What does Never Forget mean if I was not alive to see the Twin Towers fall?
My father used to work in an office in downtown Manhattan, just a few blocks from the Twin Towers; only recently did I ask him to tell me about that day.
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He happened to be starting his commute to the office when the first plane hit the North Tower. Like everyone else, he assumed it was a freak accident — a small plane making a low pass before the airport. He decided to stop in the midtown offices instead, thinking the downtown subway would be a mess. By the time he got off in midtown, the second plane hit, and it was clear the nation was under attack. 
After the towers fell, he walked back to my family’s apartment, grabbed his camcorder, and filmed people sitting along Riverside, basking in the sunlight and looking on in horror as ambulance after ambulance rushed downtown, smoke rising against the blue sky.
His office would later be the last building torn down in the wake of the attack; his only recovered items were a small ceramic heart with my sister’s footprints and a cookie jar she and my brother decorated for Father’s Day. 
This past Tuesday, I covered an event for The Daily Wire in downtown New York. Arriving early, I decided to make the trip to Ground Zero for the first time in my life. 
It was a hot September Tuesday with clear skies — just as it was 25 years ago. As I walked north from the subway stop to the memorial, I took off my blazer and continued walking in the September sun. I saw young kids playing basketball in a park along the route. They were enjoying the last of summer before school resumed. Everything seemed peaceful; I could see the new World Trade Center towering in the distance as I walked north along the path.
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And then I saw a disturbing open space, something totally irregular for the New York skyline. 
I knew I had arrived at the site well before seeing the memorial, set at the base of where the towers once stood.
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Before approaching the memorial, I put my blazer back on. Dread and reverence for the place overcame me. A tree with a wreath lay in front of it, surrounded by a low fence upon which families and visitors had placed notes with that same elusive promise to “Never forget.”
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Another wreath lay at the base of the tower, flanked by posters of officers who had died. 
I stood for a moment of silent prayer. 
Then I noticed an entirely different crowd at the memorial — the selfie takers. 
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Seeing this juxtaposition, I stumbled on the answer to the question I and so many others my age have been asking ourselves.
Can you see something that happened to your fellow Americans as the same as something that had happened to your parents? Are you part of the same story? 
As we approach the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I challenge each member of my generation to engage more meaningfully with our monuments and memorials than mere selfies. Monuments and memorials exist to transmit meaning and inspire reflection in subsequent generations. They are not fixations of frivolity.
We have agency to decide whether we will be a selfie taker or someone who links themselves with the broader story. As it turns out, the Israelites, ancient and modern, and the Founding Fathers both exemplify how to link oneself to a common historical memory.
For thousands of years, generations of Jewish grandparents, parents, and children have commemorated the Exodus, with the injunction to view themselves as if they themselves left the tyranny of Egypt.
For the Revolutionaries, the image of the Almighty taking the Israelites through the Red Sea served as a powerful engine for the American Founding. Benjamin Franklin <a href="https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/seal-united-states">proposed</a> an image of Moses extending his hands over the Red Sea with Pharaoh drowning in the sea as the official Great Seal of the United States with the motto “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” 
When the children of Israel finally passed into the Holy Land, Joshua erects a monument as a vehicle to transmit both a national memory and meaning: 
<blockquote>He charged the Israelites as follows: “In time to come, when your children ask their fathers, ‘What is the meaning of those stones?’ tell your children: ‘Here the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry land.’For the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you crossed, just as the LORD your God did to the Sea of Reeds, which He dried up before us until we crossed. Thus all the peoples of the earth shall know how mighty is the hand of the LORD, and you shall fear the LORD your God always.” (Joshua 4:21-24)</blockquote>
The Israelites looked to the monuments and asked their elders what they meant, and they were told they marked the place where their God redeemed them, just as he redeemed them from Egypt. The monument promotes introspection and a recitation of where they are placed in that story, and ultimately it inspires both an understanding that memory is inherited and humility. 
Similarly, we today must, as Americans, view ourselves as part of a broader tradition and inheritance; with that come patriotic and proud moments, but it also calls us to place ourselves within our national tragedies. This can look different for different people, but the Judeo-Christian tradition of historical recitation and familial bonds serves as a model for how we can remember what we never experienced.
As I stepped down from the monument, I decided to take a symbolic step backward before walking fully away, in recognition of the sanctity of the place, a step normally reserved by Orthodox Jews when moving away from the destroyed Temple Mount in the Holy Land. 
Today there <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2026-09-10/born-post-9-11-how-young-adults-relate-to-an-event-they-never-experienced">are</a> some 100 million Americans who were not alive to see the Towers fall. I am one of them; but for me, at least, I have come to learn what it means to “Never Forget.”

9/11 Memorial And Museum Prepares To Mark 25th Anniversary Of September 11th Attacks In NYC

