What I Love About America

A love letter to my country on Independence Day

We are at a unique moment in the history of the United States of America, the great republic our ancestors fought to establish and uphold. It’s a moment where, for perfectly good reasons, many of us are not happy with the state of our country. I know I’m not. But today is not the day for that sort of talk. So, as I always try to do on July 4, I am going to take a moment to focus on what I love about our great nation. Here we go.

I love the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. I love the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and the hundreds of beautiful letters that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams wrote to one another in retirement. I love the journals of Lewis and Clark and the diary of John Quincy Adams. I love the Declaration of Sentiments, the founding document of the women’s rights movement, written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I love the Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King and The Strenuous Life by Theodore Roosevelt.

I love Abraham Lincoln's “Gettysburg Address” and his “Second Inaugural Address”. I love the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments. I love FDR's "Four Freedoms" speech, JFK's speech at Rice University in which he declared that America chose to go to the Moon, MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech, Daniel Webster’s “Second Reply to Hayne” during the Nullification Crisis of 1830, Barbara Jordan's speech in defense of the Constitution during the Watergate hearings, and the 1987 speech in which Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. As ironic as it might seem on this day, I love Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?”

I love Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Harper Lee, Louisa May Alcott and Tomas Rivera, Edgar Allan Poe and Claude McKay. I love the poetry of Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Phillis Wheatly, Robert Frost, and Maya Angelou. I love the wonderful books of David McCullough. I love The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. They are all part of the same story.

I love the American flag, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the old-fashioned patriotic songs sung by elementary school choirs. I love the Statue of Liberty (thanks, France!), Mount Rushmore, and the Liberty Bell. I love bald eagles and American bison. I love Mount Vernon and Monticello, not only as living tributes to great men but as reminders of the reality of slavery in our nation’s story. I love the monuments to great statesmen and leaders around the National Mall in our nation's capital, honoring Lincoln, Jefferson, FDR, MLK, Eisenhower, and George Mason (a sadly forgotten Founding Father, but I’m glad he has a monument). I love the memorials to those who gave their lives for the country in the First World War, the Second World War, Korea, and Vietnam. I love the Alamo. I love the monument to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment in Boston.

I love St. John's Church in Richmond, where Patrick Henry asked to be given either liberty or death. I love the Old North Church in Boston, where two lanterns were once hung to signal riders that the British were coming by sea. I love the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. and Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity Church in New York City. I love Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, whose young pastor once agreed to lead a boycott of the city’s buses in opposition to segregation. I love the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, to which George Washington addressed a letter in 1790, saying that the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance”. I love the Mother Mosque of America, the oldest purpose-built Islamic house of worship in the country, in, of all places, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I love Emanuel Leutze's painting Washington Crossing the Delaware, with its subtle inclusion of a black man, an immigrant, an American Indian, and possibly even a woman. I love the USS Constitution - "Old Ironsides" - launched in 1797, bloodied in battles against the British and the Barbary Pirates, and still officially a commissioned warship in the United States Navy today. I love the American Battle Monuments Commission, which carefully maintains dozens of national cemeteries around the world where tens of thousands of our fallen warriors rest in peace.

I love the Space Needle in Seattle and the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center in New York City. I love the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. I love the Art Deco architecture of Miami and the Spanish colonial architecture of Santa Fe. I love the Golden Gate Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the Astoria–Megler Bridge, and all the thousands of small bridges one passes over while driving the back roads of our vast nation.

I love the cultural institutions of New York City: the Met Opera, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Hayden Planetarium, the musicals of Broadway, and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. I love the museums of the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.: the National Air and Space Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National Museum of American History. I love the Boston Aquarium, the San Diego Zoo, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, and Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. I love the Library of Congress and all the presidential libraries. I love Ellis Island, through which uncounted thousands of immigrants (including some of my own ancestors, in 1906 and 1907) passed through to become Americans, their eyes sparkling with dreams of freedom and a better life for themselves and their children.

I love the National Parks: Yellowstone, the Everglades, Yosemite, Acadia, Bryce Canyon, and all the rest. I love Carlsbad Caverns and Mammoth Cave. I love the haunting stillness one can feel amid the ancient cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park and Bandelier National Monument. I love the carefully preserved sites of the mysterious Mound Builders. I love the way the wind howls through "The Window" at Big Bend National Park. I love the national battlefields: Saratoga, Yorktown, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, and all the rest. I love the carefully preserved homes of historical figures, such as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington D.C., and the sites of historical events, like the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kitty Hawk on the coast of North Carolina or the Flight 93 National Memorial in the middle of Pennsylvania. I love the Freedom Trail in Boston, the cradle of our glorious revolution, and Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, the oldest continually inhabited place in what is now the United States.

