Courtney’s Thoughts:
I’m a Yankee. Doodle. Dandy. Which, I learned today, is essentially an exceptionally proud American.
British soldiers originally sang “Yankee Doodle” to mock American colonists. “Yankee” was a nickname for Americans (and now northerners). “Doodle” meant a fool or simpleton. The lyrics of the song joked that colonists were unsophisticated country bumpkins who thought sticking a feather in their cap made them fashionable.
The Americans responded in classic American fashion. We adopted the song and sang it ourselves.
After the American victory in the Revolutionary War, the tune became a patriotic anthem instead of an insult. By the early 1900s, a “Yankee Doodle Dandy” had come to mean a true patriot, someone proudly American, a person with energy, confidence, and spirit.
Check. Check. Check.
Given my Jersey roots and my willingness to hop on a plane to New York just for dinner, there’s definitely a healthy share of Yankee Doodle Dandy in me.
America is not perfect. (I have definitely apologized when visiting other countries for some of the decisions being made in these parts.)
But the best part about being an American is that we are allowed to believe tomorrow can be different from today. That’s woven into our national DNA.
America has never been a place defined by a single ethnicity, religion, language, or centuries-old bloodline or crown. Instead, we’ve been united by an idea: that where you start doesn’t have to determine where you finish.
For 250 years, people have come here – or have been born here – and decided to reinvent themselves. Farmers became business owners. Factory workers sent children to college. Immigrants arrived with little more than hope and built lives they could scarcely imagine. Communities faced hardship, disaster, and division, then rolled up their sleeves and started again.
Is the American story perfect? Not even close.
But it is a story of perpetual optimism. We are a nation that believes problems can be solved, neighborhoods can be rebuilt, opportunities can be created, and the next generation can do better than the one before.
You see it every day in the work of nonprofits, schools, churches, first responders, small businesses, and volunteers. You see it in the adult learner studying for a GED after a 10-hour shift. You see it in the entrepreneur taking a chance on a new idea. You see it in neighbors helping neighbors after a storm.
The best part about being an American isn’t that we’ve figured everything out.
It’s that we never stop believing there’s more work to do – and that together, we’re capable of doing it.
Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved this country. Americans are builders. We build businesses, nonprofits, schools, communities, and second chances. We see a need and start a committee. We see a problem and organize a response. We meet a stranger and somehow end up calling them a friend.
It’s messy. It’s imperfect. It’s occasionally exhausting.
But 250 years in, it’s still a pretty remarkable experiment.
Barry’s Thoughts:
If you ask me (and you didn’t) the most important phrase in the United States Constitution comes in the preamble. When James Madison and the boys sat down to draft the rulebook for Democracy 2.0, they described their goals in simple terms – “to create a more perfect union.” Setting aside what an awesome band name James Madison and The Boys would be, this seems particularly quaint in 2026.
Today, we have come to expect a little more bombast and hyperbole from our statesmen. Everything is either “the biggest ever,” “the greatest in history,” or “terrible – the likes of which have never been seen.” Viewed through that lens, the phrase “more perfect” seems almost mealy mouthed.
Maybe that compromise of a phrase is something we’ve forgotten. We never set out to be a perfect union, because we knew from the beginning that wasn’t possible. This whole thing is too big, loud, and messy to ever be perfect. It can be pretty damn good, maybe even close to perfect. But the thing about close to perfect is that you can always get closer.
One of my favorite authors recently shared a bunch of tweets he’d come across from Europeans experiencing America for the first time during the World Cup and, folks, they are in awe. Some Swedish lady tried ranch dressing for the first time, and it was like she saw God. A German live-tweeted his trip through Buc-ees like he’d entered Narnia, then later had his mind blown by the atmosphere at Auburn’s Jordan-Hare stadium.
It’s been a refreshing reminder of how great this country really is (as a Big Ten guy, even I have to admit that SEC stadiums are on another level). Because what we do is always over the top. We’re the country where professional wrestling as we know it was born. We’re the country that put seven layers on a gordita. We’re the country that celebrates its birthday every year by seeing how many hot dogs Joey Chestnut can eat.
What we do is beyond big, on a scale that baffles European tourists. But what we’re trying to create is allowed to be a little more nuanced. We’re trying to create a more perfect union. We can acknowledge that this country has flaws, as long as we’re willing to try and sand them down. We can love what we’re building while actively working to supplant it with something better.
We’re the country of freedom and slavery. Opportunity and oppression. Optimism and skepticism. We can proudly serve you a brisket sandwich at 1 in the morning in a backwater town that used to be Choctaw land. We can rattle your fillings blasting music from stadium speakers of a school that didn’t admit black kids until 1964. Hell, we have bigger St. Patrick’s Day parades than Ireland, and you don’t even want to know what we put those poor people through.
Because of how much we’ve screwed it up along the way, we can be better. We’re getting there, and so far, we’ve created something incredible. Something that even Jimmy Madison and the Boys would be impressed by. But there’s always a way to become a more perfect union. Thankfully, we have plenty of ranch dressing for the journey.