Happy Semiquincentennial America!
It’s a holiday, so I’ll keep this brief before fireworks coruscate the night sky: America was and is the greatest living experiment in cultivating human ingenuity in furtherance of individual and collective progress.
That progress includes material (the free-market capitalism that creates the incentives for both brilliant invention and banal construction of everything from homes to data centers), cultural (America’s soft power remains unrivaled globally across books, music, movies, video games, and more), social (a persistent drive to improve the lots of individuals and keep them unshackled by unnecessary restraints), security (the American military has no rival, period), and technological (do I really need to spell this out?).
While we often glaze over in distracted stupor as we skim our infinite feeds, enamored and repelled by the bric-a-brac of the day’s events, there is a much more sanguine view to be found over the long horizon. America just keeps lurching toward the future. Yes, there’s fighting, and partisanship, and arguments. Progress in a democracy is inevitably messy — how could it not be? Our fights are precisely what ensures that our institutions are responsive to our needs — and ensures they will endure for generations to come.
That the fight takes place right in the public square is thanks to what I consider to be America’s most sterling contribution to man: its commitment to freedom of speech and other rights enumerated in the First Amendment. It never ceases to astonish me the degree to which our peer countries curtail speech through regulation. America has the most robust speech protections in the world, bar none. It’s a commitment that has its downsides that other countries attempt to ameliorate, but they do so at the cost of something far more fundamental: a belief that a free people can think for themselves, speak for themselves and comport themselves in accordance with their responsibilities as citizens. The First Amendment is a strident statement of optimism, and as a writer, I appreciate its affordances everyday.
Whether you are at home or abroad, and whether you are an American citizen, aspiring to become one, or just part of this great human tribe on Earth, it’s worth taking a breath and reminding ourselves that 250 years ago, a group of enlightened individuals came together and decided that we’d break from the continuity of the past, and that things could and would be better for everyone. They built an engine for progress that has never stopped. Happy Fourth!