‘Never Forget’ For The Generation Born After 9/11

9 11 memorial museum

history

new york city

opinion

patriotism

september 11 attacks

It doesn&#8217;t matter that Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed blames the West for &#8220;<a href="https://x.com/Bobby_LaVallley/status/2091555439645200547/video/1">creating</a>&#8221; terrorism, excuses terror attacks against American Jewish preschoolers <a href="https://x.com/AbdulElSayed/status/2032529011646038257/video/1">because</a> &#8220;hurt people hurt people,&#8221; believes <a href="https://x.com/KyleMartinsen_/status/2094833380349382910">Canada</a>, of all places, is where the American dream comes true, implies the <a href="https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/abdul-el-sayed-resurfaced-tweet-139094229.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1024">true</a> victims of 9/11 were the Muslims harmed in retaliation, or that both his <a href="https://x.com/NJMom32/status/2095094995728351717">mother and father-in-law</a> have <a href="https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2085084805335556116/video/1">ties</a> to terrorism and his sister <a href="https://x.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/2088110608960872677">hates</a> America.
He will likely win his Senate race in Michigan against the America-loving patriot Mike Rogers. Not despite his anti-Americanism, but because of it.
According to a 2026 Gallup poll, an abysmal 27% of Democrats are very proud to be American. Three-fourths of the Left are not.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
This Gallup poll is inane:
The poll shows how proud Republicans and Democrats are from 2001 to today.
2001: 
Republicans: 90% 
Democrats : 85%
2026: 
Republicans: 92% (+2) ⬆️ 
Democrats: 36% (-49) 👀
What happened to democrats the last 25 years? <a href="https://t.co/ODkGgO9cFo">pic.twitter.com/ODkGgO9cFo</a>
— Patrick Bet-David (@patrickbetdavid) <a href="https://x.com/patrickbetdavid/status/2097150301295849501?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 8, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
It&#8217;s pathetic. But it explains part of why these leftist candidates, who seemingly despise this country, are not faltering in the polls when pundits point this out. In fact, it may be feeding them.
On Tuesday, vile audio of Abdul El-Sayed, the most anti-USA candidate in the country, <a href="https://x.com/Bobby_LaVallley/status/2097341640625025511/video/1">surfaced</a>, though Democrats will likely just shrug and murmur, &#8220;Well, he wants to make healthcare free,” as though taqiyya slogans absolve terror.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 Abdul El-Sayed in unearthed audio:
&#8220;9/11 scarred our country in profound ways, but what we did after 9/11 scarred millions of other people.&#8221;
&#8220;When we talk about 9/11, we often fail to center them.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/Xa8XOY2Tdb">pic.twitter.com/Xa8XOY2Tdb</a>
— Bobby LaValley (@Bobby_LaVallley) <a href="https://x.com/Bobby_LaVallley/status/2097341640625025511?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 8, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;9/11 scarred our country in profound ways, but what we did after 9/11 scarred millions of other people. &#8230; When we talk about 9/11, we often fail to center them.&#8221;
Center them? Center who? Islamists? Al-Qaeda’s foot soldiers? The Muslims who were never caught aiding and abetting the hijackers? All Muslims? Compared to those we are correctly centering — the nearly 3,000 Americans who were turned to dust, dust that was breathed in by their neighbors, family members, coworkers, and countrymen for weeks following? Forgive us, Abdul, for centering the dead. Forgive us for centering the firefighters who coughed up their lungs a decade later, the widows, the souls of those incinerated in the name of your faith.
He makes me sick.
A decade ago, this confession would have ended his career. Today, it garnered him a two-point gain in the <a href="https://kalshi.com/markets/kx/test/kxmisenate-26">Kalshi</a> prediction markets. He&#8217;s now up 63% over Mike Rogers. Why? Because the Left hates America. They aren&#8217;t proud to be American, and they wish to usher in those who will castrate this country into obscurity.
What happens when you take morally bankrupt, perpetually aggrieved persons who have fewer dependents to provide for and fewer humans to develop into respectable members of society (thereby making themselves more respectable in the process), tell them they need never work for anything because everything is innately a right, and brainwash them through corrupt education systems that teach them America is inherently evil, racist, bigoted, and colonizing? You get people who not only have no reason to defend a system that has created more good for the world than any other country, but who actively try to destroy it.
Compound that with the mass importation of the Third World and of cultures that reject our Western norms, grant them amnesty, then voting rights, and suddenly you have a country that&#8217;s both unrecognizable and self-loathing.
It has become disgustingly, casually fashionable to detest this land that gave us everything. A land that did not start slavery, but bled itself to end it, even as Muslim countries to this day still sell <a href="https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/#the-scale">humans</a> as cattle. A land that wasn’t history&#8217;s first colonizer — that dishonor belongs to the Islamic empires that <a href="https://x.com/realMaalouf/status/2096689646864314568">swept</a> the Middle East, North Africa, and into Europe and South Asia under the sword. A land that built the most prosperous, inventive, upwardly mobile society human beings have ever managed to construct.
It&#8217;s trendy to hate America when your only war is the one you&#8217;ve seen on a screen, remote in hand, snack in reach. Roughly one percent of Americans voluntarily wear the uniform. It&#8217;s trendy to be thankless. It&#8217;s trendy to hate America when it doesn&#8217;t make you a millionaire overnight because you chose to pursue an African Art degree over one that would make you a decent living. It&#8217;s trendy to be a self-obsessed, narcissistic, spoiled brat who couldn&#8217;t care less if a terror apologist penetrates the Senate because, one, 9/11 was sooo 25 years ago, and two, he&#8217;s promising free healthcare, so clearly, clearly, he cares. Duh.
The most insulated from the consequences of bad ideas are the ones most eager to experiment with them.
We need to call out those who deride this nation and make them answer for their claims. Because America is awesome, we should be proud to be American, and she is still worth defending. Abraham Lincoln called our great country &#8220;the last best hope of earth.&#8221; He is indubitably correct. And we cannot let that flame gutter out at the hands of people too comfortable, too coddled, and too ungrateful to understand exactly what they stand to lose.

