The A&W Drive-In in Cortland, New York, isn't just a lunch spot — it's a time machine



There’s a time portal in Upstate New York that can take you back 40-50 years.

You’ll have a hard time believing this, but it’s true. You’ll find normal people, friendly customer service, sincere smiles, and multi-generational families having good old-fashioned fun. Inside this wrinkle in time, there are no touchscreens, no questions about signing up for text messages to get a discount, and no dead-eyed Gen Z cashiers who need to get a manager if they key in the wrong amount.

Every carhop was a pretty, well-put-together woman between 20 and 50. All wore clean, well-fitting uniforms and genuine smiles on their faces.

This doorway to a better time is disguised as the A&W Restaurant on route 281 in Cortland, and I believe it can save America. Stay with me for details below; first we have to take stock of where we are in 2025.

Chimes and misdemeanors

In a typical day, the average American — let’s call him Matt — gets into his car and struggles with a touchscreen TV just to get the air conditioning going while a series of “helpful reminder” chimes and warnings lecture about seatbelts and looking behind before he backs up.

At work, he has to answer to Caitlynne, the candy-haired HR manager who demands to know when he’s going to sit through the Belonging and Inclusion video. When he answers the phone, some random under-35 with phone anxiety who won’t identify himself asks, “Is this, like, Matt?”

Check yourself

The fast casual lunch spot has his favorite burrito ready to go at 12:15, but Worker Tyler insists Matt “has to” use “the app” to pay “because we don’t have the staff for the register.”

On the days that they do have the staff, Adelaide hands him the bag over the counter, then swings the iPad around: “It’s just gonna ask you a question?” Fast-food workers believe they’re entitled to tips for handing you a bag, but they don’t have the character to ask directly, so they disguise it with a phony statement delivered in “upspeak.”

On the way home, Matt’s wife, Becca, texts him to ask him to stop at the grocery and get half and half. This “quick stop” takes a half-hour because while the store is filled with shoppers, only one live human is on a register. The self-checkouts have lines going down the paper towel aisle and one sullen heifer with face metal to supervise the so-stupid customers, who, like, can’t even figure out how to scan milk?

Tech tyrants

Once Matt is home, Becca apologizes that the laundry isn’t done, but she can’t get the washing machine to run. It has 26 “features” and cycles — none of which say simply, “Wash in hot water.”

Becca made the inferior-human mistake of trying to make the tub fill all the way, but the Wi-Fi-enabled machine decided that using enough water to get the clothes clean is Causing the Environment to Experience Harm. So it just sits there doing nothing, and Becca can go suck eggs.

In bed with their books, Becca and Matt sigh as Matt’s work phone dings at him with a message from his boss that “can’t wait” until morning. But he can’t open his email, because company policy requires two-factor (read: “You must have two computers on your person at all times”) authentication, and the “super easy app” with a special secret code keeps shutting down.

Fridge opens YOU

Does any of this sound familiar? It’s what life looks like in 2025, a time that most of us in Generation X thought would look like "The Jetsons." But instead of friendly robot maids and easy-to-fly space cars, we’re bossed around by over-digitized automobiles and jacked-up telephones.

For the first time in history, our machines don’t execute our commands. Instead, they issue orders and commands to us. Get the key sequence right or you’re not eating tonight, meat bag.

Matt to the fridge: “Open the freezer doors, HAL.”

The fridge: “I feel like maybe I can’t do that, Matt?”

Woe betide anyone who complains about this. Complainers will be assured by young people (and a surprising number of middle-agers) that they’re lol-boomer-stupid for not instantly recognizing that the squiggly line drawing on the touchscreen is supposed to mean “send this text.”

We humans are fairly begging the machines to finish us. Have you noticed how we walk around all day with devices the size of a pack of cards with alphabetic letters so tiny your finger selects four at once and yet we apologize for having “fat thumbs”?

Since when did we accept that we don’t measure up to the machine, instead of making the machine measure up to our needs?

Time portal

That was a long wind-up before I tell you about the A&W time portal in Cortland, New York, I know, but it was necessary. Now that you’re feeling 21st-century exasperation, imagine what it would be like to have the lunch I had with my sister last week.

That restaurant has been in Cortland since long before I was born. My mother worked there when I was a baby, and Grandma brought me in to eat cut-up hot dogs in a high chair. This all took place in the same dining room, under the same roof, with the same sign and the same food that I enjoyed the other day on a hometown trip with my sister.

The first thing you notice is that there’s no drive-through. That’s because it’s a drive-in. For those younger than 45, that means you pull into a covered parking spot, you place your order through an intercom, and a waitress called a “carhop” brings you food on a tray that hooks onto your car door. On this visit, my burger came in a bag, but you get the idea.

Flipping the switch

The menu boards are printed and static, not revolving LED displays. The intercoms are the very same heavy-duty steel and chrome units originally installed in the late 1950s. Operating them could not be simpler. Press the button — yes, a physical button that does one thing and gives tactile feedback — to place your order. On the right, there’s a toggle switch (again, yes) you flip to have your tray picked up.

“NO CARDS — CASH ONLY — ATM INSIDE,” says a sign on the menu. I walk into the dining room to get my cash. It’s an actual dining room with carpet, padded booths, and attractive hanging lamps. Each table features A&W’s 1980s signature traditional corded handset phones; you can place your order or call for a waitress by picking one up.

RELATED: Fear the beaver: How a gas station became a cult (and why you should consider joining)

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Warm welcome

The place was hopping, and everyone on staff had a chipper tone and a smile. I worked in restaurants for years, and this was a sure sign of a well-run establishment where staff enjoyed their work. That was probably the part of this visit that felt most like I had slipped back in time — there were zero mumbling Gen Z kids acting like my patronage was a burden.

At almost every table was a multi-generational family from toddlers to grandpas eating together and behaving like sane humans. I had to slap my own face to make sure I was awake.

The carhop brought our order out and, mirabile dictu, counted my change back up to the original tender amount. All without an iPhone. She was about 22, attractive, and genuinely cheerful. I gave her a 50% tip.

Every carhop was a pretty, well-put-together woman between 20 and 50. All wore clean, well-fitting uniforms and genuine smiles on their faces. No outrageous makeup or clacking face jewelry — and no attitude.

A quick 18

Next door is the A&W mini-golf course. Most of the families went over there after burgers and onion rings. The course had no Branded Franchise characters, no X-Men(™) or Marvel Universe Friends(™). Instead, you aimed your ball at holes graced by miniature fairy-tale castles, cartoon bears, and raging tigers.

Cortland Miniature Golf Course

Faithful readers, it was wholesome. The burgers and rings were bigger, better, hotter, and about a third cheaper than the slop served at more famous national chains. Yes, the onion rings are still the best you can get.

The best of American life

My sister Jesse and I grew up in Cortland. It was a hard childhood; our mother was deranged and violent, and we wanted nothing more than to run away from that stupid, awful small town and have a life somewhere, anywhere, that didn’t look like home.

