07/05/2026
In honor of the semiquincentennial, here’s a picture of me from the BICENTENNIAL, posing for my first grade picture in the fall of 1976 while living in mid-coast Maine. I was born in Pennsylvania, but Maine was where I have my earliest memories and I rather clearly remember the parade in Thomaston on Saturday, July 3, 1976, and then the following day where my father, the new pastor at Spruce Head, led a service that included multiple patriotic readings.
Apart from that day, the 70s were a rather dismal decade – the Beatles broke up, scandal brought down a president, our efforts in Viet Nam ended with embarrassment, the economy stagnated, Elvis died, and an energy crisis drove up prices and made it a day-long expedition if you wanted to fill up your gas tank.
Yet we were resilient – the 80s and 90s brought twenty years of nearly uninterrupted prosperity. New, strong leadership in the White House and elsewhere renewed our sense of patriotism, reset our national psyche, and restored us to the forefront of the free world. We were reminded, that, whatever our flaws, we were the greatest and most successful country in the history of the world and had been – and remain – a force largely for good both at home and abroad.
Seven of those years would see me living overseas, in a country with its own set of problems. While, personally, this was mostly a positive experience, it was also a daily reminder that the freedoms we took for granted back home were not only unique, but could easily be lost if we lacked vigilance. In South Africa, the government controlled what the media published, 80% of the country couldn’t vote, and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time would get you imprisoned or banned. Again, it took strong leadership to bring about largely peaceful change in that country, although the underlying strife and inherent instability remains.
Some, including those who have also lived overseas, may have a different perspective. That’s entirely fair – however similar experiences may seem on the surface, they will shape each person differently. Nonetheless, any reasonable understanding of history validates American exceptionalism. The list is almost endless, but one doesn’t have to look much further than the years following World War II – strong leadership under two presidents of opposite parties gave us the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, the restoration of Europe and Japan, and the establishment of Israel, while neutralizing the communist threat around the world until we could achieve victory over the Iron Curtain in 1989.
It’s often overlooked that for most of those early years, the United States was the only country with the technology to produce a nuclear weapon. Yet instead of using it as a force for imperialism, we used it only to end a war, saving millions of lives, and have not used it since, while sharing the technology with our allies. What other country in the history of the planet, when in possession of the original Weapon of Mass Destruction, would abstain from using it to aggressively expand its influence? That is American Exceptionalism in a nutshell.
History will also reveal our country’s flaws, many of which I see on a daily basis, but the overall track record is second to none, and whoever is in second place is “Twice a Prince” to 1973's “Secretariat.” In closing, two important reminders.
First, communism and its ugly step-sister socialism both have a consistent track record of failure. Wherever and however it has been tried, it leads to underperformance and corruption at best, imprisonment and death at worst. Socialism, as Margaret Thatcher said, only works until you run out of other people’s money, and communism is a philosophy formulated by an failed atheistic poet that doesn’t work at all.
Second, whatever your opinion of our national leaders and the current political climate, it’s important to keep the perspective that politics runs in cycles and politicians come and go. Some of them – and we all have our list – may not “go” fast enough, but in my lifetime I’ve seen 10 presidents. A few were great, a few were dismal, and the others were a mixed bag. That has been the trend for 250 years, but the Republic has survived, and as long as we stay true to our core values, including the moral and religious values cited by President and Founding Father John Adams, the Republic will continue to thrive. In any case, we cannot allow the transient nature of politics to conflict with our enduring patriotism, and certainly not with our permanent love of family.
My generation likely won’t make it to the Tricentennial, but our children and grandchildren will, and I hope they will carry the torch for the following generations and, if called, that they will defend our heritage and those freedoms, perhaps even in uniform. I pray that God will continue to bless America, protect our troops, and see the expansion of freedom worldwide.
Happy Fourth of July!