US-POLITICS-CAMPAIGN

This Is Why A Terrorist Sympathizer Will Win In Michigan

2026 midterm election

abdul el-sayed

michigan senate race

mike rogers

&#8220;Rosie the Riveter&#8221; wasn&#8217;t a single person.
There were actually millions of Rosies: women who stepped up to work in factories and shipyards to keep the United States humming while the men who typically held those jobs were away fighting in World War II. Every &#8220;Rosie&#8221; was an integral part of the war effort, doing whatever it took to step up for her country.
A new campaign from Independent Women, a nonprofit advocacy group for women, wants to bring that patriotic spirit back for America&#8217;s 250th birthday. There isn&#8217;t the same workforce crisis as there was 80 years ago, but there is perhaps a greater crisis when it comes to patriotism. A recent Gallup poll found that American pride fell to a 25-year low, with the sharpest decline among women.
In the past year, the <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/711938/american-pride-falls-year-record-low.aspx">number of American women</a> who said they were extremely proud to be an American fell 13 points, to just 26%. Another <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/697382/record-numbers-younger-women-leave.aspx">poll</a> found that two out of every five younger women would permanently leave the country if possible.
&#8220;Young women have been taught that patriotism is embarrassing and contempt for America is a badge of intelligence,&#8221; Meaghan Mobbs, director of Independent Women’s Center for American Safety and Security, told The Daily Wire.
Mobbs, who is a combat veteran herself, says women should be proud to contribute to America, and that military service is far from the only way to do it. She believes the spirit of &#8220;Rosie the Riveter&#8221; is what&#8217;s needed to reverse that tide.
&#8220;Rosie 250 matters because it offers a powerful counterexample — generations of American women who understood that strength meant contributing to their country, not sneering at it,&#8221; Mobbs said. &#8220;As America turns 250, we have an opportunity to give young women something worth inheriting — a sense of pride, purpose, responsibility, and ownership in the nation they will help lead.&#8221;
The campaign says that a Rosie is &#8220;a woman who loves her country, chooses her own path, and uses her strength, talent, and freedom to build something bigger than herself.&#8221;
&#8220;She serves where she is needed, stands alongside the men in her life, and believes America is worth strengthening for the next generation,&#8221; Independent Women says.
While the Rosie of World War II was portrayed as a blue-collar factory worker, this campaign makes it clear that there are many more ways to step up in the current era.
&#8220;There is no single right way to be a woman,&#8221; the campaign says. &#8220;She may raise a family, build a career, serve her country, lead her community, or forge a path entirely her own. Every one of those lives helps build a stronger America.&#8221;

America Needs A New ‘Rosie The Riveter’ For Its 250th Birthday

america 250th anniversary

independent women

rosie the riveter

women

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Just weeks before our nation’s 250th birthday, NBC News released a new <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-america-250-riven-doubt-pessimism-glimmers-hope-rcna348912">poll</a> showing a “record-low number” of Americans are “extremely proud” to be Americans. Two groups, in particular, are driving the decline: liberals and young Americans. Just 29% of Democrats and 36% of 18- to 34-year-olds <a href="https://x.com/SteveKornacki/status/2066173092393533458">say they are “very” or “extremely proud”</a> of being American, compared to 90% of Republicans and 75% of seniors.
Individually, these partisan and generational divides seem like bad news. But taken together, they strike me as a source of optimism and even inspiration for American patriots.
Because there is another crucial difference between older and younger Americans besides their age and their politics: their knowledge of American history and civics. 
For <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/2890/younger-americans-get-much-lower-grades-than-their-elders-history-quiz.aspx?utm_source=chatgpt.com">decades</a>, surveys have found that older Americans know more about our founding, our Constitution, and our history than younger Americans do. A recent <a href="https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/america-at-250-surveying-change-and-continuity-on-civic-values/">study</a> by the American Enterprise Institute asked Americans about key elements of U.S. history such as the Bill of Rights, the Civil War, and the Cold War, and found, “Members of Gen Z were less knowledgeable on each historical landmark than were baby boomers.”
This is consistent with the abysmal data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“the nation’s report card”). Students’ test scores in U.S. history have been <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ushistory/2022/">falling</a> for over a decade now. Fewer than 15% of U.S. eighth graders are proficient in the subject, and only one-fifth are proficient in <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/civics/2022/">civics</a>.
Nor is this epidemic of historical ignorance limited to middle-schoolers. Studies show similar knowledge gaps among <a href="https://www.goacta.org/2024/07/acta-releases-alarming-new-survey-showing-dangerous-level-of-civic-illiteracy-among-college-students/">college students</a> and <a href="https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/civics/new-study-finds-alarming-lack-of-civic-literacy-among-americans">adults</a>. Only one-third of Americans, for instance, know enough about our country to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/most-us-would-fail-u-s-citizenship-test-survey-finds-n918961">pass</a> the citizenship test we require for new immigrants.
In this context, America’s patriotism gap makes more sense. The people who love our country most tend to be the ones who know her best. American history is the second greatest story ever told. The problem is that we stopped telling that story to our children.
On the contrary, we have twisted the story. The elites who run America’s schools, news media, and the entertainment industry have spent a generation lying to our kids about our country. In classrooms across the country today, American history is treated like a horror story. Students don’t learn about our successes — only our sins.
Of course, kids inundated with anti-American propaganda are going to grow up to be less patriotic. On the other hand, if the root cause of America’s patriotism gap is ignorance about our history, the problem can be easily solved. All we have to do is tell the truth about America. That’s exactly what &#8220;Star Spangled Adventures: The Movie!&#8221; does.
&#8220;Star Spangled Adventures&#8221; is a series of animated shorts that tells the true story of the United States. Each episode introduces children to a hero or moment from America’s history, from Christopher Columbus and the Pilgrims through the Revolution, the Civil War, and all the way to the Wright brothers and Jackie Robinson. Launched three years ago by the American Cornerstone Institute, the series now has over 30 episodes and has reached hundreds of thousands of children and their families.
Through our <a href="https://littlepatriotslearning.com">Little Patriots</a> initiative, we worked with historians and educators to create original classroom resources to go along with each episode. We’re fighting back against historical ignorance one story at a time.
This year, in celebration of America’s 250th, we decided to turn &#8220;Star Spangled Adventures&#8221; into a feature-length film. The movie features the voices of stars such as Kirk Cameron, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/weekend-plans-with-gary-sinise-the-most-patriotic-actor-in-america">Gary Sinise</a>, Kevin Sorbo, and even a cartoon version of me! You will soon be able to stream the movie for yourself and your family <a href="https://starspangledadventures.com/">online</a>.
No nation is perfect, but ours is extraordinary. At no point in the last 250 years was there a country that presented more opportunities than America did. Sure, we had our faults. But every other country’s faults were at least as bad, and usually worse.
Today, Americans of every race, creed, and color are freer, more prosperous, and more secure in their God-given rights than any people in history. &#8220;Star Spangled Adventures&#8221; reminds us all that the best reason Americans should love their country is that their country is so lovable.
And the best way to revive American patriotism is to start telling our children the truth about the land of the free and the home of the brave.
***
Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., is founder and chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute. He previously served as the 17th secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

