings, unjust wars, exclusion that continued to permeate its history; and the division we face today — in light of all that this country is hard to celebrate. It is hard to call America "my country" when it has been the host of so much evil.

But it is not by rejecting the past, distinguishing ourselves from it, that we will make progress. Progress historically was not made by those who rejected America, but created it anew. If you'll allow me to make a (perhaps somewhat facile) reference to Dr. King's best-known speech:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

(Transcript of Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" Speech)

It was not by discarding Americanism as a failure that the Civil Rights movement succeeded; it was by redefining Americanism as something greater.

Today this country is the most powerful nation on the planet, both economically and militarily. It is the guarantor of global security — the backbone of NATO and, through its naval dominance, the protector of the world's trade. It has opposed and defeated history’s most powerful and evil regimes — the Nazis and the USSR — in spite of its own moral imperfection.

Its citizens have been the engine of the world’s most transformative technological developments in recent history, perhaps in history period — the internet, and now artificial intelligence.

And it has two and a half centuries of history of people striving towards the fulfillment of its basic principles.

This is the country we inherit. We have the choice to wield that power for good, or leave its power to those who would misuse it. This is what I claim when I say I am American: that I love this country and still wish to change it. In fact, if we are to live up to the legacy of those who came before us, we must do so.

Today, looking back at all the Americans who lived before me, and looking forward to those who will live after me — I am grateful. Today marks the birth of this country, two and a half centuries ago. Every day since, it has been reborn.

II.

It's July 4th in Virginia, four in the afternoon. The thunder cracks, and the clouds have torn open. Torrential rains are pouring down. The trees shake and the wind is howling.

There's a little blue bird in the driveway splashing around in a puddle. It flaps its wings, it hops around — I'm sitting on the porch again, watching the water sink into the soil, watching with amusement as this bird takes a little bath.

I'm sweating a little; the humidity is sticking vapor to my skin. I'm really happy. It's been a month since it rained here, so the grass and the trees look happy too. The storm shakes and howls, but the grass waves with it; the trees sway, they don't crack.

This country is volatile right now. Things will probably only get more volatile in the coming years. Some say the world is ending — some say the world as we know it is ending — some say nothing is happening (though I think those people are probably wrong). Political division, deglobalization, rising authoritarian populism, great power competition, AI capabilities. The country could fall. Great gales could crack the trees in half. Floodwaters could drag away the grasses.

But it is through conflict that we become stronger. It is through storms that the soil is nourished. The lightning will strike and the thunderstorm will rage.

Let us sway in the wind!

Footnotes