What Is It That Makes Americans Special In All the World?

I hope you had a good Memorial Day.

It’s nice to have a Monday when nobody has to go to work but it’s also incredibly poignant to remember all the men in their graves who died for this country.

The quality that made these men and women so special is the same quality that allowed Americans to found this crazy country in the first place.

So what is it? What’s the singular quality that defines traditionally American mores and patriotic Americans themselves?

It’s this: an idealistic optimism so expansive and unwavering that to those riddled with the rot of cynicism it looks like hopeless naivete. “Those idiot Americans,” the stereotypical Europeans sneer. “Don’t they know that will never work? Don’t they know they are silly grinning fools? They should have quit while they were ahead, they can’t possibly keep their childish little country going.”

But it did work.

And it kept working. And the stubborn upstart, wet behind the ears, like an overgrown puppy bounding into grass too high to see over, charged headlong into settling it. It laid claim first to the manifest destiny in its backyard, and swiftly ascended until it ruled the world as its supreme power.

The purehearted, eternally generous people who rode to the rescue for those superior Europeans many times, and also happened to bestow on the rest of the world’s teeming masses wonders like electricity, telephones, the car, the plane, the Internet, and constitutional democracy.

You’re welcome.