USA, Indiana, Lafayette

The Story About America Too Few Kids Hear

America 250

children

Movies

upstream

Happy 100th birthday, Route 66! Yes, that scenic byway that runs from Chicago to Santa Monica, California – 2,448 miles of pure America — hit the centennial mark and looks pretty darned good considering it was marked for execution half its lifetime ago.
Instead of a death sentence, this vein that cuts through the heart of America persists, just as America has for 250 years: reinventing itself and rebelling against generations of nostalgia-bathed geriatrics to define its own purpose and future, brick by brick — or paved mile after paved mile.
Sure, there’s plenty of old-timey glory to be had, but this super roadway toward a sunset strip offers so much more: a glimpse into the past with the wheels always treading toward the future. And if you follow it west, it goes right into the horizon of a sun that never sets until you want it. And even then, perhaps it’s somewhere in the cool desert under a canopy of endless stars winking you a goodnight through the neon glow of a roadside motel or trippy little teepee. The Mother Road offers what Americans have always been looking for: adventure, discovery, possibility, and a path of unwritten rules (speed limit be damned). Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.
But this isn’t about Route 66. It’s about the type of country and the type of Americans it represents.
We are empire builders in every sense of the world, and if you’re ashamed of that, then you need to reassess your priorities, man. Because doggone, how could you not always be in love with the team that suffers the foolishness of the world and ends up shaking the whole thing down until it’s safe for the beaten and scared – or threats are at least behind us – and then carries on as if it was NBD? And all the while we’re blasting rockets into space, curing diseases, feeding the world&#8217;s hungry, writing great literature, creating great art, and writing the Great American Songbook. We build skyscrapers, railroads, fleets of aircraft, and TV dinners. We invented Hollywood, football, pantyhose, and pinup girls. We make muscle cars. We play golf on the moon.
What good is an empire if you don’t use it? Yet here we are – the U.S. of A. with our hotdog cookouts where men wear low-cut sneakers and grab beers from sweating coolers under the Maple tree, and wives in gingham and soft brown hair corral barefoot children, sticky from ice pops and marshmallows and lemonade made with too much sugar. Here is the Empire of the true believers: the road doesn’t start or end here. Each man knows from where he came and wishes to go. These are parents whose own childhoods were unburdened by the weight of the future and the fears of old men. Couples who fell in love with each other and the American Dream. When it comes to realizing that love — of God, family, and country — it cannot be held back. It’s akin to closing the back cover of a book that blew your mind, and the only thought that bubbles to the surface is, “This must be shared.” And so it is with building the American Empire.
Who has lost faith in the American Dream? When “proud” is a proxy for love, it’s easy to see who is invested in the long-haul, full-speed-ahead, ride-or-die America of the past, present, and future. If one man is making that drive by way of the Main Street of America or any other highway or byway, backroad or country road, in a Corvette alongside Tod Stiles or riding shotgun with Hunter S. Thompson, the Empire is unmistakable. It is belief in the project of America rather than the political projects subject to the whim of office-holding power. To Democrats, there is nothing to be proud of — nothing to love — when the levers of power aren’t being pulled by “your team.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1126395" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/image-5.jpg" alt="" width="579" height="466" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/image-5.jpg 579w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/image-5-300x241.jpg 300w" sizes=" (max-width: 579px) 100vw, 579px" /></div>
So it goes, why invest in the American Dream, become part of the Great American Project, the American Empire, if your entire viewpoint and love is dependent on political power? You don’t. You don’t see the point beyond one being wholly consumed by a constant feed of hateful slop, shoveled into every eye, ear, and mouth hole until the consumer is conditioned to crave it. For the leftist, the defiance and the satisfaction both depend on the project of destroying the American Empire rather than on recognizing its awesomeness.
We live in the most culturally and environmentally diverse nation, yet are largely unified under the principle of being, well, American. To paraphrase John Candy (R.I.P.) We like us — and we like being American. This is a land still waiting to be discovered and shared, and welcomed to, where you can stake your own little corner of it somewhere – practically anywhere. We are kind and without prejudice to strangers until the moment you badmouth the very things that make this the best place on Earth — our trust in goodness, and our ability to do good, if imperfectly. We unapologetic Americans don&#8217;t care about how others denigrate us to feel morally superior; that&#8217;s our superpower. The down-on-America types contribute nothing to this scenic adventure, but they do expose a shallow and unprincipled life by so easily and flippantly turning on a nation and its people who gave the world so much in exchange for the self-important applause of fellow pompous status-seekers.
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that those who still love America despite the politics of the thing are <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/the-ideological-fertility-divide">having more kids</a>, according to the Institute for Family Studies. There might be something about being absorbed in shoveling slop to such an extent that the idea of being without it drives a person to be an anxiety-riddled mess, the weight of the synthetic fears smothering any optimism for the future.
People mercilessly attack the very idea of America as a chimera or a worn-out fable for silly-headed children and misty-eyed, faded patriots. But America and the American Dream endure — if not as the Promised Land, then as the Land of Promise. And whose to say what that promise is, exactly?
Maybe we don’t want someone to tell us the answer (what’s up, Alexa?) but to go forth and discover it on our own — and even if we don’t find it, we take pleasure and pride in seeking it ourselves. Because the truth is somewhere down that road, but first you have to get in the car and drive. And what a drive it is. That’s the dividing line. Those who see the miles of mountains, desert, grassland and plains, swamps and valley, forest and seashore, and stand in awe at what God has so graciously given us, and we want so desperately to share that sense of wonder. There is nothing that can satisfy that urgency like having children and wanting them to see and discover and experience what we have been so generously given for 250 years. Even through war and famine and desolation, Americans have conquered — not nation building for its own sake, but conquered to spread the American ethos: the unbound spirit of searching for an American Dream that never dies in the hearts of those who believe in it.

