Brexit marks Britain’s return to patriotism, an ideal slumping in the U.S., where a recent Wallethub poll found just 28 percent of people thought America was the world’s best country, despite it being the dream nation of more than 130 million folks around the globe.
For their information there are 240 reasons to celebrate the most consequential nation on earth — one for each year of her spectacular life, each one as compelling as her Stars and Stripes, the most evocative flag of our time.
On July 4 we reflect upon a glorious odyssey that began with a six-paragraph document — still the final word on self-determination.
The Declaration of Independence — unprecedented in scope and vision — laid the foundation of a fledgling nation that would become a lightning rod for the human spirit, and a guidepost of hope for generations of immigrants flocking here for a better life. Their stories embody the truths the Founding Fathers held as 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.”
Those stirring words inspired a bloody revolution and severed ties with the British oppressors, but they are as undeniable today as they were on July 4, 1776 when Congress approved them and set the stage for a pioneering, peerless new land.
America was the first to declare the universal right to revolution, embrace different cultures, permit freedom of worship, create the public school, and give freely to public betterment projects here and abroad. Credit the extraordinary triumphs to the sacrifices and labors of ordinary Americans who died on the battlefield to honor the American way of life, and created a tidal force of enterprise and hard work that engineered the best production system in history, improved the human standard, and made the American Dream possible.
America — still an evolutionary baby — is a Goliath of democracy and humanity, towering head and shoulders above problem nations that have been around since the dawn of civilization with negligible returns.
Independence Day is a portrait of who Americans are, what America stands for, how her footprint has touched countless lives, why a world without her doesn’t bear thinking about, and why allegiance to her is so critical.
On Twitter: @BritShavana
