On being the greatest nation on earth.

July 4, 2026

I’m usually the most patriotic person amongst my friends. Often, I’m asked, “Why? Why do you love this country so much?” If there was ever a time to put it in writing, today is the day, as we celebrate 250 years of independence.

The United States was founded on a set of ideals, a choice that remains unique to this day. Most countries are founded on the basis of an ethnic group or a set of religious beliefs. Not us. We chose to hold “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” That we are “endowed with certain unalienable rights.”

By its mere existence, our country made these truths, which were by no means obvious at the time, self-evident. These last 250 years have been our struggle to make the words we wrote a reality. It is a constant fight, and one that will remain so for eternity.

What makes America exceptional is not what we are today or what we were in the past. It is what we choose to believe our future can be. It is a constant pursuit of greatness, of getting closer and closer to these truths that we hold to be “self-evident.”

No other nation on earth so deeply believes in a set of ideas like we do. No other nation on earth understands its flaws and fights to correct them. We fought through the winter at Valley Forge. We fought ourselves at Gettysburg. We fought from Seneca Falls to the steps of the Capitol. We fought on the beaches of Normandy. We fought on a bridge in Selma.

America is a promise not yet fulfilled. It is a work in progress, a nation inured to change. Our responsibility as Americans is to question, to criticize, to protest, to push our country closer and closer to those ideals. We will never be perfect. It is that pursuit of perfection that makes us great.