Proud of America on the Fourth of July

I have loved America since the first morning that I woke up in Denver in December 1965 after flying from England to spend Christmas with my parents. This is what I saw, from my parents' apartment at  8th and Clarkson, on that glorious morning as the sun prepared to rise into the gin-clear mile-high sky:

Hey! What is not to like! And pretty soon we were heading West on the 6th Avenue expressway into the mountings. That's the Rocky Mountains to you.

When I went back to Limeyland after my trip I was startled to find out that my fellow Brits were unimpressed. OK, I said to myself: I'm outta here.

Oh, all right. I didn't quite say that, because I hadn't yet learned to talk like a baseball umpire in the movies. But you get the point.

Ever since I have loved America, more and more. And I have often shed a tear for Britain, the land of my childhood.

Now, Reuters does an annual poll about Americans being Proud to be an American, and Reuters is anxious to tell us that, for the first time there is no longer a majority of Americans that are Extremely Proud of America. The poll question is thus:

How proud are you to be an American -- extremely proud, moderately proud, only a little proud, or not at all proud?

The all-time high was in 2003 after 9-11 when a full 70 percent of Americans declared themselves Very Proud. Ever since Very Proud has been going down. Even the existential moment of Barack Obama's first Fourth as president did not provide an uptick.

The folks least proud to be an American are Democrats, college graduates, and liberals. Gosh, I wonder what that is all about? I mean, Only In America can a crass real-estate developer from Queens get to be president! And yet only 23 percent of liberals are now Very Proud to be Americans.

Extreme pride among liberals has dropped nine points in the past year and 28 points since 2013.

What is wrong with these people? Don't they have compassion and respect for the ordinary real-estate stiff?

But really, this is not surprising. All my life I have observed that my liberal friends affect a supercilious skepticism with regard to the glory of America. You might say that among liberal college graduates it is fashionable to be skeptical about America. I mean. Whatabout slavery, racism, toxic masculinity?

And given that liberals run the schools and the university, what else would you expect but that Good Little Girls like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with BAs from Boston University would be non-patriotic Democratic Socialists. What Good Little Girls learn in school is to follow the neo-tribalism of identity politics rather than the more elevated tribe of the nation. Because Hitler.

And really, I can't say that I am particularly proud to be an American. Rather, I feel blessed beyond all measure to be an American, to enjoy the immense fortune of being an American and the residual legatee of chaps like George Washington, the man on a white horse than won the revolutionary war, served two terms as president and then went home; Alexander Hamilton, the "bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar" that served as Washington's chief of staff at age 25, wrote a good part of the Federalist Papers and founded the US financial system. And so on.

How could we deserve such political leaders?

To me, the terrifying thing about America is that, again and again, we have gotten just the leaders we needed: Reagan, to clear up the follies of the Johnson and Nixon and Carter years. And now Trump, to clean up the follies of the administrative state in the Obama years.

For my judgement is that we are dealing with a Great Reaction, that wants to return to the past, with the neo-tribalism of identity politics, the neo-feudalism of the welfare state, and the neo-piracy of using the government to loot and plunder your fellow men and women. What is so wrong in these hearts and minds that they return to the failures of the past for their inspiration?

In my view we are witnessing an almost titanic struggle in our time between the worship of politics-as-salvation and the emerging culture and economy that rewards people for simply contributing honestly and faithfully to the welfare of all in the market economy.

It is natural and physical that people should look to the past for inspiration, and natural and physical that they should be skeptical of the utter miracle of the last 200 years of the Great Enrichment.

But all of life is an act of faith, to live and grow in the hope that things will work out. And the greatest act of faith has perhaps been the faith of the Founders in their Declaration of Independence that a free people could govern themselves, and did not need to submit to the knout of a supercilious ruling class in order to secure safety.

And that is something to be really proud of.