David McElroy

A baby isn’t born with an owner’s manual.

Human beings are born into all sorts of circumstances. Some come into loving homes. Some face challenges that make life confusing.

When children are young, they’re under the control of adults who seem god-like in many ways. The adults seem to know everything. They seem to have complete control. We eventually figure out that those adults are typically just as confused as we are, but in the meantime, we absorb everything those adults teach.

Some of what we’re taught is intentional, but much of it is what we pick up from the examples around us. Both good and bad.

By the time a child is in the neighborhood of 18 years old, he or she is considered an adult. The child has spent years trying to define himself or herself in relation to parents, assuming those figures are around. At first, most children want to be just like their parents, but the time soon comes when they want to pull away and live their own lives.

By the time I was in my 20s, I knew everything. Or so I thought. I really thought I had everything figured out. Most people feel the same, either consciously or unconsciously. And then we’re off to building a life as a new adult.

But in all of that messy process, one thing is true for almost all of us. Since we don’t have an owner’s manual, we’ve been programmed by parents and preachers and teachers.

Nobody has ever told us that we need to ask one basic question: How should I live a good life?

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America has always been more of an idea than a place.

There was certainly a country called the United States of America, but that was more of a government entity. When I was growing up, many of us were relatively naive about the imperfections of that government.

I think now that it was mostly because we were so blinded by our devotion to the core mythology of America to see the grasping and evil politicians behind the machinery of government.

We excused the reality of what our politicians often did because we were in love with the idea of America as a place of freedom and justice and decency.

When the country celebrated its 200th anniversary of independence in 1976, we were still in love with the shared idea of America. Even though it came just after the disasters of Watergate and Vietnam and oil embargoes, most people still believed in America as an idea.

In a month, the United States will celebrate its 250th anniversary, but things feel very different.

As we approach July 4, 2026, I no longer sense the shared belief in an ideal that we once took for granted. And I fear that the ideas which once burned like a holy fire now resemble dying embers that threaten to go out completely.

Is the idea of America — the good parts, the parts worth celebrating — slowly dying?

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