I love NASA. I love the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers that are exploring the surface of Mars. I love the Juno probe currently in orbit around Jupiter, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in orbit around the Moon (though it could have had a better name), and the plucky little New Horizons spacecraft that flew past Pluto a decade ago and is now sailing on into the Kuiper Belt. I love the two Voyager probes, still sending back data decades after being launched and embarking on their lonely journey out of the Solar System and into the vastness of the Milky Way Galaxy. I love the beautiful photographs taken by the Hubble space telescope and the James Webb space telescope. I love the scientific information sent back by Galileo from Jupiter, Messenger from Mercury, Cassini from Saturn, Magellan from Venus, Dawn from the asteroid belt, and dozens of other amazing missions throughout the Solar System. I love that the United States was the first nation to land human beings on the surface of another world.

I love turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, green bean casseroles, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. I love Texas barbecue more than words can express, but I’m willing to admit that the folks in Kansas City, Memphis, and the Carolinas make some pretty good stuff, too. I love well-made cheeseburgers. I love the breakfast tacos of Austin and San Antonio. I love locally brewed beer and locally distilled whiskey. I love Kentucky bourbon. I love the overpriced hot dogs and pretzels served at baseball stadiums. I love corn dogs at the Texas State Fair. I love the cabernet sauvignons of Napa and Sonoma County, the tempranillos of the Texas Hill Country, and the pinot noirs of Oregon and Washington, proof that Thomas Jefferson was right when he said America could produce wines as good as those of Europe. I love clam chowder from Massachusetts, Alaskan salmon, maid-rite sandwiches from Iowa, bison steaks from Wyoming, “Rocky Mountain oysters” from Colorado (spoiler alert: they’re bull testicles), spicy chicken from Nashville, and Louisiana gumbo. I love cheddar cheese from Vermont and Colby cheese from Wisconsin. I love Native American frybread.

I love pizza. I love Brooklyn-style pizza, which is what most Americans think of when they think of pizza. But I also love deep-dish pizza from Chicago, coal-fired thin crust pizza from Connecticut topped with clams, rectangular pizza with burst crusts from Detroit, pizza from St. Louis with crust so thin it’s almost like a cracker, and thick and doughy Sicilian-style pizza. I love how American pizza is a culinary gift to our country from the five percent of our people who are Italian-American.

I love drinking a good hurricane at Pat O'Brien's Bar in New Orleans. I love the Steak Dunigan made at the Pink Adobe restaurant in Santa Fe. I love the chili half-smokes at Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington D.C. I love the fresh shrimp at Singleton's Seafood Shack in Mayport, Florida, taken right out of the St. Johns River only hours before they’re on the plate. I love lobsters from Maine and oysters from Apalachicola in the Florida panhandle. I love Boston cream pie and I love s'mores around the campfire. I love the grits, catfish, fried okra, and pecan pie of the South. I love chimichangas at Tex-Mex restaurants. I love Jewish delis in New York City. I love kolache festivals in small towns that have strong Czech heritages. I love coffee, bacon, eggs, and hash browns served at dingy highway diners by sarcastic old waitresses who reek of cigarettes. I love dive bars. I love making dinner from ingredients purchased at farmers' markets. I love peach cobbler from Georgia, saltwater taffy on New Jersey boardwalks, and Girl Scout cookies. I love Cuban sandwiches in Florida restaurants. I love the delicious food you can enjoy in family-owned restaurants in cities and towns all across this bountiful country.

I love the Mississippi River, the Great Lakes, the Columbia River, the Ohio River, Crater Lake, the Tennessee River, Chesapeake Bay, the Susquehanna River, the 14,420 lakes of Minnesota, and all the other rivers and bodies of water that run their courses throughout our land. I love the vast skies of the Great Plains, the majestic peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the palisades of the Hudson Valley in New York, the brilliant colors of the autumn leaves in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, the volcanoes of Hawaii, the beautiful desolation of the painted deserts of the American Southwest, the great forests of the Pacific Northwest, and the rocky seashores of New England. I love the successful effort to reintroduce grey wolves back into Yellowstone National Park. I love KOA campgrounds.

