My American Story - July 4, 2025
THB Insider #22
As the United States celebrates its 249th birthday this weekend, it would be easy to focus on the negative. THB readers will know that I am no fan of the current administration and I wasn’t a fan of the last administration either. Remember, THB is about science, policy, and politics.
Partisanship is currently popular but I’m not presently on either side.
Congress — by far the most important branch of government — has been AWOL for a while now, and the Supreme Court seems to be still trying to find its role in the 21st century. For those of us focused on policy rather than squabbling, it is an interesting time, to put it mildly.
Writing in The Free Press today, Michael Strain (an AEI colleague) and Cliff Asness provide some much needed perspective:
A quick look at some recent headlines shows that we have problems. The nation sharply and angrily divided along political lines. Rioters in the streets of Los Angeles. A destructive trade war. Debt and deficits at unsustainable levels.
Those are real and serious problems (and not close to an exhaustive list). But the tenor of the public debate—from elected officials to pundits, journalists to public intellectuals—implies that we are living in something approaching the apocalypse. To them, the game is rigged, the system is broken, everything is awful, and life was better decades ago.
That’s mostly bullshit.
Yes, we have real problems. But widen the aperture, and you’ll see that there has never been a better time to be alive than the present day.
I agree with this perspective. Strain and Asness also celebrate the fact that the present time is better for more people in more places than ever.
Our focus has been on the United States, because we are U.S. citizens and we are writing about what’s happening in our country. But it is not a small thing that global inequality continues to fall due to huge declines in the incidence of crushing, abject poverty. One does not have to be a nefarious “globalist” to feel great joy at this amazing development. One just has to have a heart. One does not have to be a genius to recognize it as a triumph of free-market capitalism, not of autocratic government. One just has to have a brain.
Every year, Gallup releases a poll in advance of July 4th on how Americans feel about America. The figure below shows self-reported pride in being an American by party identification from 2001 to 2025. A remarkable divide has opened up between Republicans and Democrats.
Almost all Republicans are proud to be Americans; Most Democrats are not. That’s a problem — for Republicans, Democrats, and America.
In addition to partisan differences, there are also stark differences in national pride by age. The figure below, also from Gallup, shows that young people have much less pride in the United States. I’m an independent Gen-X (aka, the best of the best;. but I digress!) and have views consistent with most in my cohort.
Others have discussed these issues in depth: I strongly recommend The Liberal Patriot. Here at THB, today I am not interested why you may dislike some of your fellow Americans or love your own political party or leader.
This weekend is a good time to come together. If you have comments to offer, please share what you like most about your political opponents — Thanks!
In the remainder of this post I share my American story in more personal terms than I usually do — THB subscribers should know a bit about who they are spending time with; I am a proud American.
My story is no doubt similar to tens or hundreds of millions of other Americans. It starts with immigrants . . .
Reminder: THB paid subscribers get lots of bonus content — books, posts, aritcles.