#american-identity

#american-identity

The price of gasoline is always displayed on the sign, in huge numbers that overwhelm the rest of the scene. That design makes the gas-price sign a kind of key to understanding American life.

Anyone who comes after Trump is going to have a really hard time inheriting a cult of personality and turning that back into a party. Vance is not this kind of charismatic movement leader.

Younger generations have lost faith in American institutions due to nearly two decades of economic turmoil, which has led to a significant rise in populism across the United States.

In 1979 the revolution happened, and now Tehran looks like something from an earlier century. Sometimes I think that our whole world has become kind of like that-going backwards in time.

Jefferson's words on equality are often seen as self-evident, yet they fail to encompass enslaved individuals, women, and other marginalized groups, revealing a significant contradiction.

The frame, magnificently ornate and gilded, was intended for royalty and originally surrounded a portrait of British King George II that hung in the college's Nassau Hall.

Starting next month, the cost of renouncing your U.S. citizenship will go down dramatically - a boon for people already shouldering the burden of paying for a major overseas move. Anyone wishing to formally shed their American citizenship is required to obtain a form called a Certificate of Loss of Nationality, and right now it comes with a whopping $2,350 fee. In April, that fee will drop by 80% to $450.

For a nation whose founding symbols were carefully engineered around the balance of peace and war, that omission is hard to read as accidental. Dropping the olive branch from the dime isn't just a design choice: it's a cultural signal.

The air feels heavier. And the struggles are changing shape. Beyond my office walls, the world is shifting, and my clients sense the tremors. The things they once trusted, global order, democratic norms, and even their own personal safety, no longer feel solid. They feel brittle, as if one strong wind could bring it all down. And what they're sensing isn't imagined.

Few ideas are as central to the nation's identity as that of the American Dream. With the 250th birthday of the United States coming up in July 2026, it's worth stepping back to examine a concept essential to the nation's self-image. The term "American Dream" was actually coined in the 1930s by historian James Truslow Adams. Ever since the establishment of the Colonies, however, America has been viewed as a land where individual and collective hopes and aspirations can be realized.

A record high of adults—80 percent—believes that Americans are divided on the most important values. National pride, trust in government, and confidence in institutions are near record lows. The Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz says the United States hasn't been this divided since the Civil War. Nearly half of Americans think another civil war is likely in their lifetime.

President Donald Trump's MAGA movement suffers from an excess of morality. On no issue is that more apparent, and more self-damaging, than immigration. That claim likely would strike both the right and the left as absurd. The former sees itself as hard-nosed realists who will do whatever necessary to take back their nation. And the latter doesn't see much MAGA morality in Minneapolis, where this weekend immigration officers again shot dead a disruptive protester, the second this month.

"It is not the critic who counts," President Theodore Roosevelt once said. "The credit belongs to the man who is in the arena." The Heritage Foundation has been in the arena for many years, fighting many battles, so it's no surprise that it has attracted many critics as well. And while Heritage cannot claim perfection, this much is certain: We have stayed true to our mission despite the critics;

That was the case for Mailan Pacios, a 28-year-old Cuban immigrant living in Tennessee, who was scheduled to take her citizenship exam on January 8, only to receive a notice on January 3 that her appointment had been canceled. It was like a bucket of cold water. It's very painful when you come with the hope of moving forward and this happens, says Pacios, who has two children, owns an air-conditioning business, and insists she has never had legal problems nor been a public burden.