Today I’m 50 and she’s 46. When we drive through Cortland of 2025, we see a town that looks pretty much the same as it did in the 1980s.

What we couldn’t see as children is obvious now. Cortland is a working-class town full of people who keep their houses and lawns tidy, know the value of a dollar, and take pride in doing their work well. Frankly, it seems like paradise.

There’s no better example of the best of American life than what you get at the A&W Restaurant on Route 281. If more of the country would look at that example and remember how good work — and life — can be when it's done sensibly with a smile, America could save itself. God bless that place and everyone who works there.

9 reasons we (still) love America — and you should too



1. We're incurable optimists

H. Armstrong Roberts/Classic Stock

If you're on music duty for the barbecue this weekend, don't overlook "Little Pink Houses."

The John Cougar Mellencamp classic is a dependable crowd-pleaser because it's one of those songs people tend to forget they love. At least until it gets to the first "Ain't that America?" — at which point everybody's singing along. An essential addition to any patriotic playlist.

Now, some party poopers love to point out that "Little Pink Houses" isn't really a celebration of America. (They do this with "Born in the U.S.A." too.) Even Mellencamp himself.

“This one has been misconstrued over the years because of the chorus — it sounds very rah-rah. But it’s really an anti-American song."

Tell you what, Mr. Mellencamp: We'll be the judge of that. And as soon as we hear that opening riff, our hearts swell with patriotic pride.

It's not that we haven't heard the lyrics. It's that we don't feel sorry for the everyday Americans they describe — as we're apparently supposed to.

Take the black guy in the first verse, with the interstate running through the front yard of his little pink house.

That guy inspired the song. He's based on a real person Mellencamp saw in Indianapolis, sitting in a cheap lawn chair with a cat and watching the endless traffic go past his front yard.

The most striking thing to Mellencamp was how content the guy seemed. But instead of contemplating this mysterious serenity, he dismisses it as delusional.

"You know he thinks he got it so good."

Who are we to say he doesn't? Have you ever seen a better distillation of patronizing, paternal liberalism?

From that simple image, by the way, the up-and-coming singer-songwriter built a top-10 hit and classic rock staple beloved by millions for more than four decades. How's that for the American dream? The dream "Little Pink Houses" is supposed to "critique."

Or consider the young man with the greasy hair and greasy smile "listening to the rock and roll station."

When we hear that verse, we get an intense nostalgic feeling of doing nothing on a lazy summer afternoon before smartphones were invented.

Paradise. He's young and it's morning in America. And we're supposed to think he's sad that he's not going to be president?

Forget the self-defeating, sad-sack interpretations. "Little Pink Houses" is about the kind of determined optimism only Americans understand. "There's winners, and there's losers," the song notes. Can you think of a better place to be either?

It's the pedantic killjoys who miss the point. Yes, we're taking a tale of ordinary hardship and cheerfully focusing on the good parts until the hardship itself almost seems fun. It's the American way.

From the moment "Little Pink Houses" hit the airwaves in October 1983, all the Debbie Downers and Gloomy Guses trying to bum us out didn't stand a chance.

Or as one scold puts it, "Most people simply heard 'America,' tuned out the sarcasm, and unfurled the flag."

Exactly. Sounds like the perfect Fourth of July to us.

—Matt Himes, managing editor, Align

2. We love pulling off the impossible

In "Democracy in America," Alexis de Tocqueville said, “Democracy is slow and sluggish and inefficient, but once the will of the people is set in motion, nothing can stop it.”

At least, that’s what I remember him saying, but my computer says no. Maybe he said it to me in confidence and I thought I read it in a book.

At any rate, it’s true. Americans are capable of letting the pendulum swing very far into chaos (not as far as South Africa, but almost) before correcting. Chicago went from the frying pan of Lori Lightfoot into the fire of Brandon Johnson. New York City has been choosing progressively worse progressives since Giuliani and currently has its sites set on a spoiled rich kid who thinks he hates money and loves Palestine.

However, after Biden, we got Trump. After letting in more immigrants in four years than Ellis Island did from 1892 to 1954, we got deportations. After praising Antifa and BLM for burning our country to the ground and then condemning innocent J6ers to decades in prison, we we got pardons for the innocent and punishment for the pyromaniacs.

It might feel sometimes that we are losing our country and the pendulum is locked into “slow and sluggish” mode, but Trump should give us hope. If the presidency can be saved, so can the whole country.

Andrew Breitbart always said, “Politics is downstream from culture,” but MAGA is both. Last week a replica of the "Dukes of Hazzard" car was jumped over the downtown fountain in Somerset, Kentucky, as 35,000 people screamed their heads off. It wasn’t just a random stunt. It was a sign. America is becoming great again. We just have to stay the course and have faith.

—Gavin McInnes, host of "Get Off My Lawn"

3. You can't shut us up

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Once upon a time Hollywood loved free speech, the all-American value we need now more than ever.

The 1995 political romance "The American President" ended with a stem-winder by President Shepherd, played by Michael Douglas.

America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.

That was then. Hollywood wouldn't allow that opinion in a feature film today. The industry recoils over "hate speech," refuses to defend conservatives banned from social media, and twiddles its thumbs while "sensitivity readers" swarm the publishing ranks.

Oh, and the best and brightest cheered when social media platforms booted President Donald Trump off of their digital turf.

I want that 1995-era Hollywood back. And if today's version can't rise to the occasion, a new Hollywood will emerge. It won't be based in California, mind you, but as technology gives artists the tools to tell their stories their way, new tales will be told across the fruited plain.

Why? Because that's how America works. Still.

—Christian Toto, film critic

RELATED: America’s Southwest was conquered fair and square

Photo by Nawrocki/ClassicStock/Getty Images

4. We have the need for speed

Bernard Cahier/Getty Images

America, to me, is the land of boundless opportunity, where hard work, creativity, and ingenuity drive progress, from the open road to the factory floor.

Our nation is built on the freedom to chase dreams, like restoring classic cars; driving the type of vehicle you want, where you want and when you want; or pioneering new technologies, all while honoring the values that keep us strong.

For our family, our life is all about cars, auto racing, and restoration. One American who has especially inspired us is the famous car racer, designer, and marketer Carroll Shelby.

In the early 1960s, GT automobile racing was dominated by European brands like Jaguar, Ferrari, and Aston Martin. Shelby, a young Texan who had won Le Mans in an Aston Martin, thought he could make something faster. And he did — putting a Ford V8 engine in a sleek, lightweight body.

For us, Shelby represents American ingenuity, hard work, and never-say-die spirit. He reminds us of the simple, uniquely American freedom of getting behind the wheel of your own car and hitting the open road.

It's impossible to drive or ride in a Shelby Mustang or Cobra without a big smile on your face; it's one of those special experiences you don't forget. We certainly won't — we named our daughter Shelby.

—Lauren Fix, Align Cars

5. We love a long shot

Joshua Lisec

Scott Adams was working at Pacific Bell and wanted a career change. So he woke up early every day before work to figure out his next step.