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Who Lost Faith In The American Dream?

American family

American History

DW Opinion

On this day, 250 years ago, Thomas <a href="https://x.com/OldeWorldOrder/status/2071021131373429235">Paine</a> publicly argued for adopting &#8220;United States of America&#8221; as the formal name of the new nation, just days before the Declaration of Independence was adopted. The name stuck because it described exactly what we were building: a nation of united, sovereign states, not a collection of squabbling colonies.
And on this day, June 29, 2026, Democrats are flipping their flags upside down, banning the Bible from schools, and refusing to celebrate our 250th anniversary. They&#8217;re not just apathetic about this country; they&#8217;re actively allergic to it.
Gosh, they ruin everything good.
Though Republican pride in the country remains strong — 70% of Republican voters say they&#8217;re &#8220;extremely proud&#8221; to be an American — Democrats are at an embarrassing 14%. If you&#8217;re not proud of the nation that invented modern liberty, defeated fascism and communism, put a man on the moon, and gave the world the technologies that define the 21st century, then what exactly are you proud of?
I, for one, identify as an American thoroughbred. I bleed red, white, and blue. I think Uncle Sam is my actual uncle. I get giddy reading about the Founding Fathers and the impossible odds they overcame to secure the freedoms we now treat like background noise. Sure, I&#8217;m proud of my Italian heritage and my olive skin, and Sicily is a fantastic vacation spot, but all of that will always come second to my Americanism. 
 
And for those of you who don&#8217;t feel this way and have allegiances to other countries, may I ask why the hell you&#8217;re still here?
We have a mountain with four presidents&#8217; faces carved into it — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt — because they&#8217;re the men who brought us independence, individual liberty, global strength, and the abolition of slavery. We sent reusable rockets into space while other nations were still figuring out how to keep the lights on. We put a man on the moon before most people had calculators. We invented the airplane, the internet, and the smartphone, and turned the very landscape of every Taylor Sheridan series into the most powerful, prosperous, and free society in human history. Also, we have lots of air conditioning.
This is not a normal country. It&#8217;s an extraordinary one. Where people don’t just “make it,” they change the world.
And despite this, despite ubiquitous Ozempic, despite Amazon Prime and ranch dressing, the Left still isn’t having fun. But they aren’t just unhappy. They&#8217;ve built an entire identity out of grievance, and a country worth celebrating is a direct threat to that identity. If America is good, their whole worldview collapses. So it can&#8217;t be good. It has to be irredeemably racist, colonialist, and oppressive. Because the alternative is admitting they&#8217;ve spent decades being wrong about everything.
That&#8217;s why they ban the Bible from schools, sneer at the flag, and sit out the 250th anniversary of the greatest political experiment in human history. It&#8217;s not intellectual. It&#8217;s a mental illness. Misery needs company, and America&#8217;s success is the loneliest thing in the world for someone who needs it to fail.
Take the Bible. Liberals are furious that the Texas State Board of Education voted to make Bible passages required in public schools. I’m furious that it wasn’t already.
The Bible is in our national DNA. It helped write the code. George Washington prayed that citizens would imitate &#8220;the Divine Author of our blessed Religion.&#8221; John Adams said plainly that the Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people, and called the Bible the best book in the world. Thomas Jefferson created his own edited version of the Gospels. And our first Chief Justice, John Jay, said it was the duty of a Christian nation to prefer Christian leaders. These views weren’t fringe; they were the whole operation. Attacking the Bible isn’t brave countercultural resistance; it’s sawing off the branch you’re sitting on.
But here&#8217;s the thing about 250 years: we&#8217;ve survived worse than these woke woeful warriors. We&#8217;ve survived actual existential threats, and we came out stronger every time. The question is whether this generation will do its part.
It&#8217;s not too late for normal Democrats and independents who still love this country. Stop following activists who treat America like an original sin. Ask yourself what kind of nation you want your children to inherit. Be proud of the past, protective of the present, and hopeful for the future. Fly the flag right-side up. Teach your kids and your friends the real story of this country. Fire up the grill this Fourth and celebrate the 250th anniversary like it means something — because it means everything.
This nation is worth defending. It&#8217;s worth keeping alive for another 250 years. And it&#8217;s worth being proud of.