I love New Orleans jazz, the blues of Memphis and Chicago, the indie rock of the Pacific Northwest, the bluegrass of the Appalachian Mountains, and the amazing music that comes out of Austin. I love the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. I love the blending of Mexican and Central European elements one can hear in Tejano music. I love the singer-songwriters of the seventies. I love Creedence Clearwater Revival and Johnny Cash. I love how a single rendition of Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville” can make a bad day better. I love mariachi bands at Mexican restaurants. I love the singing of James Taylor, Elvis Presley, and Bing Crosby, the guitars of B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, and Stevie Ray Vaughn, the trumpet of Miles Davis, the drums of Art Blakey, and the piano of Dave Brubeck. I love the beautiful voices of Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Dolly Parton, and Billie Holiday. I love the classical compositions of Aaron Copeland and the grand marches of John Philip Sousa. I love the haunting music that can be produced by the Native American flute.

I love trick-or-treating on Halloween. I love Civil War reenactors and the ridiculous arguments they have with each other about brass buttons. I love the World Series and minor league baseball games. I love independent bookstores like BookPeople in Austin, the Tattered Cover in Denver, City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, and Prairie Lights in Iowa City. I love county fairs, pumpkin festivals, and outdoor church services on Christmas and Easter. I love the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival and the Santa Fe Indian Market. I love Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations and Von Steuben Day parades. I love that the nation’s biggest annual celebration of George Washington’s birthday takes place in Laredo, Texas, a community more than 95% Hispanic.

I love silly American traditions. I love presidential pardons for turkeys just before Thanksgiving. I love that the Le Pavillion Hotel in New Orleans serves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with ice-cold milk in the lobby every evening at ten o'clock. I love the singing of “Sweet Caroline” by Red Sox fans at Fenway Park in the middle of the eighth inning every game. I love the daily duck parade between the elevator and the lobby fountain at the Peabody in Memphis. I love the World Cow Chip Throwing Contest in Beaver, Oklahoma, and I love Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. I love the different drinks and different theme songs for each of the Triple Crown horse races. I love the emergence of Punxsutawney Phil from Gobbler's Knob on Groundhog Day. I loved the Poe Toaster, wonder what happened to him, and still hope he comes back.

I love public schools and private schools. I love crossing guards and yellow school buses. I love little league games and Sunday school classes. I love bake sales that raise money for middle school bands. I love family-owned businesses and restaurants that have local high school football jerseys hanging on their walls. I love public libraries and PTA meetings. I love local chapters of the Lions Club and VFW. I love local volunteer-run history museums in small towns.

I love the mystique of the Golden Age of Hollywood: Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly. I love old Frank Capra movies, especially Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I love the movies Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together. I love Frank Sinatra and John Wayne. I love the script-writing of Aaron Sorkin, the documentaries of Ken Burns, the musicals of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the films of Steven Spielberg and John Hughes, and the acting of Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Meryl Streep. I love watching the Academy Awards. I love Field of Dreams, a film which says so much about America. I love Robert Redford running around the bases at the end of The Natural. I love the Charlie Brown specials shown every Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I love reruns of M.A.S.H., The Andrew Griffith Show, Cheers, and Seinfeld. I love PBS programs like NOVA, Masterpiece Theater, and American Experience.

I love how Congress, despite its flaws, its partisanship, and the corruption and mediocrity of so many of its members, can sometimes rise to the occasion and pass legislation that dramatically changes America for the better. I love the Homestead Act, the Morrill Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (more commonly known as “the G.I. Bill”), the National Defense Education Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Higher Education Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and many, many others.

I love how most of the world’s democracies wouldn’t be democracies if it weren’t for the United States. I love how America, after crushing Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II, did not treat those countries as conquered nations to be plundered, but reached out to the German and Japanese people in the spirit of friendship and humanity to help them rebuild their nations and establish democratic governments. I love how the United States implemented the Marshall Plan, channeling American wealth and resources to help repair the damage caused by war. I love especially that the three men principally responsible for the Marshall Plan – President Harry Truman, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, and Secretary of State George Marshall – were, respectively, a Democrat, a Republican, and a political independent, proof that Americans of all political stripes can work together for the common good and the benefit of the world.

