The U.S. is on the eve of its 250th birthday. Traditionally, around the 4th of July, there is a plethora of polls that measure national pride, patriotism, and confidence in the country. Given unrest persistently reported by media, economic challenges like widening income inequality, and the increasingly unreachable American dream, one would think that the majority of Americans have given up on their country. Interestingly, not so.
- The Gallup Poll of May 2026, published June 24, 2026, reports:
77% of Americans say the Founding Fathers would be disappointed, compared with 71% in 2013 and 42% in 2001. The view is shared across party, age, income and race.
The same poll also reports that the majority of Americans say the nation has made progress on its founding ideals; a view measured at 84% in 2002 and 77% in 1976.
Although the percentage of those who see progress has decreased, “The contrast between the two suggests Americans distinguish between the country’s long arc and its current state,” Gallup concludes.
- There is another way of expressing what the Gallup Poll reported.
Most Americans see the difference between nation and government – between the Founders’ ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and the disorder created by the elected humans that govern.
When in the midst of establishing the nation, the Founders considered the writings of thinkers like Cicero, John Locke, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith. They studied governing documents like the Magna Carta. And they came up with a unique system of government, unheard of at the time.
The system included a written Constitution, instead of an amalgamation of traditions and laws; it aimed for checks and balances via three separate branches of government exercising equal power, instead of a central ruling body; it provided for a share of powers between the federal and individual state governments; it was a Republic in which the populace was represented by elected officials, instead of a direct Democracy which the Founders considered “mob rule;” and its engine of prosperity was the free market described by Adam Smith.
After 250 years, that system is still standing and holds the record for the oldest continuous constitutional representative democracy among the larger modern countries.
- Wait, what about slavery?
The recent major polls all agree with Gallup’s assessment of the majority of Americans’ complex feelings of pride in the nation the Founders created, hope that improvements can continue to be made, and high levels of frustration with current challenges.
But there is a minority, with laser focus on the Founders’ shortcomings: All men are created equal, except for slaves and women. People are born with unalienable rights, except slaves and women.
What this minority fails to incorporate in their arguments is that the Founders allowed Americans to make changes to the Constitution as circumstances changed.
Their circumstances included an agrarian South depended on slave labor that would not have stayed in the Union if the newly-created government did away with slavery (Abraham Lincoln took a different path; the Civil War claimed 690,000 souls, but did end slavery).
Their circumstances also included the fact that women in the world’s major powers – England, France, and Germany – could not vote. Maybe the Founders, in spite of breaking so much new historical ground, balked at being pioneers in the women’s suffrage issue.
- Enjoy your 4th of July
Picture: (Editor’s note) This is a picture of one of the two main streets in the small Southern town in which I live (48,000 residents). That’s what it looks like all the time, not just dressing up for the 4th of July. Nothing to do with partisanship either, since nothing changed when last November voters replaced a Republican Mayor with a Democratic one.
