We're really enjoying your 1,000,000+ fans who came to celebrate you — and watch the World Cup along the way.
I write an Independence Day blog most years. Part of it is pride in being an American. Part of it is gratitude for the good fortune of being born here at all — because that was never a guarantee in my family.
My dad's parents were both born and raised in Ireland with nothing. No money, no opportunity, no options. Leaving for the “land of the free, home of the brave” wasn't a hard choice — but it took real courage. They were moving alone to a country where they'd have even less at first, leaving their families behind for good. The promise of American opportunity was bright enough that they simply believed they'd find a way to make it work.
That same instinct - take the risk, bet on yourself, trust that the reward is worth it - showed up a generation later in my dad, when he left a stable corporate job to start a company built around helping people achieve their financial and life goals.
He used to sing “Country Roads” constantly. So much so that it runs through nearly every memory I have of him. Hearing it on repeat this month as the U.S. Men's National Team's victory anthem has had him on my mind all week, right as we approach the country's 250th birthday. He loved a lot about America, but what he loved most was the American dream itself — the idea that if you were willing to roll up your sleeves and take a real risk, you probably had a better shot at building something here than almost anywhere else in the world.
That's the deal America has always offered. And it's worth being honest about what the deal actually is: opportunity and hardship aren't opposites here, they're the same coin. A country that can incubate the world's first trillionaire and is home to more billionaires than any other place on earth is also, necessarily, a country where plenty of hard-working people with their own goals and dreams feel like the ground keeps shifting under them. That's not a flaw in the system — it's the cost of a system that actually lets people swing big. You don't get one without the other. Anyone who tells you America could offer unlimited upside with none of the friction is naive.
World Cup fans have been finding that out in real time this summer. Visitors came expecting to find the discord they'd heard about, and instead found a big, quirky, extremely American family - imperfect, generous to a fault, and completely unbothered by how strange Buc-ee's must look to a first-time visitor. My hope is that as the tournament wraps up, those fans keep finding the thing that's actually true underneath the noise: that kindness, service, and sacrifice are the real bedrock here, even when the headlines say otherwise.
The semiquincentennial is a good moment to remember that this has always been America. We were built on the belief that people should be able to take care of themselves, and that belief is what fuels our economic scale, our restlessness to build and improve things, our refusal to accept “that's just how it is.” But we were built just as much on the expectation that to whom much is given, much is expected. Helping your fellow man isn't treated as a burden here. Instead, it's treated as a privilege. That's not incidental to the American story. It's the same instinct my grandparents carried across an ocean with nothing, and the same one that's shown up in every client conversation I've had about what someone actually wants their money to do for the people and causes they love. Self-reliance and generosity aren't in tension. They're the same value, pointed in two directions.
So, America, as you turn 250, I have a heart full of gratitude. For those who founded this country and wrote the documents that still guide us. For those who came from foreign lands and contributed their work ethic, their ideas, their food, and their culture. For those in the military who've defended us, and for their families. For the entrepreneurs and leaders who think bigger than themselves and build opportunity for other people. For the diverse, hopeful array of people chasing their own financial and life goals every single day. And for the World Cup fans who, without meaning to, reminded a lot of us that there's still real unity to be found here through shared purpose.
I also have a heart full of hope that once the fans go home, we remember something ourselves: this big quirky family is our family. We should lock arms to strengthen it. We are better together.
Happy birthday, America. I sure do love you.