This Fourth of July, I’d like to share some thoughts about America at this historic moment in our history.
I guess what I’d like to say is this: this Fourth of July, let’s think carefully about the America we MUST choose.
I find myself thinking less about flags and fireworks and more about my grandchildren.
This is what age does to you.
At 74, the question changes. It’s no longer, What do I want? It’s What am I leaving behind?
What kind of country will my five grandchildren, ranging in age from 32 down to 12, inherit?
What kind of story will they tell about us?
Not long ago, my 12-year-old granddaughter needed a ride to school. There was nothing historic about it. No cameras. No speeches. No audience. Just a grandfather and his granddaughter in a car on an ordinary morning.
A week later I hired her. Every summer I pay my grandchildren to work with me, and this summer we’re repainting a porch. I enjoy the fact that the first paying job all five of my grandchildren ever had was working for me.
The day I drove her to school, before she got out for the summer, we didn’t talk about anything important.
I’ve discovered that’s where the most important things happen.
What we call casual conversations are the stuff our lives are made of.
I dropped her off, watched her disappear into a crowd of kids, and drove home grateful.
That was it.
As I get older, I understand that those small moments are not interruptions to the meaning of life.
They are the meaning of life.
The point of life is not domination.
It is not winning.
It is not becoming rich and powerful, so rich and powerful you no longer need anyone or care.
The point is love.
That is the America I still believe in on this Fourth of July.
America has always been a contradiction.
We proclaimed liberty while tolerating slavery.
We spoke of equality while denying it to women, Black Americans, Native Americans, and so many others.
But the miracle of America was never that we were innocent.
We weren’t.
The miracle was that, at our best, we were capable of confession and change.
At our best, Americans could repent.
We could become better.
That is why tens of millions of people came to this country over the years.
This was a country filled with hope.
We could become better.
We could say the most important sentence in any language:
“I am sorry.”
Today that America is under attack.
Not from immigrants.
Not from the powerless people politicians tell us to fear.
But from some of the richest and most powerful people on earth who have decided democracy itself is an inconvenience.
Donald Trump did not create this sickness.
Donald Trump revealed it.
The billionaires who gathered around him for profit, the tech oligarchs, the financiers, people who already possess more wealth and influence than almost anyone in human history, looked at democracy and saw it as a problem.
Too inefficient.
Too messy.
Too human.
They do not want citizens.
They want followers.
They want customers.
They want a world where everything can be bought, including truth.
What has been degraded most profoundly in the Trump era is not only our politics.
It is our moral imagination.
Words have been degraded.
Truth has been degraded.
Faith itself has been degraded.
I know something about this because my family helped build the modern Religious Right.
In the 1970s my father and I were there at the beginning.
We believed we were defending Christianity and Western civilization.
Looking back now, I see something else.
How easily religious certainty can become a weapon.
How easily faith can be recruited into the service of power.
The Jesus who somehow found me again, not the Jesus of political movements or flags or rallies, but the Jesus who remained after my anger, my doubts, and my attempts to walk away, asks a much simpler question.
How do you treat the person who has nothing to offer you?
I’ll repeat that.
How do you treat the person who has nothing to offer you?
It seems to me, at age 74, with a lot less of my life ahead than behind me, that this is the question that matters most.
It’s not how loudly you pray.
It’s not how many Bible verses you can quote.
It’s not whether you’re using religious language.
How do you treat people when there is no advantage to loving them?
That question has done more good in my life than anything else.
Which brings me to JD Vance.
His failure is not that he changed his mind.
I’ve changed my mind all my life.
I was an evangelical.
I became Greek Orthodox.
I walked away and called myself an atheist.
Now, unexpectedly, ridiculously, beautifully, I find myself praying again.
Not with certainty.
With gratitude and hope.
Changing your mind is one thing.
Changing your conscience to serve power is something completely different.
JD Vance knew who Donald Trump was.
He saw the cruelty.
He saw the contempt for democratic norms.
He saw the lies.
He saw January 6.
And then he chose him anyway.
Character is not revealed when doing the right thing is easy.
Character is revealed when doing the right thing costs you something.
He chose ambition over truth.
That choice matters.
America needs disagreement.
Democracy depends on it.
But democracy cannot survive leaders who decide loyalty to one man is more important than loyalty to the truth.
The presidency is a moral trust.
Anyone who helped normalize Donald Trump after seeing exactly who he was failed that trust.
This Fourth of July, I do not want revenge.
I do not want humiliation for people who disagree with me.
If my strange journey back toward faith has taught me anything, it is that contempt destroys the person carrying it.
What I hope for is much harder.
I hope for repentance.
I hope for a change of heart.
America was never supposed to be a playground for billionaires or a reality show starring the loudest man in the room.
America is the teacher buying supplies with her own money.
America is the nurse working the night shift because someone called in sick.
America is the immigrant beginning again.
America is grandparents answering the phone because someone needs help.
Not because they can get something out of it.
Beauty and love have intrinsic worth.
That is the best of our country.
America is the ordinary miracle of belonging to each other.
The billionaires have their rockets, their algorithms, and their dreams of escaping weakness, age, and even death.
But the rest of us have something they seem to have forgotten.
This Fourth of July, we have each other.
Needing one another is not a design flaw.
It is the design.
Maybe that’s why, after all these years of running from faith and returning to it and running again, I find myself whispering the same prayer every morning:
“Lord, help me give Genie the best day of her life today.”
Because nations are not saved by strong men.
They are saved by love.
By grandparents loving grandchildren.
By grandchildren caring for the child who’s being bullied.
On this Fourth of July, the fragile, wounded, unfinished promise of America is still worth loving.
And still worth defending.
Happy Fourth of July.