Even though he had little artistic experience and no special talent, the career that stuck was newspaper cartoonist. "Dilbert" was born. After almost a decade of grinding it out, he made it the most successful comic strip in the country.

With his MBA and corporate resume, Adams had no business trying to break in to the hyper-competitive world of syndicated newspaper strips. It shouldn't have worked — but it did. As he writes in his book "Reframe Your Brain,"

Once you realize you're terrible at estimating the odds of your own success, you're free to try things you might otherwise not consider. You are allowed to expand beyond your comfort zone without pressure because the only way to know what will work is to test it yourself.

In 2015, Adams noticed another corporate guy attempting an improbable career change. He was the first to predict that Donald Trump would win the presidency. People laughed, but of course Adams was right.

Since then, Adams has gone on to launch a beloved YouTube show, publish a few books, and build a reputation as one of the wisest political commentators and dispensers of career and life advice around.

When Adams announced that he had terminal prostate cancer in May, the outpouring of tributes on X and elsewhere was a powerful indication of how many lives he changed.

Since then, he's continued to show up for the community he's built, while acknowledging that he's on borrowed time. His fans plan on sticking with him to the end.

In the words of Adams' frequent collaborator, ghostwriter, editor, and publisher Joshua Lisec:

Scott is the original internet dad. It's obvious to all that basically everyone under 45 or so has the father wound — either from overbearing dads who weren't helpful in giving quality life advice or dads who were totally checked out while a second-wave feminist mom ran the show. So what's it like to have a father who wants the absolute best for you and provides you firm yet kind counsel in every area of your life, from career, health, and relationships to how to think productively about politics, religion, and happiness? That's Scott Adams.

—Matt Himes

6. We're different but the same

Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

Order a "hot dog" in New York City and you'll get an all-beef frankfurter in a natural casing with mustard and maybe some sauerkraut and onions. In Chicago they'll load you up with everything: yellow mustard, dark green relish, chopped raw onion, peppers, pickles, and tomato — crammed into a poppy-seed bun with celery salt on top.

In D.C. the style is half beef, half pork with chili and onions. In Philadelphia they'll make it surf and turf by adding a fish cake.

In Cleveland they have the Polish Boy, which is a kielbasa with french fries, slaw, and barbecue sauce. Go to a Colorado Rockies game and you'll get a foot-long with grilled peppers. Up in Maine they like their dogs bright red.

At Fenway Park they boil and grill them and offer to put baked beans on top. Cincinnati is known for chili and cheese. And in the Southwest, they'll add salsa, bacon, and pinto beans.

Come to think of it, this is a great metaphor for the big immigration brouhaha these days. Opening the borders to millions of foreigners who have no interest in America except as a nice place to set up their own ethnic enclaves and send money home is like replacing all the hot-dog stands in Albany with samosa carts or kebab trucks.

You want both. And when it comes to hot dogs, you want something recognizably American (a hot dog) but with its own regional spin. Making it their own while still respecting the core elements (frankfurter, bun, toppings) that make it work. That's the kind of "diversity" this country is built on.

—Matt Himes

7. Show us a frontier and we'll build on it

Just returned from weekend at Wagon Box. It was great.

Beautiful, intellectual, long conversations, incredible local beef, flow of locals and weirdos interfacing with Substack religo-dorks and scenester art women. A little janky, not everything works right, everything a bit slanted, erratic, and natural. Some things you pay for, some you don't.

Nobody quite knows the rules. An overtly hostile shouting bartender whom everyone learns to love. Two types of delicious local ale and only three items on the lunch menu. Zero gloss of private equity. A positive and non-hateful crossroads of genuinely strange IRL human connection, contemplation, and discussion.

And most importantly, no policing of thought or language.

When Paul McNiel bought it a few years ago, it was a former biker bar in the woods where hardcore one-percenters would stop on their way around upper Wyoming and Montana. They used to sit on that porch and howl and make trouble all night long, until cultural feminization quelled their activity to a trickle.

And now instead of bikers, it's a bunch of thinkers and talkers who sit on that porch thinking and talking late into the night, with a lot less meth and a lot less fighting and a lot more plotting and planning to benefit the globe and humankind. It's a free zone one way or another.

—Isaac Simpson, founder and director, WILL

8. We elected Donald Trump. Twice.

SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

No modern American president has ever been this fully president before. He is pulling every lever and pressing every button, even ones that haven't been pressed in decades, if ever. He is dusting off the forgotten control panels and firing up the long-abandoned machines.

It may not be exactly to your liking, but this is the best we are ever going to get in our lifetimes, so enjoy it while it lasts.

—Peachy Keenan, author of "Domestic Extremist"

9. Because it's worth fighting for

Portland Press Herald/Getty Images

It's wild that simply loving America has become a revolutionary act. But since it's the closest I'll get to the founding fathers, I'll take it.

—Lou Perez, writer and comedian

Which way, Trump voter? We react to election 2024



Cry me a river

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I’m done with liberal tears. I don’t care.

Do you enjoy finding out your ex-girlfriend got dumped after you’ve been married for five years? No. You couldn't care less. I knew they’d be crying, and I care as much about their belief system today as I did before Trump won.

The only remotely thing interesting about their meltdowns is how they’ve gone from, “Muh … RACIST” to “Muh … UNEDUCATED!” I actually prefer the latter allegation because it’s more true.

I don’t "wish them nothing but the best." I don’t wish them anything. They blew it a long time ago, and we’ve moved on.

For the next four years, we will be building a wall, deporting illegal aliens, privatizing everything, trashing CRT, dismantling affirmative action, de-wokeifying education, embracing meritocracy, and basically allowing America to reach its full potential without Marxist bureaucracy in the way.

The crybabies can join us or move to Europe or go on a sex strike, we don’t care. Bye-bye! Home to Mommy.

—Gavin McInnes, host of "Get Off My Lawn"

Time to build

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A national mandate has been delivered by the American people to Donald Trump and all who would serve at his pleasure: a mandate to secure our borders, revive our economy, and bring peace to our empire — to change the trajectory of our nation.

The American revival has begun. This is our century. We will not surrender to despair and malaise, nor consign ourselves and our civilization to decline and collapse.

Beyond this political victory, achieving this grander civilizational goal will require sober thinking and serious work. Politics and civic duty will be required, as will enterprise and economics, entertainment and the arts, technology and exploration.

The American people and their engines of war and peace — private and public, secular and religious, urban and rural — must set their minds and hands to the work needed for this revival of their civilization. America has been drowning in mere inches of water. All we must do is stand up.

—Andrew Beck, co-founder, Beck & Stone

Sun's out, guns out

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That disorienting feeling you are feeling is not vertigo.

It's the Overton window, which just made the most dramatic shift to the right in decades.

The win is so massive. Their loss is so total.

The worst people in America are vanquished. Evil dynasties fell. All Trump's enemies are in exile, humiliated. GOD IS GOOD.

