America is about to turn 250, which means we are headed for fireworks, speeches, flags, bunting, commemorative coins, school programs, and at least one committee logo that probably cost more than my first truck.
Some of it will be wonderful. Some of it will be exhausting. And underneath all the pageantry, a lot of Americans are asking a harder question: Do we still believe this works?
The Independent reports on a new AP-NORC poll showing that fewer Americans now see the United States or its system of government as exceptional. Only about a quarter say America is superior to all other countries. Forty-four percent say it is one of the world’s greatest nations alongside others. Nearly three in ten say there are better countries. The poll also found declining confidence in democracy as central to America’s identity, and 51 percent now say the American Dream once held true but does not anymore.
That is not just a polling story. That is a kitchen-table gut check.
A lot of people are not hating America. They are looking at broken institutions, ugly politics, public schools in chaos, grocery bills that require a recovery period, housing that feels out of reach, and leaders who talk like HR memos left in a rainstorm. Then they wonder if the old promise still works for people who actually have to stretch a paycheck.
That is not disloyalty.
There is a difference between losing faith in the permanent political class and losing faith in the country.
In normal-person English: when government quits serving people well, people stop calling the system exceptional. That should sober us up. It should not surprise us.
Most regular Americans still understand something the professional cynics miss. America was never exceptional because our politicians were especially impressive. Read a little history. We have always had blowhards, schemers, cowards, crooks, and men in waistcoats who would absolutely have been unbearable on cable news.
America is exceptional because of the idea.
That human rights come from God, not government. That power should be limited. That citizens are not subjects. That we can govern ourselves. That hard work, family, faith, liberty, local responsibility, and ordered freedom can build a nation unlike anything the world has seen.
That idea is still worth defending.
But it does not defend itself.
You do not restore American exceptionalism with branding campaigns, taxpayer-funded pageantry, or speeches written by consultants who think “stakeholder engagement” is a love language.
You restore it by telling the truth. By teaching the founding honestly, the glory and the failures. By defending liberty when it is inconvenient. By rebuilding trust locally. By raising decent kids. By honoring work. By refusing to hand the country over to cynics, bureaucrats, and professional weirdos who think normal people are obstacles to be managed.
America 250 should have fireworks. I am not against fireworks. I am a grown man, but a good fireworks show still turns part of my brain into an eight-year-old holding a melting popsicle. But this birthday needs to be more than noise in the sky.
It should be a recommitment.
Not to politicians. Not to parties. Not to nostalgia. To the country itself.
Parents should ask what their kids are being taught. Churches should remember that gratitude and responsibility belong together. Citizens should show up locally before complaining nationally. Leaders should speak plainly, spend carefully, protect freedom, and stop treating regular Americans like focus-group props.
The old promise is not dead. But it is tired. And tired things need care, courage, and work.
America is not government property.
It belongs to us, under God, if we still have the courage to act like it.
Source: The Independent
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