Patriot’s Day Parade

I Bleed Red, White, And Blue – The Left Can’t Stand It

Founding Fathers

Leftists

The major intellectual project of the far Left in the United States has long been its attempt to get Americans to hate their country. Its proponents may allow for hope of future love of country, once the left has been swept into power and undertaken the necessary reforms or even a revolution. But as for the country’s past and its condition today, it is chiefly worthy of visceral detestation and condemnation.
As for the view of their country among Americans writ large, we will likely get a better impression of the prevailing mood in the weeks ahead. Prediction: Americans will mark their country’s 250th birthday with celebratory gusto, not disgust.
Those in the public square who don’t share the condemnatory view, including President Trump, often speak of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Frequently, however, TDS is a symptom of a more encompassing malady. Call it “America Derangement Syndrome” — the view that this country stinks in all major and many minor ways. The mobilization against Trump is personal, but he is often a proxy for a bigger target: the idea of a great America.
This view mainly spreads from its sturdy long-time redoubt on the end of the political spectrum, where Americans identify themselves not as “liberal” but as “very liberal.” The intensifier has made a big difference in attitudes toward American exceptionalism (no such thing), views of the U.S. military (highly suspect), DEI and transgender policy preferences (enthusiastic support), and, in pandemic times, personal fear of COVID (very high).
Over decades, Gallup surveys found Americans embraced this “very liberal” self-description in low numbers, typically no more than 10% of respondents, compared to 25% or so identifying as “liberal.” Yet the “very liberal” do command cultural heights from Hollywood and academia to publishing to major media outlets. They are a tiny minority of Americans, but they don’t act like it and never have. Meanwhile, surveys have shown that in recent years, more Democrats have been tipping toward “very liberal.” In terms of political domination of the party, the “very liberal” seem to have routed or cowed into submission moderate or old-school “liberal” Democrats.
The representative cultural document of “very liberal” America is the “1619 Project,” which sought to redate the founding of the United States to the year the first African slaves arrived in the British colonies of North America. To slavery, add “settler genocide” as practiced against Native Americans, the all-encompassing subjugation of women by men, stultifying religious conformism, the turn of the United States to imperial conquest in the late 19th century, Japanese internment during World War II, the South of Jim Crow, ongoing structural racism and sexism, income inequality, and the overweening political influence of billionaires. The cumulative impression is that of an American moral cesspool. A Gallup survey last year found 9% of respondents said they had no pride in the United States;  an additional 11% said they had only a little.
Lately, however, this broad-based rejection of the United States as a political project has also taken inchoate root on the “postliberal” right. Here, the primary objection is the primacy accorded to individual rights and freedom in liberal societies, especially the United States. Liberty, in this view, inevitably becomes license and runs roughshod over any notion of the common good, which societies must embrace to survive. Postliberals divide over whether the United States, at its origin, was in fact a liberal society. One view holds that because it was, the venture was doomed to failure from the outset once liberalism had run its course.  Another view is that the United States was born a Christian nationalist polity but became corrupted over time by liberal individualism.
As for where to go from here, the recovery of the sense of collective good requires some form of authoritarian transformation. Most postliberals are vague on the details, though some are explicit in their yearning for a strongman. Both the postliberals and the left aspire to cultural hegemony and the suppression of ideas about the “common good” that deviate from their own. This requires enforcement power that they won’t find in the Constitution of the United States.
While “very liberal” self-describers are a small but growing minority, the postliberal sort is a growing minority but still an infinitesimal one. J.D. Vance has called himself postliberal, but he is less well known for that than for his conspicuous patriotism as vice president of the United States.
The “very liberal” and the postliberal are one in spirit in that their advocacy takes place not outside the confines of the society they claim to despise, or even on its margins, but in its bosom. Many on the Left have long been adept at cashing in on their views in societies such as the United States, which readily enable individuals to do so. The ability of right-wingers to do so seems to be improving as social media is monetized. In this, paradoxically or not, both camps have a lot in common with the hundreds of millions of other individuals bustling in pursuit of happiness in the United States.
So even as those who peddle disgust with America continue to make the most of living here, 41% in that Gallup survey said they are extremely proud of their country, 17% very proud, and 19% moderately proud. It’s true that the extremely/very numbers were down from 2024, but there is clearly a partisan effect from Donald Trump’s reelection to account for. So the inroads of America Derangement Syndrome are real but small.
This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, and it points to a fundamental misconception among evangelists of America-hate. Guess what? All sentient Americans are aware of their country’s history of slavery, and polls show most agree its negative effects remain with us. Yet 77% are at least moderately proud of their country anyway. Love of one’s country or pride in it doesn’t require a view that its past was sinless. So “educating” people about its sinfulness, by way of the 1619 Project, will not produce the hoped-for levels of radicalization a new revolution requires. The “very liberal” may or may not believe they are speaking to the masses, but their message resonates mainly with their preexisting ideological soulmates. It can, however, produce an unwarranted degree of self-doubt among  Americans about their country and a reluctance to speak up for it for fear of monomaniacal “very liberal” denunciation. This is a problem, and it demands greater outspokenness on behalf of the 77% who recognize, wholly or in part, that they live in a great country.
In fact, most of the time, most citizens of most countries feel a sense of attachment to them. This is visceral. Here, it’s what causes otherwise even-keeled individuals at international sporting events to chant “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and to be moved to tears by especially powerful renditions of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” These reactions do not require an unblemished historical record of goodness and achievement, nor are they easily undone by affluent scolds with an agenda. The notion that you could talk Americans out of pride in their country is part and parcel of the derangement.
Once, when asked in Europe about American exceptionalism, President Barack Obama replied, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” He chose to answer by pretending not to know of the specific use of the term “exceptionalism” as applied to the American experience. That left many Americans dissatisfied or worse, because if everyone rightly feels exceptional, it’s the rule, not the exception.
Nevertheless, to the extent Obama was simply describing the pride people generally take in their country, he was on to something. He selected safe countries to set alongside America. The German and Japanese examples, had he picked them, would have created a different hubbub. Yet it’s impossible to find countries or peoples in the world today whose history includes nothing blameworthy. An overall identity-driven affinity and affection persists among their people even so.
There will always be a fringe of outlying haters. Those living in societies whose top political priority is the protection of individual rights — the United States, for example — have the great advantage of freedom to seek recruits to their point of view. But they are pitching lunacy, and they should not be surprised when their inroads are not great.
***
Tod Lindberg is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Group of people waving small American flags at sunset. Concept for different topics like Election Results, Happy Veterans Day, Labor Day, Independence Day, President day.