On November 5, 2024, America fought and won a second war against European governance. We rejected unelected bureaucracy. We rejected state-enforced decline, crushing and inhuman rule by faceless overlords, socialism, communism, European-style feudalist wars over territory, and globalist rot.

Next summer is going to be the biggest and best White Boy Summer we’ve ever had. You have six months to work on your tan.

—Peachy Keenan, cultural commentator and author of "Domestic Extremist"

Fear factor

David Dee Delgado

A decade as pariahs. Reverse McCarthyism.

Think of how many of us in blue cities put up with the petty harassment, the constant, low-grade fear they'd come after our livelihoods or our families. And come they did.

A Tuesday evening in November put an end to all that. Suddenly, we're citizens again. MAGA hats in Manhattan and Beverly Hills. Has any other piece of clothing so enraged a regime?

For ten years our friends, families, and employers pretended that voting for an extremely popular, mainstream politician and his frankly milquetoast policy proposals was not wrong, not misguided, but deeply, historically evil.

I can't think of anything less American than that. Trump will inevitably disappoint, as does every president once faced with the task of actually governing. It remains to be seen whether he will make good on his promises.

But we must remember him for what he was — a hammer that punched through the door of an absolutely rotten elite that simply had to go. And, ultimately, a leader who freed us from an era of fear.

—Isaac Simpson, founder and director, WILL

Dictatorship at the door, democracy on the floor

Sonia Moskovitz/Getty Images

She would nod while delivering her response to a question like a teacher trying to get buy-in from a truculent fourth grader.

There was a fair amount of "Nnkay?" — eventually fodder for impersonators on TikTok.

But even very simple, general, softball questions got engulfed in "Americans have hopes, and dreams, and aspirations" — as if, yep, those three things were not the exact same thing.

What was clear to the world was that this woman had not done the homework. If you look at video of her in Europe right as the invasion of Ukraine happened, a reporter asks her a fairly specific and detailed but not at all hostile question, and she makes a comical deer-in-the-headlights face and points at a diplomat from Iceland, as if to say, "He knows the answer!"

In brief, the reason the coconut lost was not "misogynoir," not gender war, not "a battle for the future of our multiracial democracy."

It was because she appeared incapable of the gig and the orange man seemed capable. You might not like his solutions, but he knows what he wants to do and how he's going to do it.

Legacy media was shocked and appalled that large percentages of "Latinx" people wanted to make money and wanted things to run properly. For this disloyalty, you had the likes of Joy Reid and Al Sharpton saying that the "Latinx" were more racist (read: anti-black) than whites were. So much for thick-and-thin loyalty!

People want (yes, go for it, Mussolini meme-makers!) the trains to run on time. They want crime to be punished and for the border to be enforced.

It cannot be overemphasized what an existential shock to the system it is that Trump suggested that the United States of America is not just some block of real estate that anyone on earth can hang out in but rather an exclusive club — kind of like Roy Cohn's favorite hangout, Studio 54 — where to gain admittance you have to show some value.

What a concept! It makes even the Ella Emhoffs of the world worry that someday they might not be on the list. This to me is an admirable form of discipline for the hoi polloi.

The second-biggest takeaway from this election is that the entire legacy media sang the same note together.

It's brat summer, wear Charli XCX putrid green, it's coconut-tree meme time, it's the summer of vibes, she didn't do so badly against Trump, Walz didn't do so badly against Vance, her "60 Minutes" bobbles didn't matter, she's gonna win it in a landslide, it's gonna be a squeaker but she's gonna make it after all, she's gonna save democracy ...

... and no real Americans out there in the real world bought it.

Puerto Ricans went up for Trump after the garbage gag. No one will trust the mainstream media in the same way ever again.

The biggest takeaway: We have a golden age coming at us. Not just in terms of laws passed but where the culture is going. It feels weird to have hope on a large scale!

—Matthew Wilder, writer and director of the forthcoming film "Morning Has Broken," with Ava McAvoy and Fred Melamed

Uncle Donald

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I don’t think it’s very feminine to have political thoughts — it’s kind of a dirty topic that’s best left to the men. But I used to be very involved before I married my husband. I would mostly help my dad, John Lamb, with his campaigns.

It’s hard to have feelings about Trump, in the way that it’s hard to know what to think about your eccentric uncle. When I spent six months in Germany in 2019 as an au pair, the children I looked after asked me, “How can you stand to have him for your president?”

I felt a righteous indignation to defend his honor — as if he were my uncle. A little unsavory, perhaps, but still family.

I also felt pride — not the brazen sense of superiority Americans stereotypically display in Europe, but a simple, sincere gratitude for my country. I decided then to like Trump, to the point that I became more active on Twitter so I could see his tweets.

I liked that he didn’t seem calculating, that he just said things as he saw them. Sometimes even I was offended by what he said, but I could respect his authenticity. When he didn’t make it the second time around, I regretted that I hadn’t liked him a little more. America felt less fun those next four years.

This election, I ignored the news as much as I could, although my husband and I did watch both debates. I remember thinking how Trump seemed changed — more poised. I had a feeling he might actually be able to win this time, especially when Kamala took over the race. Nobody wants a prosecutor for a president.

Is a Trump presidency truly God's will? It's still too early to know, in my opinion. Part of me wonders if there might be more assassination attempts, or if the left has accepted this victory to lull us into complacency. I really don’t know — all I’m certain of is that these next four years show promise to be interesting and fun.

—Keturah Hickman, writer and lace tatter

Go fast and go forward

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We are on the good timeline now.

The triumph of Trumpism is complete. He has put away the old GOP and defeated both the Clinton and Obama factions of the Democratic party. Trump has built a coalition of core Americans and Silicon Valley power brokers that is unique to modern history. Young people, tired and put off by the constant moral hectoring of the left, have also come on board. It is now cool to support Trump. It is high-status to support Trump.

In this new environment, anything is possible.

American dynamism has been tamped down for decades by bureaucratic dead weight and the enervating spirit of the longhouse. No more. The conditions are ripe for unprecedented growth and innovation. We are going to the stars, literally. And a wide-scale cultural renewal is imminent.

People want beauty, they want optimism, they want adventure, and they want heroism. We are going to deliver them the symbols and narratives that instantiate this latent yearning. We must not lose sight of this opportunity. We must not get bogged down in petty squabbles and factional disputes. We must go fast and go forward.

—Jonathan Keeperman, founder, Passage Publishing

Exit the Twilight Zone

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There have been times over the past four years when I have felt like I’m living in the Twilight Zone.

We have been gaslit over and over by the Biden administration and the media regarding the strength of the economy and all of their accomplishments.

I would hear this while pulling my hair out to keep my restaurant going amid skyrocketing costs and frequent supply shortages — as our family's savings evaporated.

I would hear this while my wife and I did everything we could to support our four children, while also having to protect them from relentless ideological nonsense. And while being called bigots for wanting our daughter to play in sports with just biological women.

