Editor’s Note

“What is this you call property?” the Shawnee chief Tecumseh is said to have asked U.S. officials in 1810 while negotiating over the future of his people’s lands. “It cannot be the earth, for the land is our mother.” More than 200 years later, Tecumseh’s words offer a powerful reminder of something Americans often forget: that from its very beginning, the country has been not just a place but an idea – and one that different people have understood in radically different ways. 

As the United States prepares to mark its 250th birthday, you might expect celebrations focused on common ground and shared achievements. There will be plenty of those, and rightly so. But this milestone also offers something more valuable: an opportunity to ask hard questions about the gap between America’s ideals and its reality, and about whether our founding principles still inspire our citizens and the world. 

To help answer those questions, we asked ten diverse writers – from refugees and Dreamers to diplomats, political strategists, and ranchers – to reflect on what America means to them and why it still matters. What follows are their answers: personal, passionate, and sometimes painful meditations on a country that remains, for all its flaws, an important but unfinished project. 

The issue opens with several powerful immigrant perspectives. Former Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, who fled Cuba as a refugee in 1960, makes a powerful defense of immigration. He reminds us that America has always been an immigrant country – that roughly 100 million newcomers have arrived on our shores over the centuries and that these arrivals have been essential to America’s success. Indeed, today’s hostile rhetoric toward immigrants risks squandering one of our greatest competitive advantages, especially at a moment when China threatens U.S. economic supremacy. 

Goli Ameri, who came to the United States from Iran in 1974, provides a different kind of immigrant story – one focused on the unique American relationship to authority and rules. Her essay describes a series of revelatory moments that taught her about a country built not on obedience but on challenges, where power must constantly justify itself. Her stories of getting her first job during the Iranian hostage crisis, and later running for Congress, illustrate America’s radical openness – its willingness to extend trust broadly enough to allow citizens to grow into responsibility. 

Florent Groberg, a Medal of Honor recipient who came to the United States at age 11, offers yet another immigrant perspective – one written in the language of resistance and duty. Groberg’s America began as “an act of defiance” by people united not by blood but their refusal to accept permanent hierarchy. His decision to join the U.S. military during wartime reflected his belief that citizenship is about obligation, not paperwork. Combat, he writes, revealed to him what really matters: trust, discipline, and responsibility to the person next to you. His warning is stark: At 250 years old, America’s greatest threat is not foreign adversaries but internal erosion – cynicism mistaken for wisdom, contempt mistaken for critique. 

Jendayi Frazer, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs, adds to the historical perspective. As a descendant of enslaved Africans, she draws inspiration from the Constitution’s promise to form “a more perfect union” – a promise that has been repeatedly broken and reclaimed throughout our history. Her essay reminds us that America’s greatest strength has always been its capacity for self-correction, even as she warns that recent moves by Washington risk erasing the very struggles that make America exceptional. 

Karl Rove tackles the question of American identity. Pushing back against those who downplay the importance of our founding principles, he makes an unapologetic case for America as a “creedal nation” – one defined not by ethnicity or geography, but by its commitment to universal ideals. His essay is a passionate defense of the Declaration of Independence and a call to recommit ourselves to its promises. 

Paul Tera, a young Dreamer with DACA status, offers one of the issue’s most moving contributions. Having lived in the United States since the age of 9, he describes America as “the most consequential political experiment in human history” and argues that Dreamers are part of the long American tradition of expanding the nation’s promise to those previously excluded. His precarious legal status lends his words special urgency, as does his reminder that Congress has the power to fix this problem but has failed to act. 

Onaba Payab writes from the perspective of an Afghan refugee who first learned about the United States through the Voice of America. She then studied at the American University of Afghanistan before coming to the United States as a Fulbright scholar. Her essay is both a tribute to American soft power – the educational programs and cultural exchanges that quietly transformed her country – and a critique of U.S. inconsistency. The 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, she argues, sent a painful message that American commitments can be reversed when they become inconvenient. 

Glenn Rogers, a Texas rancher and veterinarian, provides a very different take on what makes the United States exceptional. In his view, the story of American progress is inseparable from the story of agriculture. He traces how innovations in farming have freed 98% of Americans from having to raise their own food, creating the surplus labor that powered every other advance in technology, medicine, and industry. Rogers reminds us that America’s success rests on foundations we rarely think about. 

Karen Hughes, who worked in public diplomacy at the State Department, grapples with a question that haunts this entire issue: Does the Statue of Liberty still face outward? Her essay argues that America’s greatness lies not just in its ideals but in its generosity – its willingness to help others in their darkest hours. She warns that recent cuts to foreign aid and humanitarian programs betray our founding values and our better angels. 

Finally, Jean-Guillaume de Tocqueville, a descendant of Alexis de Tocqueville (the famous French observer of American democracy), offers a view from across the Atlantic. Drawing on his ancestor’s great work, Democracy in America, he argues that Tocqueville’s 19th-century characterization of the United States – as a country defined by equality of conditions, civic participation, and voluntary associations – remains the nation’s ideal form. But he also notes that contemporary America has drifted far from that vision, with declining civic engagement, growing inequality, and citizens retreating into virtual worlds. His essay is both a tribute and a warning. 

Our contributors don’t always agree with one another. Some focus on economic innovation; others on moral leadership. Some see progress; others see backsliding. But together, they paint a portrait of a country that remains what President Abraham Lincoln called it: “the last best hope of earth” – not because it’s perfect, but because its ideals continue to inspire people at home and abroad to demand something better. 

As America turns 250, the real question isn’t whether we’ve lived up to our founding promises – we clearly haven’t, not fully, not yet. The question is whether we still believe those promises are worth pursuing. The writers in this issue suggest that the answer, despite everything, remains yes. I couldn’t agree more.