Remember and preserve America’s real greatness
We must see the beacon of what America has been, should be again, and could be for the future.
Many people have told us lately that they aren’t feeling patriotic. They give us powerful reasons, too.
The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is a good one. It is as big as it isn’t beautiful. This Republican law will leave millions without healthcare, including tens of thousands of Iowans using Hawki, Fee-For-Service, Iowa Health Link, and other Iowa Medicaid programs. It will dramatically worsen rural healthcare, reproductive healthcare, and hunger among children. It will blow up the cost of college along with the budget. Its litany of evils continues for a thousand pages. All Iowa Senators and Representatives voted for it.
Further, the health of our democracy has precipitously declined. People are being grabbed off the streets by agents with no uniforms, no badges, and no warrants. We are witnessing extortionary executive orders, threats against political adversaries, breaches of the constitutional order, and attacks on the press, while the President abandons both those who fought with us in Afghanistan and the Ukrainian people.
It’s no wonder that pride in being an American is at a record low, with many people in a funk, wondering what happened to the America that they loved.
But there are no solutions to be found in despair or by giving up on the American ideal.
While it is important to hear the drumbeat of awful news, it’s more important to see the beacon of what America has been, should be again, and could be for the future.
Over its centuries, America has committed many sins, both of action and inaction, but we have also been a force for good of historic proportions.
On the purely material level, America has catalyzed unprecedented global wealth and security. From the Marshall Plan to USAID to private international investment, the United States has helped drive the dramatic decline in global poverty. We ended two World Wars, prevented others, and kept the seas free. We routinely saved millions of lives from famine, disease, and disasters while pioneering medicines that save many millions more.
In the meantime we produced technological marvels, the stuff of literal science fiction. American inventors, often with government funding backing them, gave us everything from telephones to light bulbs to airplanes. Then they produced nearly every component of our digital world, from transistors to integrated circuits to the internet and smartphones. Even most computer languages are American, as is every Big Tech company.
America has also propelled discovery and exploration. Consider space exploration. We put a man on the moon. We populated Mars with robots. We explore the cosmos with probes and wonders like the Hubble and Webb telescopes. From electricity to DNA, from the human genome to agronomy, Americans have pushed the boundaries of science and knowledge. Fully 71% of all Nobel prizes have gone to Americans.
America has been good for humanity’s soul, too.
Our revolution, our principles, and our Constitution have inspired many worldwide to pursue liberty, opportunity, and equality before the law. They have provided a model for other nations to enshrine the rights of their people in their own laws, often with the help of American lawyers and Constitutional scholars. And those principles–as well as our values that have been so well articulated by our past Presidents–have helped to make the world a better world, where rules, morals, and universal human rights matter, not just raw national interest.
But America has never been perfect. Our history has been one of extremes, swinging between cruelty and generosity, repression and rights. Sometimes we even do both at once. Beholding our great country being shaken by such crass, unprincipled ineptitude is demoralizing, but it’s not our first trial. So don’t let the red-hats claim to have the only true patriotism. Hold firm to yours. Celebrate our history, our democracy, our accomplishments. No man or movement can take those away from us. Then decide what actions you will take to help preserve them for future Americans.
Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.
Originally published in the Press-Citizen on July 19, 2025.