{"id":4102,"date":"2026-07-09T10:37:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T10:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=4102"},"modified":"2026-07-09T10:37:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T10:37:37","slug":"opinion-america-is-always-a-work-in-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=4102","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: America is always a work in progress"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The U.S. celebrated its 250th birthday with the <\/span>level of patriotism<\/span> at a new low and the partisan divide over who feels it at a new high. This growing sense of \u201cnational shame,\u201d <\/span>according to President Trump<\/span>, stems from a campaign to cast U.S. history as \u201cirredeemably flawed.\u201d For Trump, reviving national pride to help \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d requires learning about how great America once was through <\/span>\u201cpatriotic education\u201d<\/span> in schools, museums and historical sites across the country.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ironically, Trump would be hard-pressed to find anyone more qualified to be patriotic educator-in-chief than President Obama. No politician since Ronald Reagan, who inspired Obama, has done more to tap the nation\u2019s past to instill national pride in the present. Reagan, Obama <\/span>wrote<\/span> in 2006, offered Americans \u201ca sense of a common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s effort to harness history in the service of <\/span>\u201cfostering unity,\u201d<\/span> as Trump called for last year, first captured national attention in his 2004 <\/span>address<\/span> to the Democratic National Convention. Obama hailed the U.S. as a land of \u201cgreatness\u201d that served as a \u201cbeacon of freedom and opportunity\u201d for the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama had no patience for Americans who denounced their country for being irredeemably flawed. On the 2008 campaign trail, Obama <\/span>blasted<\/span> 1960s radicals who went so far as to burn American flags and blame the U.S. for \u201call that was wrong with the world.\u201d He even <\/span>rebuked<\/span> his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, for denigrating \u201cthe greatness and the goodness of our nation\u201d with his fiery, censorious sermons about America\u2019s sinful history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such a static conception of the American past flew in the face of the romantic patriotism that Obama appealed to Americans with, one rooted in a history of inevitable progress rooted in incessant struggle. By contrast, Trump would later offer a nostalgic patriotism of a golden past with an immaculate conception, the <\/span>\u201cmiracle of history,\u201d<\/span> as he described the Declaration of Independence in his thunderstorm-delayed July 4th address.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both kinds of patriotism have historical precedents to commend them. There is plenty to be proud of in U.S. history, including inspiring struggles and sacrifices that yielded progress. <\/span>But nostalgia has blind spots, and romance can go unrequited. Patriotism rooted in one or the other can curdle into cynicism or nihilism when confronted with evidence that confounds them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A more resilient and historically-informed patriotism would begin with the premise that <\/span>America, like Americans, is always a work in progress, which is not the same as a march of progress. We can no more turn back the hands of time to Make America Great Again than we can predict what the future holds, including how it will judge the past. Struggle does not always bear fruit, and what passes for progress today might not be deemed as such tomorrow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unforeseen outcomes<\/h4>\n

Consider the Progressive Era, named for the Progressives who pursued a proliferation of policy reforms on behalf of progress as they understood it, such as California\u2019s <\/span>John Randolph Haynes<\/span>. A Los Angeles physician, Dr. Haynes was a prominent socialist and leading proponent of expanding the reach of democracy through direct democracy measures (the initiative, referendum and recall).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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In 1911, Haynes\u2019 efforts came to fruition when California legislators, with the support of newly elected Progressive governor Hiram Johnson, enacted all three direct democracy reforms. California would eventually become the state most known for legislation by direct democracy. However, the ballot proposition process would increasingly serve the very forces that direct democracy was conceived as a bulwark against \u2014 those with the means to push their pet causes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Progressives also promoted the nation\u2019s first laws to protect the environment. This included the creation of national forests, which banned prescribed burns and promoted fire suppression. Over time, though, this well-intentioned Progressive reform backfired. It contributed to growth of dense underbrush that provided the fuel to make <\/span>California\u2019s most recent fires its most devastating ones<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The logic driving environmental conservation also drove another Progressive Era reform: eugenics, which sought to steer human evolution in particular directions. <\/span>As Progressive President Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s <\/span>National Conservation Commission<\/span> explained, \u201cconservation of our natural resources \u2026 must include \u2026 above all \u2026 conservation of the racial stock itself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

California became the nation\u2019s second adopter and most voluminous practitioner of the eugenics reform of <\/span>compulsory sterilization. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who <\/span>famously dissented from his brethren to support Progressive legislation that protected workers<\/span>, wrote the 1927 majority opinion that, in the name of progress, upheld the practice of rendering women deemed \u201cunfit\u201d to procreate unable to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Modern parallels<\/h4>\n

The Progressive Era was a response to the Gilded Age driven by the late 19th century industrial revolution. Today, we live in a <\/span>New or Second Gilded Age<\/span>, which is, in part, the ironic and unanticipated product of the post-industrial (or information) revolution. In 1976, America\u2019s bicentennial year, The New York Times celebrated the <\/span>\u201cRevolution in Silicon Valley\u201d<\/span> and the promise of \u201calmost unlimited consumer markets.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As Silicon Valley soared, however, so, too, did economic inequality, the defining feature of yesterday\u2019s and today\u2019s Gilded Age. Here, too, <\/span>California led the way<\/span>, even as it became an ever increasing Democratic Party stronghold. <\/span>In 1969, California sat <\/span>just below<\/span> the national average when it came to the degree of family income inequality. Since then, the state\u2019s income inequality gap has <\/span>widened considerably<\/span> \u2014 making it one of the most unequal in the country today: the Golden State as Gilded State.<\/span><\/p>\n

As these historical examples underscore, there is no idealized past to reclaim nor idealized future to arrive at through an inevitable march of progress. Instead, the best we can do is endeavor to make America greater. This is a never-ending quest implied by the Constitution\u2019s aspiration \u201cto form a more perfect union.\u201d <\/span>Our past provides reasons for both hope (if not guarantees) and humility borne of the knowledge that the future brings unforeseen twists and ironic turns that can mock the convictions of those who profess today that they know what\u2019s best for tomorrow. But that should not deter us from trying.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately, in this journey without destination we have north stars to guide us. Foremost among them is the Declaration of Independence. Embedded within it are what Obama aptly <\/span>described<\/span> as \u201cideals that \u2026 stir our collective conscience\u201d and \u201cbind us together despite our differences\u201d \u2014 and which Trump rightly hailed for igniting a <\/span>\u201crevolution that has never ended.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This \u201cgreat charter,\u201d as <\/span>President Calvin Coolidge called the Declaration on its 150th birthday<\/span>, anchored in what Walter Isaacson recently called <\/span>\u201cthe greatest sentence ever written,\u201d<\/span> provides the foundation for making America greater over and over again. That ought to be more than enough for Americans across polarized political divides to fly the Stars and Stripes in our front yards, while celebrating the nation\u2019s birthday in our backyards under a fireworks-lit sky \u2014 and to return to the work-in-progress that is our nation for another 250 years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark Brilliant is an associate professor of history and American Studies at\u00a0<\/span><\/i>UC Berkeley.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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