“No other nation’s founding could be so happily, indifferently, noisily, diversely, inspiringly, mawkishly, carelessly, embarrassingly, or fervently celebrated, because no other nation—no other nation—can claim to be what we are. As Archibald MacLeish once put it, we Americans are ‘the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created people in the history of the world.’“Somehow, despite slips here and there, we have managed to balance in the main that combination of ‘private rights and public happiness’ so proudly extolled by James Madison. Despite all the encroachments on our freedoms, despite all the insidious growth of our government at every level, we remain more free than anyone, anywhere, and in an ineffable way that no one else but an American or would-be American can completely understand. We are the people of a fabulous country, as Thomas Wolfe wrote, ‘the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.’
“July Fourth. Independence Day. It is the exceptional day of an exceptional country; whether celebrated or ignored, it is the bright and happy measure of our freedom within the security, the plenty, the enduring challenges of this astounding enterprise, the United States of America.”
--Ralph Kinney Bennett, The American
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