‘All America Lies at the End of the Wilderness Road’

It has been precisely 248 years since the patriots of ’76 affixed their lives, fortunes, and sacred honors to the cause of national independence, and their posterity today appears to be more confused and unsure of who they are and where they come from than at any other point in the nation’s history. This is not an organic development, nor an unfortunate accident of history, but a byproduct of a concerted and intentional campaign — begun more than 50 years ago — to abstract America out of existence, replacing the entirely real nation and people with a series of “principles” and abstract maxims that melt down our actual heritage and identity into a thin classroom theory.

This political project has been advanced, in slightly different (though ultimately quite similar) forms, by the establishment Right and Left alike. But it is perhaps most evident today on the Left, which — after having spent the past decade lecturing anyone who was unfortunate enough to be within earshot about America’s unique evils — has suddenly rediscovered “patriotism,” or at least something that resembles it enough to convince the most gullible members of the electorate. (It’s just a coincidence, of course, that this rediscovery coincided with the precise moment that Democrats regained control of the White House).

The most recent example of this tendency came from Barack Obama, who took the nation’s 248th Independence Day as an opportunity to tell us exactly what he thinks of America. “The Fourth of July,” the former president wrote, “is about celebrating the big, bold, inclusive experiment that is our American democracy. And it has always been an experiment. Our democracy has never been guaranteed, which means we can’t take it for granted. We need to keep fighting for it, keep improving it, and keep making sure it reflects the better angels of our nature instead of the worst. That, more than anything, is what America is all about.”

I came of political age in 2016, so Obama’s presidency was just before my time. But one thing I have learned, in the years since, is that he had — and still has — a sort of diabolical genius for smuggling radical ideas into seemingly blasé, vaguely patriotic-sounding statements. This is a distinctive tendency in modern progressive rhetoric, but Obama is perhaps the single best representative of it.

The aforementioned July 4 post is one such example of this. With a series of brief, breezy passing remarks, the statement makes America so abstract that it may as well not exist at all. As I noted on X, “if they weren’t paying close attention, statements like this would probably strike most Americans as broadly unobjectionable. You have to actually read closely — and slowly — to understand the breathtaking radicalism of a statement like this. Then, and only then, you’ll realize that if the fundamental meaning of America is to ‘keep improving,’ then America doesn’t mean anything at all. It really is merely an abstract proposition, a set of aspirations that we’ve never quite reached.”

Obama’s patriotism, and the broader genre of progressive patriotism it represents, is a thin, conditional affair: America is good so long as it continues to become more and more like the country that they wish it was. (“I believe in the country American could be” is a simple, succinct summarization of this view that one hears, from time to time, in moments where the Left feels compelled to express some kind of affection for their country). It is a contractual patriotism, and when America fails to live up to its side of the bargain, progressives swiftly default on theirs. The four years of vicious, totalizing anti-Americanism that the nation was treated to during the Trump years — followed by the sudden reversal that occurred almost immediately after Trump left office — is a testament to this dynamic.

But America is not an abstraction. It is neither an idea (as neoconservatives on the Right would tell you) nor a dream of what might be (as progressives on the Left would have you believe). It is a place, a people, and a shared way of life, that — beleaguered as it may be — remains wonderful and unique and exceptional in a dazzling array of ways. More importantly still, it is ours. It is our home. We have obligations to it that precede any ideology or partisan commitments.

What is America? America is front porches, high school proms, skyscrapers, small-town museums tucked away on the corner of Main Street, the roar of the crowd in a football stadium, and highway diners where the waitresses never let your coffee cup make it to empty. America is the secret wonders lying at the end of a wilderness road, the hidden worlds, right here in your own country, lying in wait for you to discover. America is anybody with a car and a little gas money making off across the magical continent, chasing “all that raw land,” as Jack Kerouac wrote, “and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it.” It’s mountains that block out the sky, salt flats that stretch on into the horizon, canyons so deep it gives you vertigo just to look down them. It’s the misty ancient rocks of Maine, the vast darkness of the forests of Oregon, the ethereal red rocks of Utah and New Mexico. It’s turkey on Thanksgiving, presents under the tree on Christmas, candy on Halloween, firecrackers on the Fourth of July. It’s Neil Armstrong stepping out onto the moon, Miles Davis crooning on the trumpet, Babe Ruth sending another one into the bleachers. It’s all that and much more besides, and it belongs to us, and only us, and no one else other than us. Don’t let anyone — right, left or center — ever tell you otherwise.

“All America,” wrote T.K. Whipple, “lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.”

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