OPINION:
Earlier this week, most Americans took a day and celebrated their good fortune in being a part of the greatest nation on Earth. Unfortunately, not everyone felt like celebrating.
It is a well-known feature of opinion research that those who identify as progressives are less enthusiastic about the United States than most other Americans.
For instance, in November 2021, Pew Research asked whether there are other countries better than the United States. A quarter of the respondents said yes, but that was driven almost entirely by the 75% of self-identified progressives who said yes.
In December 2020, More in Common asked whether respondents were proud to be American. Three-quarters (78%) said they were; 55% of self-identified progressives said they weren’t.
There are other examples, but you get the idea.
Why are progressives, generally speaking, unhappy with the United States?
The United States is and has been the greatest force for good in the history of the world. Even if the only thing Americans did were invent electricity and produce the Green Revolution in agriculture (led by Norman Borlaug, the most important man of the 20th century), the United States would be the greatest nation ever.
Those two inventions have enabled, saved and improved the lives of billions of people.
If the only things Americans invented were the computer, the television and motion pictures, we would be the greatest nation ever. Every day, billions of lives are improved and made richer by those inventions.
If the only things Americans invented were airplanes, plastics, gasoline or jet fuel, we would be the greatest nation ever.
If the only things Americans invented were refrigeration and air conditioning, we would be the greatest nation ever.
If the only things Americans invented were the sewing machine or the assembly line, we would be the greatest nation ever.
If the only technological achievements the Americans could boast of were going to the moon or landing a spacecraft on Mars, we would be the greatest nation ever.
With respect to international achievements, few people believe that the world would be a safer or better place if the Germans or the Russians had developed nuclear weapons before the United States. Few if any want to live in a world in which China is the lone superpower.
All of this is a problem for progressives. These inventions and improvements democratized mobility, prosperity, energy, health, information, housing, and even caloric intake.
The progressive, credentialed class is intensely uncomfortable with the idea that average people are allowed to sculpt their own lives without supervision from their betters. The problem for the rest of America is that the progressive, credentialed crowd holds (at least for a little while longer) the commanding heights of American society: the media, the government and the academy.
The good news is that efforts to remedy this situation proceed apace, with occasionally obvious moments of friction, usually in the political realm and usually centered on efforts to remake at least one of the parties as a legitimate counterbalance to the progressive elite.
The signers of the Declaration of Independence would understand our current moment; they foreshadowed the democratization of everything and knew that the powerful would oppose it. They themselves were a bit of a hodgepodge — businessmen, farmers, lawyers, ministers, tradesmen, a doctor, a newspaperman.
Some were legitimately wealthy and embedded in the ruling class, but most had grown up in the middle and upper middle class in the American Colonies. Those who had gone to college went to school at places like William and Mary rather than Oxford.
As we put another July Fourth in the rearview mirror, it is good to know that what the signers of the Declaration of Independence struggled for — the right of men to find their own path without unsolicited and unwanted “help” — is still very much alive in these United States, the greatest nation the world has ever known.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House. He can be reached at mike@mwrstrat.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.