All of this against a backdrop of lies suggesting this is simply what "democracy" is.

But the people have spoken, and it turns out that many of us have seen through the lies. We want to leave this twisted, far-left fantasy world and get back to reality.

It’s comforting to watch the left's once semi-secret agenda get exposed once and for all — just before the new administration rips it up.

I feel confident we will see the cost of goods come down as a result of less inflationary spending, smaller government, regulations being rolled back, and American food producers being given priority within the supply chain. I know it will be easier to get my kids healthy food without having to spend a mortgage payment. There’s a lot of work to be done, but winning the election was the most important first step.

—Chef Andrew Gruel, restaurant owner and author of "Andrew Gruel's Family Cookbook"

Folie à Duh

Ollie Millington/Getty Images

To all the members of the intellectual dark web who could not bring themselves to endorse Trump, hereby known as the ineffectual dork web:

Listen, you guys had a good run. Everyone had high hopes that your breakaway sect of intelligentsia would recognize that your little pet anti-woke topics weren't just isolated problems but endemic to the entire rotting corpse of the left.

We thought you guys would realize that the issues you were stumbling upon had actually been clocked years before by the ordinary, uneducated Americans despised by the elites and that this might engender some humility.

Congrats for realizing trans people are mostly perverts and DEI is wildly unpopular. It doesn't take a great genius to realize castrating children and villainizing white people is wrong. In fact, these are basic moral intuitions that the intellectual class somehow deluded themselves into suppressing, before tepidly rolling back their cultural revolution while expecting great acclamation for such efforts.

We are sick of gentility and nuance, because we rightly perceive it as another form of intellectual skullduggery. That's different from genuine analysis and argument, which have tremendous energy and dynamism. Your role, whether you realize it or not, has been to sterilize these insights at every turn, stripping them of their charisma and repackaging them into ineffectual and glib "discourse."

For whom? You have irreparably alienated yourself from the left and will never be welcomed back there again. The left's fundamental tenet is not freedom or equality or the exchange of ideas, but eradicating all opposition on its ineluctable, grand march toward progress.

Understandable mistake, but you only get to make it once.

You're done. Nobody is going to take away your little Substacks or your sparsely populated conferences or your anti-woke nonprofits, but they're going be irrelevant.

Nobody on the right will engage with you again. These are our issues now, and any useful ideas we can extract from your self-serving, butt-covering pontification will be repurposed by those of us who actually want to do something about these problems.

—Catherine Sulpizio, writer and co-host of the podcast "Temple of Friendship"

Win or die

Universal History Archive/Getty Images

Trump has won. Although this incredible victory is cause for celebration, I believe the risk of disaster has never been higher than it is right now.

As one Russian official said of attempts by the czar to modernize Imperial Russia shortly before the revolution: “The most dangerous thing you can do to a bad system is try to reform it.”

For the American right, this is the eye of the storm. It's only going to get crazier from here, and only organization and discipline will carry us through the challenges ahead. We could go into a new golden age and reach higher than anyone else has done before, or we could collapse into despair and passivity in just a few years.

It really is up to us. We get to choose whether we win or die. That’s the only choice.

—Conundrum Cluster, writer and critic

Vibe shifting

Barbara Freeman/Getty Images

There's been a "vibe shift."

Our decade of shameless anti-Americanism is over. The climate in which former New York governor Andrew Cuomo said "America was never that great" is finished.

Being an American patriot is "in" again. Crank up the rock 'n' roll. Have a cigarette. From here on out, every day is the Fourth of July. Stand tall like an American should — because you don't have to walk on eggshells any more.

I've spent more than a decade traveling this country and I now spend most of my time writing and thinking about America and celebrating this great country. As we forge into the next few years, I'm up for the task of dedicating all of my energy toward provoking the greatest resurgence in national spirit, romance, and mythos this country has ever seen. And I know I'm not alone on that score.

What the liberals get wrong about today's paradigm shift is that we're not about "American History X"-style curb-stomping rage and goose-stepping crap.

This is about the rhythm of the Rolling Stones, the Mississippi Delta blues, the little barbeque shacks and honky-tonks on the side of the highways. It's about the view from the top of Mount Washington and the stars from the beaches on Lake Superior. It's about old colonial-era homes on the Mohawk and ice cream socials at the town hall.

If there's any "populist rage" here, it's only a rage at the fact that a class of sleek, self-interested, globe-trotting elites ever sought to bleed the color from this nation. They tried to take away the fun, the vigor, the head-high pride that so many of us feel for this land. They tried to make us into a giant "human resources pool" instead of the big, weird, wild nation we always were.

Sure, there'll be policy changes. Some of them will be good; others might not be. That doesn't matter. What matters is that the dark days are over. We're done flying the flag at half-mast.

—A.M. Hickman, itinerant geographer and proprietor of "Hickman's Hinterlands"

Whose freedom?

Kirn Vintage Stock/Getty Images

Abortion doesn't save women. It doesn't stop or fix rape. It doesn't end poverty. It doesn't stop domestic violence.

It doesn't do anything except undo a woman's healthy biology, kill her child, and send her right back to whatever circumstances she came from.

This is our freedom? This is our equality?

I am legitimately angry on behalf of all the people who think the election results mean they have no agency or control over their own bodies, lives, or futures.

These people are in despair because they've been lied to. They've been told that women need to go to war with their bodies to be free, that limits on abortion limit access to lifesaving care, that surgical and hormonal intervention is the way to "treat" gender dysphoria, that restricting abortion or "gender-affirming" care leads to suicidal ideation.

These lies demand that you, an individual, rely upon your government to be safe, free, and successful.

You are so much stronger and more capable than you have been told. You have so many more options and paths to a joyful life than you have been led to believe.

—Robin Atkins, licensed mental health counselor and founder of Charis et Veritas

Dad energy

Gary Leonard/Getty Images

I never thought this would happen. I’ve been living in an insane world that put into practice the worst kind of child abuse anyone could imagine in a perverted nightmare.

People acted like it was normal. They acted like it was loving. And applauded the permanent destruction of the health and wholeness of children around the country.

Mothers, evil, wicked mothers, got spots on breakfast television and heart emojis from America for practicing Munchausen by proxy on their children. Mostly their sons.

Had I been born a little later, I could have been one of them. I was a sweet, sensitive, fey boy who thought God had cursed him with a freakish defect, one that would forever set him apart. Had someone promised to ease my pain with this warped "health care," I would have embraced it.

And I would have woken up years later even more broken than I am.

Donald Trump and his team, for the first time in our history, have called this what it is and have said no more in plain terms. “Mutilation.” “Abuse.”

A matriarchal, smothering mother culture has held America hostage for too long. We need a father energy now.

To any liberal reading this: I used to "hate" Trump every bit as much as you do. My hope for you, man or woman, is that you understand how blatantly you've been lied to about Trump.

And I hope you consider the psychological manipulation that has given these lies such power: the lingering father wounds you haven't wanted to attend to, because it was easier to rage against the big imaginary "fascist" than to face the demons of your childhood

This was me. And if you recognize yourself in it, I want you to know that you don't have to pretend any more. Believe me, it's better on the other side.