The Everlasting Resilience Of American Patriotism

Trump Derangement Syndrome

Former Presidents Gather For The Obama Presidential Center Dedication Ceremony

The NYT Has Some Real Problems With These Eight Americans

Liberalism

new york times

Racket News

Radical Chic

Tom Wolfe

To celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, two marathon runners have assembled a team to unite the country in a marathon relay from sea to shining sea. 
The idea started when marathon runners Joe Nail and Wyatt Moss met and became friends while trying to complete 50 marathons in each of the 50 US states. 
“As America&#8217;s 250th birthday came into view, Joe had an idea: do something epic to bring the country back together,” the Relay for America website <a href="https://www.relayforamerica.org/about">said</a>. “A coast-to-coast relay, carrying the American flag from one ocean to the capital. He asked Wyatt to partner — and Wyatt pushed it further. Don&#8217;t make it a private feat. Open it to everyone and build the first mass-participation flag relay across the country.”
The idea for Relay for America was born – a marathon relay where more than 250 runners will carry the flag from California to the nation’s capital. Nail and Moss planned a route consisting of 3,016 miles, with each mile <a href="https://www.relayforamerica.org/honor">dedicated</a> to one of America’s veterans. 
The website mentions that the idea started with “a ragtag group of young people on a shoestring budget, with about two weeks to plan something most would spend years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on.” However, the founders of this movement mention that the spirit of American exceptionalism has kept the team going. 
“We think that America is still an exceptional place,” Nail said during a Fox News interview. “There’s this narrative — people like to talk about all the things that are wrong with America, and really the spirit of this relay is showing all the things that are right with America.”
The run began Sunday on Rodeo Beach in San Francisco when a group of about 15 people and the runner  touched the waters of the Pacific Ocean and started running east, as Moss <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZkz1TAveZa/">told</a> his audience on Instagram.
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The <a href="https://www.relayforamerica.org/">home page</a> of the Relay for America has a map where viewers can see the flag’s current location and calculate the time the flag is expected to reach their state. 
The relay will be expected to take around 20 days, ending in Washington D.C. on the evening of July 2. The runners are currently averaging about 161 miles per day, running through all hours of the day. As of Friday, the flag had been carried all the way to Utah.
The <a href="https://www.relayforamerica.org/crew">website</a> offers opportunities for volunteers to work for management, media, comms, operations, press, and bookkeeping to make sure that the flag reaches the nation’s capital on July 4.

Hispanic woman running in desert carrying American flag

Relay for America Shows United States Runs On Tenacity and Patriotism

All American Patriotism

America250

Marathon

U.S.

Former President Barack Obama said Thursday that America’s Founding Fathers “fell terribly short” when they adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776 because they did not immediately abolish slavery. 
Obama made the remarks ahead of the official opening of his sprawling presidential library in Chicago, flanked by other former presidents, including Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Joe Biden. The library, which kicked off its opening day with a land acknowledgment, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/obama-museum-sets-records-including-how-much-itll-cost-you-to-get-in">cost</a> $850 million to construct and opened 3,437 days after Obama left office. 
&#8220;In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration&#8217;s promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property,” Obama said of the document&#8217;s proclamation that &#8220;all men are created equal&#8221; and are &#8220;endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.&#8221;
“But in drafting a Constitution and a Bill of rights, they did have the foresight, the genius, to provide us with a framework that allows each generation to make our union more perfect,” Obama added. 
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“Over more than two centuries, through petitions and protests, marches and strikes, moral appeals from the pulpit and conversations at the family dinner table, men and women from all walks of life, of every color, every faith, every region took up the cause of democracy and made it their own. Until we the People came to include not just some of us, but all of us,” Obama added later.
The Obama family has been infamously critical of America’s past, with former first lady Michelle Obama once claiming that the first time she was ever proud of the United States as an adult was during her husband’s first presidential campaign. 
&#8220;For the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback,” she said on the campaign trail in 2008. 
Obama’s comments come as the nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration.
In recognition of that milestone, President Donald Trump has promised to have the “largest fireworks show in history” to celebrate Independence Day. 
Trump said that the festivities will kick off on June 24 with music performed by the Army and Marine Corps military bands and Lee Greenwood. He said that Air Force fighter jets and stealth bombers would fly over for the ceremony taking place on the National Mall.

Obama Presidential Library Dedication Ceremony

Obama Knocks Founders Before America’s 250th

barack obama

chicago

illinois

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
It’s the lost heritage the patriot craves today: the traditional kind of small-town, Southern charm marked by porch swings, county fairs, and main streets. A place where the children are welcome in nearly every setting. Where stores close on Sundays. Where it is the norm to run into a familiar face. This America isn&#8217;t gone; it&#8217;s alive and well in Franklin, Tennessee.
At the town square, a teenage girl sings to an ambling crowd as they window shop for homegrown goods, and a young boy with a violin reminds the older generations of simpler times. There are Victorian-era storefronts, a nearly century-old theater, stylish boutiques, and a local “book lovers’ paradise” filled with Mark Twain, C.S. Lewis, and the like. A few miles down the road, the Amish sell yogurt and raw milk at the farmers market. A barbecue food truck sends the sweet, tangy smell of smoking brisket through the air into the lungs of suburban families attending their Saturday morning ritual. 
When summer nears, humidity plagues every night and day — a characteristic of life in the South. Around the same time, mosquitoes, cicadas, and lightning bugs emerge, reminding the townsfolk of the blossoming garden among them. August may be the most oppressive month, as the blazing sun, steamy air, and perpetual use of anti-itch cream hinder any kind of outside enjoyment. Then suddenly, a random September weekend alleviates the muggy blanket, and what begins is a near-perfect, brisk autumn day. 
Life is slow in Franklin, Tennessee. People linger. They smile and open the door and talk to strangers. Middle school boys ride their bikes to the Circle K down the street to cool down with Slurpees. Local coffee shops teem with first dates, older couples pay a visit while on their daily walks, remote workers escape the isolation of home, and mothers with young children revel in the sunshine with an iced drink, hoping the children entertain each other. One staple spot just south of the square is an old gas station-turned café trademarked with the logo, “Your Daily Pit Stop.”
This town is a perpetual return to its storied past. From the 19th-century Carnton plantation to a historic stove factory converted to a shopping mall, a tribute to its heritage is embedded into the groundwork of everyday life.
Even the darkest chapters.
In 1864, a German immigrant named Johann Albert Lotz found himself in the middle of one of the deadliest battles in the Civil War. When the Battle of Franklin broke out, the Lotz family fled across the street to the Carter House, where the Carter family cowered in their basement as gunfire and artillery exploded all around them. The family’s son, Tod Carter, was just outside in the heart of the war, fighting that very day when he was fatally wounded in battle. He was carried home, just up the road, where he died surrounded by his family.
The homes are now treasured today as local museums known as the Lotz House and the Carter House. The history of what once took place serves as an ongoing reminder of the bloodshed spilled 160 years ago. A legacy not meant to be solely decorative, but to be remembered.
Patches of cemeteries and gravesites and memorials are scattered around town. Small American flags line the streets for the Fourth of July. Red, white, and blue tablecloths appear on front lawns. Fathers stand at the grill cooking burgers while children run through the heat with sunglasses, face paint, and firecrackers.
This is where nostalgic, old-fashioned, and classic Americana values have stopped to rest. Elsewhere, spectators scrutinize the American mindset, the notion that one could possibly be proud of their country and the freedoms preserved for it. Those freedoms safeguard their places of worship, guarantee their defense, reprimand the corrupt, protect the motherland, and solicit dignity and honor for those grateful enough to inhabit it. It is a mindset now nearly foreign to this country.
Maybe this is why people are moving in droves to places like Franklin, Tennessee. Americans sense something fragile is at risk: not merely a political affiliation, but a shared affection for the place itself. The most devastating aspect of the collapse of a nation is the one that comes from within, when people forget what’s most important. In the words of Benjamin Franklin when asked what kind of government the founders had created, he replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.&#8221;
The search for Americana is more than a remembrance of the past. It is preserved in the small rituals: meeting and knowing the neighbors, strolling through a park and fishing at a local pond, spending more time outside in nature than on screens, inviting new friends over for a homemade dinner, and enjoying the God-given freedoms unique to this nation, and this nation alone. Perhaps Americans are starting to return to this. Perhaps we are starting to remember.

