The piece looks at a July Fourth moment when visiting fans, comedians, and polls revealed a divide: many strangers and even critics saw an America worth celebrating, while a vocal slice of elites and some Democratic voices treated patriotism like an embarrassment.

Scots in kilts arrived in Boston, marched to the games behind bagpipes, and joked about calling the city New Scotland. Japanese travelers filmed themselves eating Texas barbecue, and in Lawrence, Kansas, locals carved a foreign flag into a lawn for visitors who had never been there before. Those small scenes became the story no one on television expected.

Visitors had been warned they were landing in an angry, collapsing nation, yet they found free refills, friendly hellos, and people who took pride in ranch dressing like it mattered. The contrast between hype and reality was striking; tourists kept filming the ordinary kindnesses. America looked flawed but fundamentally good to them.

Too many professional explainers missed that. For a chunk of the commentariat, the country’s 250th birthday was a chance to air grievances and lecture rather than notice what ordinary people were doing on the Mall or in the stands. The loudest accounts came from voices who treat the flag and fireworks as symbols to be scorned rather than moments to be seen.

Bill Maher, who has long been critical of the president, pointed this out on air and in a lot of people’s feeds. He mocked some of the president’s cultural choices but then reminded viewers that patriotism is not something to tuck away. He separated the country from the man who runs it, which used to be an obvious distinction.

That idea matters. You can dislike a president and still love the nation he governs; recognizing that used to be common across the political spectrum. Now it is treated like a novelty when anyone on the left says it out loud.

Nicholas the 250th with misgivings in a major column and suggested Americans take lessons from Nordic countries. He cited Norway and its massive oil fund as evidence that other models can perform well for citizens. Pointing readers to an alternative country on your nation’s birthday is itself a kind of admission.

Norway has about five million people and a sovereign-wealth fund built on North Sea oil that is vast by any measure. That reality matters in policy debates, but it does not explain why millions risk everything to come to the United States. The line for opportunity runs to our borders, not Oslo’s.

Other critics went further, calling the celebration imperial or corrupt, and some pieces read as though the colors of our flag had suddenly become offensive. One writer said the sight of red, white, and blue now “make my heart ache.” These are not subtle complaints but a wholesale refusal to enjoy a public moment.

In New York City, its socialist mayor staged a speech from George Washington’s desk and described the nation as an arena of supremacy and oligarchic power. He reached for the familiar script about trillionaires and masked agents, then suggested the elected government operates like an authoritarian regime. The rhetoric was sharp and theatrical.

https://x.com/NickKristof/status/2073403591726186875

The vice president shot back in the Harbor and named the “couple small but loud voices” who “speak obsessively not of our national greatness, but of our national imperfections.” Those exact words captured the clash: one side treating national pride as optional, another insisting the country still merits admiration.

Hypocrisy showed up in plain view. The critic who preaches against private holdings has family ties to foreign rental property and escapes to retreats while lecturing Americans about inequality. That mismatch between sermon and lifestyle undermines the moral authority of the complaint.

Polls make the partisan drift clear. Extreme pride in being American sits near historic lows, with the share saying they are extremely proud falling over the last decade. Under Obama it was higher among Democrats, slipped under Trump, nudged under Biden, and now registers far lower among Democrats than among Republicans.

Party differences show in behavior too: roughly two-thirds of Republicans fly the flag outside their house compared with about a quarter of Democrats. A gap like that did not exist in the same way after the Gulf War, which suggests something new has happened to partisan feelings about national identity.

Weather and logistics threatened to spoil the birthday. Heat advisories, a thunderstorm evacuation, canceled parades, and a late headliner made the event messy by any logistical standard. But the people who mattered—the crowds on the Mall and the tourists packed into public spaces—stayed and cheered through the complications.

Reporters and academics described the heat, the grift, and the drama, often missing the human detail the visitors and residents saw. The story they wrote is a different country than the one most Americans experienced on the ground. That gap between elites and everyday life is the political story here.

Not every left-leaning voice has abandoned national pride. Bill Maher kept saying out loud that patriotism should rise above partisan fights, and on the Fourth of July John that patriotism must transcend politics, that America is the best nation now and forever. But those exceptions are treated as tolerable quirks rather than the guiding principle of a party.

A party whose leading figures narrow loyalty to the party itself rather than the nation asks voters for power without owing the country anything in return. Fourteen percent of Democrats expressing extreme pride is the number on the chart; the holiday was the sound it made in public. Why should any American vote to hand them the country?