July 4, 2025

Now, on to the news…

Just over half of Americans—58 percent—report that they’re “very” or “extremely” proud to be an American, according to recent Gallup polling, the lowest figure on record. It’s a worrisome trend. Has our great nation gone out of fashion?

We asked six regular City Journal contributors to tell us what it is they love about America—and why they’ll never give up on it. You can read their thoughtful responses here.

In our autumn 2012 issue, Myron Magnet asks: “Why was the American Revolution, of all great revolutions, the only successful one, resulting in two centuries and more of unexampled freedom and prosperity?”

For one thing, it was limited: the Founders strictly wanted individual freedom. “They sought only to restore the political liberty they had actually experienced for 150 years, and they constructed their new government to preserve it,” Magnet writes.

Further, the Founders’ Protestantism contributed to the deep value they placed on the individual, and their belief that everyone had an immortal soul related to God. That meant they viewed individuals as paramount to the state.

 “That so many great men came together at that time and place to do such great deeds is one of history’s most thought-provoking miracles,” Magnet concludes.

Published six years ago, Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope remains a wonderful resource on U.S. history. The book offers a fact-driven history of America’s founding, but it is far from an ordinary textbook in its ability to situate the nation in a broader historical context. 

“To hear many historians today tell it, the American past offers a choice: you can love your country or you can learn its history—but not both. McClay rejects this dichotomy,” Tim Rice writes. “Land of Hope proves that patriotism is not only compatible with a clear view of America’s past—it should proceed from it as well.”

Read his 2019 review of the book, which he says offers “a grandeur to American history all but absent in most books of this kind.”

In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge gave a powerful speech in Philadelphia to mark the 150th anniversary of American independence. “Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten,” he said at the time, “the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection.”

In 2021 City Journal reprinted the speech, which you can read in full here.

“Trump belongs on Mt. Rushmore. He is the most beneficially effective president we’ve had in the past century or more. That’s why the Left will never allow him on Rushmore.”

—

mattcoul, commenting on who belongs on Mount Rushmore

Photo credit: Probal Rashid / Contributor / LightRocket via Getty Images