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Americans Are Moving Here In Droves. Spend A Day In Town And You’ll See Why.

tennessee

Twenty-five years ago, it didn&#8217;t matter if you were red, white, blue, black, gold, or purple. On July Fourth, our nation&#8217;s birthday, Republicans and Democrats both showed up for the party.
Not anymore.
In 2026, we can&#8217;t agree on the color orange, whether water is wet, or what the American flag even stands for. And the polling proves it. Sixty-four percent of Republicans will display the American flag on July Fourth. Democrats? Twenty-seven percent.
Back in 2001 — before the towers fell, before the culture war went nuclear — Democrats and Republicans were nearly identical in how proud they were to call themselves Americans. Eighty-seven percent of the country, unified, coast to coast. Then came the decades of left-wing institutional rot, and here we are: 90% of Republicans say they are proud to be American. Democrats? 29%. That is a 61-point gap between two halves of a country that used to grill out together.
Absolutely pathetic.
The Left has always been a little less enthusiastic about American symbols, but this is more than dyspepsia; this is pure contempt. More Gen Z Democrats say they have little or no pride in being an American than say they are extremely or very proud. Think about that. The party of &#8220;our democracy&#8221; has produced a generation that actively dislikes the country more than they love it.
Instead of parties this July Fourth? They&#8217;ll be hosting off-key sing-alongs, mourning deported illegal aliens, and papering their doors with rainbow stickers. Old Glory won&#8217;t make an appearance.
Here&#8217;s why that matters.
That flag proudly wears thirteen stripes for the colonies that told a king to pound sand in 1776. Fifty stars for the states bound together under a Constitution that declared rights come from the Creator — not from government. It flew over Washington, crossing the Delaware in the snow. It inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem while British rockets lit up the night over Fort McHenry. It led the charge at Normandy and planted itself on the moon.
The stars and stripes don’t represent perfection. They represent the longest-running experiment in ordered liberty the world has ever seen.
The modern Left cannot rally around any of that. Their entire worldview requires them to see America as an original sin that can never be forgiven. Slavery existed here — just as it existed on every continent for thousands of years. The difference is that the principles in that flag gave Americans the moral and legal tools to end it. The Left&#8217;s preferred history — the 1619 Project revision pushed in classrooms and newsrooms — pretends those principles never existed. It teaches children that the country was founded on oppression rather than on the radical idea that all men are created equal.
The feature, ladies and gentlemen, never the bug.
The New Left that took over universities in the 1960s and 1970s did not want to reform America. It wanted to delegitimize it. Herbert Marcuse and the critical theory crowd taught a generation that Western civilization, and America in particular, was the source of all repression. Repressive tolerance became the rule: shut down any defense of the country as “hate,” while every grievance gets a platform. Decades later, the results are in the polling.
Democrats who went through that education system now look at the flag the way a vampire looks at garlic.
They&#8217;ve been trained to see every American success as stolen and every American failure as proof the whole thing is rotten, all while living in the country with the highest living standards, the strongest military, the freest speech, and the most opportunity any large nation has ever produced. The hypocrisy writes itself.
So let them sulk. Let them treat July Fourth like a national day of mourning.
The rest of us still believe in the country that produced the Wright brothers, the polio vaccine, the internet, and the men and women who stormed beaches to liberate continents. Republicans aren’t just holding the line. We are still building. Entrepreneurs are creating jobs instead of burning buildings. Mothers are raising children instead of raising fists at the system. Young men are enlisting or starting businesses instead of majoring in resentment.
The revolutionary spirit that won independence never left the Right. It just got busy winning in the real world.
The numbers keep dividing because one side loves what America is, and the other resents what it has achieved. That isn&#8217;t a disagreement over policy. That is a fundamental rejection of the country itself.
Democrats hate the flag. We don’t.
This July Fourth, fly it anyway. Fly it high. Fly it for the people who built this place and for the ones still trying to keep it worth defending. 
The Left can keep their grievance parade. The rest of us have a country to celebrate.

Medium size flags line a white fence

Democrats Hate The Flag That Leads The World. We Celebrate It.

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Fourth of July

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