So the good old U.S. of A. has made it to the quarter-millennium mark (if we reckon its age as starting from the signing of the Declaration of Independence). Time to celebrate, right?

Look, I know America has some pretty severe problems. There’s basically no way to say that without understating it. We’re in a full-blown crisis, things were already bad before that, and the country in its present form only exists because of a list of atrocities going back centuries.

But at the same time, it’s my country. It’s my home. I love it, despite its problems. More than that, I dare say I’m proud of it—not in its entirety, not as if those problems don’t exist or don’t matter. But there are things about the USA that are worth celebrating.

First and foremost, there’s the one part of the Declaration of Independence that just about every American remembers:

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.

Yes, it is entirely fair to point out the hypocrisy of this statement. Most of the men who signed their names to the Declaration also kept people they deemed unequal as slaves.

Founding Father John Adams (not to be confused with fellow founder and posthumous beer company mascot Sam Adams) was among those pointing out this hypocrisy. However, he also signed the Alien and Sedition acts. One of these Acts was a law banning criticism of Adams’ government. Another, still in force today, was the basis for detaining Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps during World War II. His opposition to slavery was also a mixed bag: While his declaration of rights in the Massachusetts constitution functionally abolished slavery in the state, he opposed abolition at the national level to appease the southern states.

George Washington is a similarly contradictory figure. One one hand, he was one of those who kept his fellow human beings as property. On the other, it looks like he was a true believer in democracy, stepping down after two terms as president because he didn’t fight a war against King George just to become King George.

So it is with the USA in general. We talk a lot about freedom. We mean it. We also have a lot of serious human rights abuses to our name. But that doesn’t mean we don’t still mean it when we talk about freedom.

In other words, being a hypocrite doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It doesn’t even mean you don’t actually believe in the values you don’t bother living up to.

Another thing I’m proud of, even as it could obviously use some work, is our system of checks and balances.

There has been a concerted effort, going on for much longer than I’ve been alive, to undermine that system. That effort has found a great deal of success. The White House is currently occupied by an admitted “dictator.” (“Only on day one,” he said, hoping nobody would realize that if you have a dictator on day one, you don’t get a say in what happens from day two onward.)

And yet, despite a broad refusal by the government to enforce the limits on executive power (including Democrats who spent four years with their thumbs up their butts instead of taking decisive action against the architects of January 6th), there are still those in the courts—even justices appointed by Trump himself—who are sometimes willing and able to tell him no. That may not seem like much, but it’s impressive that it happens at all considering the circumstances, and it’s genuinely a big deal that the steamroller can be slowed down and sometimes redirected even if it isn’t stopped.

The Federal Government has never been a huge fan of the freedom of speech, despite its being enshrined in the First Amendment, and we’ve certainly seen tyrannical (and unconstitutional) crackdowns on protest in recent years as well as historically. Yet this is still a country where you can go on your personal blog or on national television and criticize that government and everyone in it, and (since the above-mentioned “sedition” law expired in 1800) you can’t legally be arrested for it, and it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll illegally be arrested for it.

Unless you’re at a protest.

I’m also proud of our culture. Sure, the culture has problems, too. Much of it is shaped by the legacy of racism and other bigotries, often in ways that you’d never notice unless you know the history or are one of the groups it targets. There’s a lot of jingoism and even outright warmongering mixed up in our patriotism, and we have this weird obsession with the flag. (The Pledge of Allegiance was literally made up by a flag company to sell more flags.) We have an unhealthy degree of consumerism, materialism (in the Madonna sense, not the Dawkins sense), and celebrity worship (which could be either, TBH).

But as World Cup athletes have recently discovered, there’s also a lot of good here. One of the few things we like more than having a good time is showing our friends and our guests a good time. That’s certainly not unique to Americans, nor is the “nobody goes home hungry” principle underlying our (often mocked) relationship to food. But that hospitality is just as integral to our culture as it is to others, and it comes from a place of genuine love of neighbor and a healthy pride in what we have to offer.

Now, look, I’m not trying to say that being the home of ranch dressing makes up for the Trails of Tears or Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What I am saying is that there are things about America that are worth being proud of, and we shouldn’t allow patriotism to become the exclusive domain of those who don’t care about—or worse, support—all the parts we’re rightly ashamed of. I love my country, and it’s (partly) because I love my country that I want it to be better.

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