—Josh Slocum, host and co-creator of the "Disaffected" podcast

Man the lifeboats

Universal History Archive/Getty Images

The Trump Restoration will look less like "righting the ship" and more like launching the lifeboats.

Giving Americans the freedom to exit failing financial, political, educational, and corporate systems is the right thing to do, but it will accelerate their failure of those systems.

After this week, we are much shorter on U.S. government and much longer on America.

—Kevin Dolan, founder, EXIT

The American spirit is alive and well at Fort Worth's Cowtown Coliseum



The rodeo at the Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas, has all the adrenaline-packed cowboy classics: bronc riding, team roping, barrel racing, and, of course, bull riding.

Your ticket also gets you something you just can’t buy: an invigorating infusion of the American spirit.

Then, the announcer did something refreshing — and far more uncommon than it should be in this one nation under God. He prayed.

That’s what I took from my recent visit to the rodeo, as I watched the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps competitors from near and far embody the work ethic that built this great nation.

It was a night worth remembering, and if you ever have the good fortune to go, I think you’ll agree.

Country through and through

Walking between the rows of two-story, Western-style buildings on East Exchange Avenue was like taking a step into American history. The red brick streets bustled with foot traffic on either side. Men wore cowboy hats, boots, and denim. Women wore feathers in their brims and paired colorful or bedazzled boots with flowing summer dresses.

In front of the Cowtown Coliseum, a longhorn stood loosely tethered and drawing spectators. Turning your head either way down the picturesque street revealed an overlay of red, blue, and yellow neon signs for shops, bars, and Texas barbecue. You got the impression of being on a family-friendly version of Nashville’s famous Broadway.

It felt country through and through, and it was exhilarating.

Morgan Milan

Enter Old Glory

Ten minutes before showtime, Western-wearing locals and visitors started trickling through the doors of the coliseum to find their seats. My group settled into the strawberry red-painted wooden stadium seats in Section D, grinning ear to ear as a lanky teenager in an American flag suit took the center of the dirt ring to hype the crowd.

He took a bow, and then the announcer seated at the back of the arena asked attendees to remove their hats as a rider on a horse named Old Glory carried an American flag into the ring. Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” played over the loudspeakers, and Old Glory built from a slow trot to a breathtakingly quick gallop. Our flag was held high, rippling in the air in response to the horse’s speed through the end of the pride-inspiring song.

Because just one tribute to our great nation wouldn’t do, a female singer followed to belt “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Then, the announcer did something refreshing — and far more uncommon than it should be in this one nation under God. He prayed. He prayed for the cowboys and cowgirls participating in the rodeo. He prayed for the safety of the animals, and he prayed for the joy of those in attendance. He prayed, and it was the most American thing I’d heard in a very long time.

I don’t know that anyone could go to a rodeo at the Cowtown Coliseum and not be overcome with national pride and patriotism. The permission to openly love our country reminded me of everything freedom was supposed to mean, and I’m beyond grateful to the men and women in Fort Worth who are responsible for keeping the American spirit of my childhood alive in the midst of a world where most of us feel forced to watch it die.

Morgan Milan

True grit

Luckily, the rodeo competitors showed up with the grit to back up the patriotic showboating. Cowboys rode angry broncs, sometimes flying from the horses’ backs onto the dirt or up into the metal railing around the arena. Cowgirls roped calves with pink lassos or charged their mounts at full speed around black barrels for the fastest time. All the while, attendees passed popcorn and sipped cold Coke and whiskeys, "oohing" and "ahhing" as contestants narrowly avoided a hoof to the head, knocked over barrels, or successfully roped their cows.

Bachelorette parties flirted with groups of young men in the stands, and kids enthusiastically signed up to race each other through the arena to pull a tag from a running calf. The night buzzed with energy, and I was never far from the edge of my seat. I found myself thinking this is the America I want to raise kids in.

Cowtown Coliseum’s rodeos are a testament to what it means to be a patriot, and I highly recommend making time for a visit if you find yourself in Fort Worth … or if you ever need to be reminded why you should be proud to be an American.

Tickets to attend a rodeo at Cowtown Coliseum are available throughout the year and can be purchased online.

Which president can lead us to 'America250'?



Just two years from today, on July 4, 2026, the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and, with it, the founding of our country.

Those who were alive to remember our bicentennial celebrations of 1976 already know what to expect: a massive nationwide celebration, with fireworks and parades, with streets lined with flags and large festivals happening across the country.

Symbols and sentimentality will not suffice for this occasion. Whoever is president will need to outline a positive way forward for this country, shared values that can embolden us to face an uncertain future.

The campaign to observe our semiquincentennial already has an official name — America250 — and a website promising an effort “to commemorate and celebrate our 250th anniversary with inclusive programs that inspire Americans to renew and strengthen our daring experiment in democracy.”

What remains to be seen is the tone of the event. One of the curious realities of this celebration is that it will almost certainly be heavily affected by the outcome of the 2024 election.

Neither President Biden nor President Trump seems to think this “daring experiment” is doing very well at the moment. Each man takes every opportunity he can to express his dismay.

They differ on why American is failing. Biden sees a nation filled with violent dissenters and unabashed racists, the product of a genocidal past. Trump sees a nation corrupted by bureaucracy and foreign influence, in need of renewal.

The 1976 Bicentennial is looked back upon as a joyous, unifying affair, but that year the country was also grappling with the aftermath of Watergate and the tumult of the 1970s.

2026 will happen at a time when the meaning of America is more contested than ever, as reflected by a number of cultural and political flash points, big and small: the1619 Project, Black Lives Matter, “Hamilton,” “White Fragility,” January 6. It will be met with protests, soul-searching angst, and uncertainty about the nature of the American experiment.

Today America faces innumerable threats — rising inflation, a broken housing market, failing educational and medical systems, declining birth rates, and unchecked mass immigration.

As if the election of Trump in 2016 weren’t enough, COVID-19 offered undenable evidence of just how divided our citizenry is, with half of the population wanting to be left alone and the other half openly calling for them to catch a deadly disease and die.

Then there are our foreign policy problems, continuing to threaten global stability and trade: ongoing wars in Ukraine and Israel, a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, tensions between North and South Korea.

America250 suggests an opportunity to ask some pressing questions about who we are. Are we the same republic that George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson founded? Have we been corrupted beyond repair? Is the Constitution a dead letter? Does America even want to be America any more? Or are we doomed to national suicide, decline, secession, and a bloody civil war?

Whoever wins the 2024 election will have to stand on the national stage on July 4, 2026, and give a speech that speaks to this identity crisis.

Symbols and sentimentality will not suffice for this occasion. Whoever is president will need to outline a positive way forward for this country, shared values that can embolden us to face an uncertain future.

