A recent Bloomberg poll found that just 26% of Americans fell the country is on the right track, while a whopping 66% fell it is on the wrong track. And, according to a recent Gallup poll, 55% of Americans felt it was likely that today’s children would face a lower standard of living than their parents. Then, a Rasmussen poll released last week found that 46% of likely voters feel that America’s best days are in the past. Just 37% feel our best days are still ahead. If this is true, what’s to celebrate this July 4th?
My friend, Gary Bauer, the President of Our American Values answers this question in a wonderful way in a recent blog:

Given the leadership we have today in the White House and the news I often report on, I can understand why many Americans may feel so down. But having had the privilege of working all eight years in the Reagan Administration, I think some of the Gipper’s eternal optimism wore off on me.
Yes, America faces big challenges in the days ahead. But look back at our past. Think about the challenges that confronted our Founding Fathers. Those heroic men defeated the world’s greatest empire.
They pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to create a new nation founded on the belief that liberty was a gift to each man. They rejected the divine right of kings and believed instead that each man was endowed with rights by the Divine King of Heaven that no government could deny.
America’s “values statement” can be found in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …”
What we take for granted today was radical idea in 1776. Sadly, throughout much of the world in 2011, it still remains a radical idea that is brutally suppressed.
Of course, there will never be perfection in a fallen world, but America has done so much for the cause of freedom and the benefit of mankind. From the Civil War to the Great Depression, the threats of Nazism and Soviet communism, this great land has always produced heroes who have risen to the occasion. We survived the Carter malaise and we will overcome the Great Recession.
America is worth celebrating. It is, as Lincoln said, “the last best hope of earth.”
May God bless these United States!

Or, as Lee Greenwood so powerfully sings, “God bless the U.S.A.!”