Unlike every other western country, the US retains a purpose greater than maintaining the comfort of its present circumstances. Highfalutin words such as liberty and progress have not been stripped of their meaning and - at its best - modern America still looks to the future with confidence, not trepidation, confident in its ability to stare destiny in the eye and not shirk from the challenges ahead.
This confidence can be disconcerting when first encountered but - as any honest survey of public opinion in eastern Europe or the world's remaining dictatorships will demonstrate - it is also inspiring.
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But it is also important to say, this 4 July , that one need not have ever visited the US to feel in tune with what it means to be an American. It is an empire of the mind (and the imagination) as much as it is a military and economic superpower. The principles of the American Revolution remain sound. The World Trade Centre no longer stands, but the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights does.
No other country has embedded the "pursuit of happiness" - the great goal of mankind - in the foundations of the state; nowhere else is the idea of liberty so revered. There is such a thing as an American sensibility and it can be felt from the Baltic to the Pacific.
Could the United States be doing better? Wrong question. If not America, then who? No-one, that's who. At its best, America and American ideals remain, in Lincoln's famous words, "the last, best hope of mankind". The United States still believes in a place called hope. As it celebrates its 229th birthday today, we should too.
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