As we go into the ballot boxes this November, we should ask ourselves which of these two candidates has the vision, determination, and courage to tell America the hard truth: Unless we can recover some of the spirit with which we founded this great nation, the chances that it will be around for its tricentennial in 2076 are slim indeed.

July 4 exclusive: What we love about America



Rod Dreher, American expatriate writer and editor living in Hungary

"Red Headed Stranger" by Willie Nelson (1975). This ghostly concept album by the Texas outlaw singer is about a man in the Old West on the run after killing his wife and her lover. It is about pain, passion, and redemption. Pure as branch water and possessed of the narrative power of a biblical parable, "Red Headed Stranger" is as perfect a piece of Americana as ever was. When I play this album, I know that no matter how far we stray from God, a country that can produce Willie Nelson is not lost.

David Redfern/Getty Images


Glenn Beck, cofounder, Blaze Media

"Up from Slavery," by Booker T. Washington.

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Christian Toto, film critic and writer

Will Smith's 2006 film "The Pursuit of Happyness" is all about the American dream. The film follows a single father struggling to break through in the business world. Spoiler alert: There's a very happy ending. The moment that matters is one of the final shots. We watch Smith's character, fresh from learning he got the job he dreamed about for so long, walking into a crowded street. He's dizzy, unsure where to go, and his face reflects a thousand emotions at once. Elation. Relief. Joy. The knowledge that he'll be able to care for his young son without worrying about his next paycheck. He starts applauding himself, and his smile couldn't grow any wider.

It's the precise moment when his American dream becomes real, and it's glorious.

The Pursuit of Happyness: Chris is hiredwww.youtube.com


Doug Gray, Army veteran and founding member/lead vocalist of the Marshall Tucker Band

"Independence Day" (1996). As unusual as it sounds, this movie brought the entire country together against a true enemy. Though it was a fictional film, it perfectly symbolized unity brought on by a sinister evil.

I say this jokingly, I think, but I hope it doesn’t take an alien invasion to bring us all back together. God bless America!

Doug Gray

Bayard Winthrop, founder and CEO, American Giant

I periodically re-read the Gettysburg Address. And when I do, remind myself of what was happening in our country at that time, so that when today, things feel divided or fractured, we can remind ourselves of how important the cause of liberty is and how small our differences actually are.

Delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

Universal History Archive/Getty Images


Aaron Renn, author, 'Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture'

In the 19th century, many countries had female symbols of the nation. These have fallen by the wayside, except for Marianne in France. There's a vast trove of historic imagery of Columbia, the female symbol of America. She is a wonderful national symbol, sadly fallen out of use save for the famous Columbia Pictures logo.

There are many images of Columbia to choose from, but I like this cover from the book "The Story of the Constitution," produced by the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission. Columbia stands watch over the Constitutional Convention, an eagle and flag behind her, with a blue ribbon labeled "We the People" emerging from the flag and encircling the fasces — a symbol that in America, governmental power rests with the people. We need a Columbia revival.

Getty Images


Peachy Keenan, cultural commentator and author of 'Domestic Extremist'

She liked the enormous sky and the winds, and the land that you couldn’t see to the end of. Everything was so free and big and splendid.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder, "Little House on the Prairie"

Laura Ingalls Wilder was my first teacher of American history — not the history of Washington but the history of daily life as a young, curious girl in a new land. I would marvel at a childhood so simple, so “deprived,” that one piece of candy and an orange — maybe a bit of ribbon, if you were really lucky — in your stocking Christmas morning was considered a lavish bounty for which you would be grateful all year. Laura's father could build a log cabin in a few days by himself, and her mother could prepare dinner in a covered wagon with no appliances. Laura’s frontier was a place worth pioneering, worth the hard battle to win over the land and claim it for all time. Is it still? That seems to be the question again before us.

Bettman/Getty Images


Spencer Klavan, associate editor, Claremont Review of Books

Lovers of poetry know Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as a writer of surpassingly graceful and moving verse. But few realize he’s also the author of what is, to my knowledge, the manliest assessment of the American revolution ever written by an Englishman.

Almost a hundred years on from the first Independence Day, Tennyson invites Britain to look back on the war not with resentment but with admiration: “Strong mother of a Lion-line / Be proud of those strong sons of thine / Who wrench’d their rights from thee!”

It’s short, perfect for reciting as a barbecue toast, and appropriate this Fourth of July, when our older brothers across the pond are facing a bleak election of their own. Tennyson tells his countrymen that by insisting on their rights as Englishmen, the founding generation “retaught the lesson thou hadst taught / And in thy spirit with thee fought” — suggesting that the noble Anglo-American lineage of freedom can be revived even in moments of apparent discouragement and defeat. Let’s hope that’s still the case.

O thou that sendest out the man
To rule by land and sea,
Strong mother of a Lion-line,
Be proud of those strong sons of thine
Who wrench'd their rights from thee!

What wonder if in noble heat
Those men thine arms withstood,
Retaught the lesson thou hadst taught,
And in thy spirit with thee fought
Who sprang from English blood!

But thou rejoice with liberal joy,
Lift up thy rocky face,
And shatter, when the storms are black,
In many a streaming torrent back,
The seas that shock thy base!

Whatever harmonies of law
The growing world assume,
Thy work is thine the single note
From that deep chord which Hampden smote
Will vibrate to the doom.

MPI/Getty Images


Gavin Mcinnes, host of 'Get Off My Lawn'

“Empire of the Summer Moon” by S.C. Gwynne is a fantastic book and a beautiful reminder of the immense struggles we had as a country shortly after we were born. The West was still untamed. It was a war. We didn’t steal land from the Indians. We fought them in an epic battle that was gruesome and long because they were worthy adversaries. The story of America is an arduous journey with a million dead ends, but we all got here together. That’s something to be proud of — warts and all.

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David Azerrad, professor at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government

For me, there is only one answer: America is not a country for servile men. As Samuel Adams said in his rousing oration on American Independence: “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” Americans must choose liberty over despotism, even if it is sugarcoated, as it is today, with loan forgiveness, junk food, antidepressants, endless porn, and all other sedatives and somas that sap our spiritedness.

Boston Globe/Getty Images


Michael Knowles, author and political commentator

I recommend a little-known painting by William Halsall: “The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor.” Painted in 1882 as memory of America’s founding generation began to fade, it depicts the Pilgrims’ ship at dawn. Or is it dusk? One cannot quite tell if the sun is rising or setting on America.

Heritage Images/Getty Images


Isaac Simpson, founder and director, Will

After Muhammad Ali returned victorious from Zaire after defeating George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle, a reporter asked him, "What did you think of Africa?" After he outwardly rejected the war in Vietnam and embraced Islam, many progressives saw Ali as a hero of Marxist anti-Americanism.

The trip to Zaire itself was viewed by many as a "return to Africa"-type statement, but Ali instantaneously put that to bed with this quote, one of his all-time classic whimsical responses: "Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat."

After all the turmoil and criticism, it acknowledged that at the end of the day, he was a pure-blooded American and wouldn't have it any other way. Sort of the conclusory response to "no Vietcong ever called me n****er."

ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images


Matthew Wilder, writer and director of the forthcoming film 'Morning Has Broken,' with Ava McAvoy and Fred Melamed

I don't get the problem people have with George Stevens' "Giant." To me, it's an American "Leopard." And Rock Hudson does carry that. I am not a James Dean fetishist, but his conception of Jett Rink is advanced. For the first half he's a broken-down, incomprehensible hobo very similar to Joaquin Phoenix's Freddie Quell in "The Master."

Then, when the oil is struck, he turns into Howard Hughes in his latter days — he goes from zero to 100 to brick wall in five seconds. His whole final scene at the banquet — wow!

Imagine if he had lived to go on to do stuff with Peckinpah and Frankenheimer and Lumet and Kubrick and Richard Lester. He would have been reason enough for Godard to come to America to make "Bonnie and Clyde" with him and Tuesday Weld.

All right, enough of my cinema speculations!

United Archive/Getty Images


Ben Boychuk, opinion and analysis editor, Blaze Media

July 4 is, of course, the date we officially celebrate American independence, but John Adams believed the more momentous day was July 2, when the delegates of the Continental Congress voted to draft the Declaration of Independence and sever ties with Great Britain once and for all.

Adams wrote two letters to his wife, Abigail, on July 3 explaining the significance of the decision and sharing his relief, hopes, and fears about the struggle to come. His closing lines still strike a chord:

"You will think me transported with enthusiasm; but I am not. I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph, although you and I may rue, which I hope we shall not."

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Lou Perez, comedian/writer/producer/actor

My favorite immigrants are the ones who become Americans. So thank God my immigrant father became a U.S. citizen! That’s one less daddy issue for me.

My father came from Argentina in the late 1970s. He crossed the border with maybe a couple years of high school education and no English. His business in San Miguel de Tucumán had gone under — a butcher shop next to his childhood home — and he was in debt.

When he got to New York, he was able to find work in a deli in Queens. One day, he sat in the back of the store and cried. This wasn’t his store. This wasn’t his country. He was experiencing a new low that was truly foreign to him.

But he was in America — though he didn’t realize it at the time. Not the geographical reality — of course he knew that. It was the American ethos he had yet to grasp.

My father worked and worked and worked. He built a family, a business (Casablanca Meat Market in Spanish Harlem), and an appreciation for the United States that I’m not sure I can fully understand. I was born here, after all. I didn’t choose to make the journey.

I often joke that my father taught me the value of hard work ... and I plan on living off of his hard work for as long as I can. He butchered so that his son could make jokes. He’s my favorite American.

Lou Perez

Army Vet Files Lawsuits After Being Arrested For Holding ‘God Bless The Homeless Vets’ Sign

'Fear of consequence'

Major Bible publisher scraps 'God Bless the USA' Bible that included America's founding documents, patriotic lyrics



Book publisher HarperCollins announced Tuesday that publication of an America-themed Bible, complete with founding documents and patriotic song lyrics, would not move forward.

News about the Bible's publication, which surfaced last week, immediately triggered criticism from prominent Christians who believe Christianity and the Bible should not be with American nationalism.

What are the details?

The Bible was slated to include the New International Version translation of the biblical text, which is the best-selling translation in America.

However, HarperCollins, which holds the exclusive rights to the translation and publishes it through its imprint Zondervan, canceled a manufacturing agreement in negotiation that would have allowed the Bible's creator to use the NIV translation, according to Religion Unplugged.

"Zondervan is not publishing, manufacturing or selling the 'God Bless the USA Bible.' While we were asked for a manufacturing quote, ultimately the project was not a fit for either party, and the website and marketing of the NIV project were premature," Zondervan said in a statement.

The custom Bible was slated to ship to customers in September to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Religion Unplugged reported:

In its last pages, the custom Bible pre-selling for $49.99 includes the full texts of the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and pledge of allegiance. The holy book also includes licensed lyrics to the popular 1984 song by country music singer-songwriter Lee Greenwood, "God Bless the USA."
...
The "God Bless the USA Bible" is a product of Elite Source Pro, a Middle, Tenn.-based company that helps businesses with sales, marketing and strategy, including in Nashville's entertainment industry. Hugh Kirkpatrick, president of Elite Source Pro, confirmed to Religion Unplugged that Zondervan granted the required licensing for the custom Bible.

Kirkpatrick told Religion Unplugged the seed idea for the new Bible was planted last fall after he took notice of culture wars increasingly eroding traditional American history.

"We noticed the divide in the public where some people started seeing pro-American images like the flag, the bald eagle, the statue of liberty as weaponized tools of the Republican party, and we didn't understand that," he explained.

"In past civilizations, libraries have been burned. Documents torn down. We started seeing statutes coming down and we started seeing history for good or bad trying to be erased," Kirkpatrick added. "That's when we started thinking, okay how far does this erasing of history go? Love it or hate it, it's history. But how far does it go…? Part of having these statues...is so that we don't repeat those same mistakes."

What did critics say?

Prominent Christian authors and speakers like Lisa Sharon Harper, Jemar Tisby, and Shane Claiborne, all of whom are Zondervan authors, published a letter condemning the project.

They argued it promoted "American nationalism."

American nationalism is its own civil religion, where America rather than Jesus is the center of attention. Instead of Jesus and the Church being the light of the world and the hope for humanity, America becomes the Messianic force in the world. Like any religion it has its own liturgy, saints and holidays. These symbols are on full display in this new Bible – the eagle, the flag, the red, white and blue. America's civil religion has its own creeds too in the new Bible – "We hold these truths to be self-evident…" It has its own "worship" songs – like "God Bless the USA" and "I'm Proud to be an American," both by Lee Greenwood. It has its own theology – manifest destiny, the doctrine of discovery and American exceptionalism. And this is precisely why it is dangerous to mesh patriotism with orthodox Christian faith.

After all, the Bible does not say "God bless America." It says, "God so loved the world." The national anthem should not be in the church hymnal, and the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States should not be in the Bible.

What is next?

Although Kirkpatrick's project cannot contain the NIV translation, he told Religion Unplugged the project will move forward with the outdated King James translation instead.

In most countries, the KJV translation — which is more than 500 years old and does not include modern manuscript discoveries — is public domain and does not require licensure for publication.

"They're [HarperCollins] trying to figure a way to get it done," Kirkpatrick said. "They want to keep everybody happy. They want to keep their fans on the left and right."

Look at this turnout: 'Thousands' attend funeral of Air Force veteran with no family

Over the weekend, a Texas cemetery asked the public to attend the funeral of an Air Force veteran because it appeared that no one was expected to attend.

The call went out when the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery said it could not locate the man's family and did not want him to be buried alone, according to Fox News. The story went viral on social media, with many including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and CNN host Jake Tapper calling attention to it and asking people to attend the funeral.

Look how many have shown up to honor this American hero:

A country where people do this for someone they don't know is a great country.

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