I love moderates, liberals, progressives, genuine conservatives, and libertarians - all equally American. I love peaceful protesters, who can remind us of the hard work that lies before us if our republic is to live up to its founding ideals. I love the Silent Sentinels, who stood outside the White House in quiet protest for two-and-a-half years, enduring great suffering and hardship as they called upon their nation’s leaders to recognize the right of women to vote. I love the Little Rock Nine and Rosa Parks. I love the naturalization ceremonies in which immigrants take the oath of citizenship to the United States, instantly becoming as American as anyone whose ancestors served in the Continental Army or came over on the Mayflower.

I love freedom of expression, and I’m okay with the fact that it means people can express opinions with which I disagree and which I might find offensive or even outrageous. I love that I can stand on any street corner and denounce any politician in the nation. I love freedom of religion and the separation of church and state, which allow me to worship God as I choose, and I’m okay with the fact that it means people can practice religions different from my own or choose not to practice any religion at all. I love that a person accused of even the most heinous crime imaginable will still get a lawyer and appear before a judge and jury in the same manner as anybody else. I love protections from cruel and unusual punishments. I love that the police cannot enter my home or search my car unless they have a warrant issued by a judge. I love that anyone - regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, level of education, national origin, political affiliation, favorite NFL team, or whatever else - can go into a voting booth and cast their ballot for whomever they wish.

I love the men and women working hard at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the doctors and nurses in our nation’s hospitals. I love those police officers, the vast majority, who are good and decent people doing an incredibly stressful and often dangerous job to keep us safe. I love firefighters and emergency medical workers who protect us every day and night. I love the teachers who work in an extraordinarily demanding job with little pay because they love children and care about the future of the country. I love the plumbers, electricians, pest exterminators, highway construction workers, and mechanics without whom the country would fall apart overnight. I love janitors and garbage collectors. I love that anyone in America can take a risk and start their own business.

I love the generosity of the American people. I love the volunteers who make possible the work of nonprofits like Meals on Wheels, Homes for our Troops, and Habitat for Humanity. I love church groups who cram into vans and drive to coastal towns demolished by hurricanes to bring aid and comfort to the disaster victims. I love the Louisianans of the Cajun Navy, who show up in flooded regions with their boats to assist in search-and-rescue missions. I love Operation BBQ Relief, who show up in devastated regions with their grills and smokers and pass out thousands of barbecue sandwiches to those in need of a warm meal and simple reassurance that things will be okay.

I love the men and women who have served or are serving in the armed forces. I love the few remaining veterans of the Second World War, who fought a glorious worldwide crusade to destroy fascism. I love the grizzled old veterans of Korea and Vietnam, whose heroism and sacrifice has still never been fully appreciated. I love the men and women who have more recently fought our nation’s enemies in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. I love the Japanese-Americans of the 442nd Infantry Regiment who served in Europe during World War II and became the most decorated regiment in the history of the United States Army. I love the 16th Infantry Regiment, formed in 1861 and whose combat record stretches from Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, and Normandy to more modern battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whose soldiers still stand ready to defend our nation even as you are reading these words.

I love the Rough Riders, the Navajo Code Talkers, the 75th Ranger Regiment, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Women Airforce Service Pilots, the Iron Brigade, Merrill’s Marauders, the Buffalo Soldiers, the Doolittle Raiders, the Seabees, and the Irish Brigade. I love John Glover’s Marblehead men who, on an unforgettable Christmas Night in the year of our country’s birth, manned the boats that carried Washington’s army across the Delaware River. I love the 1st Infantry Division - the “Big Red One”, the 101st Airborne Division - the “Screaming Eagles”, the 3rd Infantry Division - the “Rock of the Marne”, the 1st Marine Division - “The Old Breed”, and all the other divisions of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.

I love SEAL Team Six, who rid the world of Osama bin Laden's evil on an epic night in the spring of 2011. I love the 1st Battalion, 5th United States Field Artillery, formed by Alexander Hamilton in 1776 and today the oldest continuously existing unit in the United States Army. I love the elite group of soldiers known as the Sentinels, who maintain their lonely vigil in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery twenty-four hours a day, even amidst hurricanes, blizzards, and terrorist attacks, as has been done without a moment’s break since 1948. I love the men and women of every battalion, every ship, and every squadron who are willing to put their lives on the line to protect everything we hold dear, including all I've written about in this piece.

I could go on and on and on, but I think the point I'm trying to make is pretty clear.

I love America.