CHAPTER 4

Defending American Exceptionalism

All this—for a flag?

—Michelle Obama

Fourth of July, Flyover Country, USA. There’s no other party quite like it anywhere in the world.

Patriotism is celebrated with classic middle-American pageantry. That’s because in that part of the country, it’s still a valued virtue of everyday life—and an opportunity to do some good for the community. There’s nothing quite like celebrating the spirit of America’s founding to bring folks together to take care of their own.

It’s hard to say what hits you first. Maybe it’s the heat—the muggy thickness of it in Georgia or the dry, crisp air of Texas. Maybe it’s the smells—asphalt mingling with fresh-cut grass, all covered by the sweet and spicy smoke rising from grills of all shapes and sizes. Maybe it’s the colors, only three—red, white, and blue, and plenty of each. Or maybe it’s the sounds—engines humming, children screaming excitedly, a few scales or strains of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” as the high school band warms up. As you take it all in, it’s clear you’re celebrating America’s birthday in Flyover Nation. And as far as I’m concerned, on that special day there’s no better place to be.

In my family’s hometown nestled in the Ozarks, there exists one big holiday: Freedom Fest. The people in town are so proud of it they made themselves a giant wooden sign that says HOME OF THE FREEDOM FEST, and people driving through think, What?

Freedom Fest is the town’s happy-birthday-America party. There are flags all over the place—on street signs, lampposts, telephone poles—there can never be too many. Red-white-and-blue bunting hangs from the windows of buildings all up and down the street, along with banners with simple, heartfelt messages: GOD BLESS AMERICA or THANK YOU, VETERANS. There’s that light breeze that makes the flags and banners wave slightly as it brings some relief from the heat.

The breeze also carries the smells—gas from the cars and trucks and fire engines idling as they wait for the parade to start, concrete and blacktop being baked by the sun, and the food. When I was a kid my entire family was in the parade; in fact, I remember practically the entire town being in the parade so there weren’t really that many people left to watch it. Everyone dressed up as either Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty, or a clown, because clowns are easy. My cousin told me all he had to do was get into our aunt’s makeup kit and smear her blue eye shadow over half his face and—ta-da!—instant clown. In the parking lots off Main Street, in front of the bank, the post office, and the Rest’urnt, the master chefs are at work. Truck beds are down and grills are blazing. Hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken are all cooked up and served up any way you like. Every grill master has their own special marinade or trick to knowing just the right time to flip the meat, often passed down from parents or grandparents. They will fight you to protect the recipe. My grandma used to make her famous chicken and dumplings from scratch, and she always lied to people who asked her for the recipe because she was so competitive. She took it to her grave. There’s corn on the cob, rubbed with plenty of butter and salt and pepper. There are piles of potato salad and steaming vats of baked beans. There are fresh vegetables from your neighbors’ backyards—the basics like lettuce, tomato, and onion. You’d have a tough time finding kale or arugula at this kind of cookout. No one talks about gluten. During a recent visit I mentioned that I ate paleo and didn’t eat gluten due to my husband’s sensitivity, and a cousin asked if gluten sensitivity was like AIDS.

Paper plates are passed among the throngs of people gathered in the parking lots and lined up along the street. All of the shops are closed. Store stoops, curbs, and sidewalks have turned into bleachers for the show to come. There’s anticipation, but there’s no sense of rush. Folks in Flyover Nation don’t do a whole lot of rushing around—they prefer to leave the business of running around like headless chickens to their cousins on the coasts. The time is “whenever you get there.” Especially today. Right now they’re content to catch up with their friends and neighbors, their kids’ teachers, church friends they haven’t had the chance to talk to in a couple of hours. It seems like everyone in town has turned out for the celebration—and that’s because they have.

The Fourth of July is truly a community event in Flyover Nation. Not only does everyone come out to be part of the festivities, but everyone has pitched in to help get them up and running. The First Baptist Church’s quilting circle made the patriotic bunting that hangs from every windowsill and porch. The Methodists have a stand set up in their parking lot serving lemonade and iced tea. Mrs. Jones’s third-grade class made the red-white-and-blue paper fans hanging from the truck beds. The owner of the Quik-Mart is in charge of the turtle races. The high school cheerleaders got together to paint the mural that depicts the founding of our country and thanks those who’ve served in the military for their sacrifices. Maybe their renditions of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin aren’t the most true to life, but there’s no doubting the amount of heart they put into the project. That’s the theme for the decorations that have gone up all across town. They’re simple, honest, and homemade. They stick to the basics—red, white, and blue. We don’t need any more glitz and glamour than that. Nobody is trying to outdo one another with flash and glitter, though there’s always a hint of friendly competition with the parade in the next town over. Anyway, most of the “flash” is being saved for the fireworks display later in the evening.

A few triumphant notes from the high school band tell the assembled crowds the parade is under way. The band leads the procession, complete with baton twirlers and the school’s ROTC color guard bearing Old Glory out in front. Then come the mayor and the city council members, putting aside their politicking for once to enjoy the day. A fire truck follows, lights flashing silently—this time for entertainment, not an emergency. There are plenty of other groups—Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, the guys who restore vintage cars and live for the days when they can show off their Mustangs or Corvettes or ancient Studebakers at events like this. Some towns are lucky enough to have few Shriners zip past in their miniature cars, tossing candy to kids. But the most powerful moment of the entire proceeding comes when the veterans pass by. These are the men—and women too—who left the ranks of the community to go answer their country’s call and were lucky enough to return. The oldest among them defeated fascism, joining up after Pearl Harbor and going on to break the Nazi stranglehold on Europe or island-hop across the Pacific toward Japan. Others fought communism on the battlefields of Korea and Vietnam—to them, the “cold war” was plenty hot. The youngest among them might have just returned from fighting terrorism in Afghanistan or Iraq. Now they wear their American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars caps and march proudly past. Some of the very old are in wheelchairs, pushed along by their younger comrades.

