Jul 4, 2025 | It's our 249th birthday! BBB is signed! Mamdani is "black"?

Hi everyone!

 

It's my favorite holiday today, the 4th of July, when we celebrate our 249th birthday, and the beginning of our 250th year. It's pretty amazing that our "experiment" of a nation has made it this far. Where we were once a collection of individuals from somewhere else, we're now our own thing, we're not Americans: it's a nationality, it's an ethnicity, it's recognizable worldwide. We barely know what we are, but everyone else in every other nation can spot us a mile away—or perhaps a kilometer.

There was a poll out from Gallup earlier this week that showed patriotism in decline among Americans, and we covered it at The Post Millennial but I also dug into it a little more for the New York Post. The poll shows that while patriotism among Republicans has pretty much held steady, for Democrats it's in steep decline—specifically among younger Dems. It's a shame. They're missing out. I blame the educational system in large part. There's no reason not to love the country or to love being American. I have a big old stars and stripes outside my front door and I love it.

I love us: We are direct and confident; we stride, we do not slouch; we are bright, big, friendly. We take charge, entering conflict assuming we will win — we’re back-to-back World War champs, after all, as I wrote in the Post. There's no reason not to have a little self-love for this country as we continue to make huge strides in the progress of actual humanity. Sure, we screw up, but that's whatever, every nation has, it doesn't mean you tear it down from the bottom up and start over. We are a work in progress and unlike other nations, we know it, we embrace it, and we strive to do better.

Americans must think of themselves as Americans first — and there’s no point in hating who and what we are. We are not a place to which people should be importing their ancient grievances; we are not an ancient nation. We patriots have high expectations for ourselves and value temerity, hard work, and social mobility. We are not a nation of strugglers, but a nation of strivers. (That's more from the column, I'm pretty happy with it.)

Trump is set to sign the Big Beautiful Bill sometime today, it seems like he's trying to time it up with the flight of some B-2 bombers flying over DC. The man sure does like a spectacle, and who can blame him, that's at least half of the bread and circus, after all. Turns out he's even planning to have a UFC fight at the White House next year for our 250th—talk about a spectacle.

I still think it's bogus that Hamilton, perhaps the most patriotic musical in our history, has refused to perform at the Kennedy Center next year because orange man bad. It's like they wrote all the words and sang all the songs but didn't actually learn anything about America, who and what we are. We don't need to love our president to celebrate our founding. The great thing about presidents is that if you wait a couple of years you'll get a new one.

Keeping it short because it is the 4th and I know you all have hotdogs to grill and fireworks to set off, but here's one last thing: there was a big data hack at Columbia University this week where hackers wanted to see if the school is still doing affirmative action admissions even though the Supreme Court said it's racist. What they found, amid all the rest of it, was data from identitarian socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who checked off two boxes on his application for admissions: "Asian" and "Black or African American."

Why did he do that? His parents are of Indian descent, he was born in Uganda, but he's not a mix of ethnicities, and at the time he definitely wasn't American. He wasn't naturalized until 2018 when he was in his late 20s. The Times was delivered the info by the hacker, apparently, and asked Mamdani about it, who said he was an American born in Africa and that he doesn't identify as black. But if he's American, why does he hate our way of life and governance so much?

Here's to a great Independence Day. I hope no one burns your buns and you keep all your fingers.