America’s Semiquincentennial
Around this time of year people ask me if we Brits celebrate July 4th. I have devised a variety of ripostes to this friendly goading. School history classes never even reached 1776 – interminable hours were dedicated to prior centuries. Perhaps English historians concluded nothing much important happened 250 years ago…
Of course, we do celebrate July 4th – I chose America in 1982, and it’s welcomed me ever since.
I love America. Not in the same way that I love my family, but for what it is, what it represents and the opportunity it has given me. Looking in from the outside as a teenager in the UK forty four years ago, I felt this urgent desire to be part of the American story. It represented free markets and capitalism. Positivity. Excitement. Opportunity. Ronald Reagan’s sunny optimism when he won the Presidential election in 1980 contrasted so much with the dour outlook of many adults I knew. They couldn’t move, but I could. And I had to.
Sometimes on YouTube I watch Reagan’s 1984 political commercial, It’s Morning Again in America, aired during his campaign to beat Walter Mondale and win re-election. How could you not love that nation? Watching it still gives me goosebumps.
Forty four years and counting has not dulled my enthusiasm and love for my adopted country. It’s become fashionable to lament the increasing political divide. Opinion polls show distressingly high feelings of negativity. Too many people don’t expect the future to be better than today.
I am not among them, for many reasons: I arrived with no money and an education only through high school (albeit a good one). I’ve enjoyed more professional success than I ever expected and more than would have been possible by staying in the UK. Our children enjoyed a more abundant childhood than me and better than if they’d grown up British. The steadily increasing distance between average incomes in both countries serves as further vindication.
The decline of my old country saddens me. Unlike America, Britain doesn’t solve its problems. Unchecked immigration and a stagnant economy seduced the electorate into a simple solution. Cynical politicians led them to Brexit, which failed to solve one problem and made the other worse. America’s not perfect, but our politics more readily hews to the popular will.
Nonetheless, I’m incredibly proud of my English heritage and upbringing. It molded me, but America made me. I’ve never felt unwelcome – Americans are naturally hospitable people. I’ve never for even one second considered that perhaps moving from the old world to the new was a mistake.
I’ve been fortunate to know so many wonderful people, and I continue to meet more. They don’t precisely reflect America – my world is one of energy investors and golf clubs, both of which are conservative and politically Republican. But while my tribe may not represent all of America, it represents much of what is best about America. We are optimistic, self-made and positive that the future will be better than today. It always has been. We confront our problems, more or less solve them and move on to better times with technological progress raising living standards ever higher.
To see a dark future is to ignore America’s history. The energy of legal immigrants has always defined the country’s relentless advance. That is part of the DNA. The US remains that shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan, my first president, so evocatively described. His sunny outlook is still mine.
Being optimistic makes life more enjoyable and aligns with history. Being pessimistic and right offers no prize worth having and is a miserable existence. America is a beautiful, wonderful country, the world’s greatest. I don’t see any sign of that changing, at least for people willing to work hard and embrace opportunity.
I hope you have a wonderful Independence Day weekend. Happy 250th birthday to America.
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