It is for these heroes of the past and present that the loudest cheers go up. Flyover Nation sends many of its citizens to fight for the United States. In these towns in Middle America, military service is a serious obligation and a point of pride. It’s family history. This pride is personal. Everyone in the community wants to make sure these veterans know just how much their sacrifice is appreciated. These “boys,” as they’re always called, no matter what their age, are our own. We’re the friends and neighbors of these veterans. Some of us taught them in grade school or sat next to them in church. As we cheer for those who came back and are marching in today’s parade, we make sure to cheer extra loudly so the ones who didn’t make it home can hear us too.

After the parade finishes, the cookouts simmer down, and the sun begins to set, everyone gradually moves toward the park near the center of town or, in my family’s town’s case, the parking lot of the Rest’urnt. A flatbed was brought in earlier and the country band is setting up to play. In other small Flyover towns, families have brought blankets to lie on the grass. Dogs and children, of course, have no interest in lying down anywhere and proceed to chase each other gleefully. Maybe the band, now seated, is still playing, or maybe someone is singing patriotic songs. Some of the local thespians from the community theater group might give an impassioned reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Once it’s dark, the fireworks show begins. The charges explode with brilliant blasts, sending shimmering showers of red, white, blue, green, orange, and yellow falling down the night sky. Everyone, from the youngest to the oldest resident, stares up in awe. From somewhere, whether played live or piped in on speakers, the “1812 Overture” plays for the finale. A deep and powerful sense of pride is felt by everyone watching this scene play out in countless towns across America, especially in Flyover country.

In my family’s hometown the local fire station came up with a clever way to raise money on the Fourth of July that ended up being fun for the whole family. After the parade, while everyone was still milling around downtown, you could head over to the small firehouse, put a dollar in the bucket, and engage in some good old-fashioned, wholesome destruction. They’d give you a bat, and you could take a few swings at an old car. By the end of the day, that junker was bashed up beyond all recognition. Kids just loved smashing things, grown men loved to show off their strength, and women loved the chance to get out some aggression for a good cause. The carnage was presided over by none other than the fire captain himself. We knew better than to try to sneak an extra swing on his watch—he was an usher at our church, after all, and sat behind us in the pews. My cousins and I firmly believed that he’d tell on us to Jesus if we tried.

Church is also where we pray for the safety of the men and women who put on the American uniform to protect our way of life, who fight for the cause of freedom around the world, and who remind us just how precious that freedom is. That’s why they get the loudest cheers during the Fourth of July parades and why they get the best seats in the house at the fireworks show. It’s the least we can do, after all they’ve done.

We understand this in Flyover Nation. It’s why our states have some of the highest percentages of military enlistees in the country. It’s why, while the people on the coasts have “better” things to do than serve their country, the men and women of Flyover Nation consistently answer the call. People like George Sisler.

George Sisler—Flyover Hero

George Kenton Sisler—who went by “Ken”—was born in 1937 in Dexter, Missouri. Dexter is a tiny town of less than eight thousand, nestled in the southeastern corner of Missouri, just a few hours from where I grew up. But Ken’s desire to serve his country would end up taking him around the world.

He first joined up in 1956, serving in the Army National Guard for a year, then another year in the Army Reserves. In 1958 he enlisted in the air force, where he served until 1962. He also found time to attend college, graduating from Arkansas State University in 1964 with a degree in education. After graduation he promptly joined the army once again, was put on the track to Officer Candidate School, and earned his commission as a second lieutenant in June of 1965.56

For a boy from Flyover Nation, Sisler did a lot of flying himself—literal flying through the air. Sisler liked to jump out of airplanes. He had worked as a “smoke jumper”—an airborne firefighter—in Missouri. One of his air force buddies recalled that Sisler would show home movies of himself “parachuting into forest fires that he had taken from a helmet mounted movie camera”—and this was decades before the days of GoPro!57

He was also a competitive parachutist in college, and a fearless one at that. An unfortunately timed injury forced Sisler to wear a cast on one leg on the eve of the 1963 National Collegiate Skydiving Championship. But Ken jumped anyway, cast and all, and took home the top prize.58

The army clearly recognized this talent and bravery. Lieutenant Sisler joined the Special Forces—the Green Berets—and was assigned as an intelligence officer to the Headquarters Company, Fifth Special Forces Group (Airborne) serving in Vietnam. That was how he found himself leading a joint patrol of American and Allied South Vietnamese troops operating in enemy territory on February 7, 1967.

Lieutenant Sisler’s patrol came under attack from three sides simultaneously. A much larger enemy force had them virtually surrounded. Sisler acted quickly—he set his men up a defensive perimeter and got on the radio to report the engagement and call for air support. As he moved around the position taking stock of his men and offering encouragement, it became clear that two soldiers were still stranded, wounded, outside the perimeter. Sisler did not take the time to issue any orders—he jumped up and ran to get them himself.59

He found the first of the injured men and proceeded to carry him back toward their lines. This only presented a more desirable target to the enemy, who opened up with even greater firepower. Sisler knew that if he didn’t act fast, neither he nor the man he was carrying stood a chance of making it. So he set down the wounded man and picked up his rifle in time to kill three enemy soldiers bearing down on them. He then threw a grenade to take out a machine-gun nest. Having cleared the way, Sisler dragged the wounded soldier back behind his own lines. But the battle was not yet over.60

Just as he was arriving back at his position, the enemy laid down concentrated fire on their left flank, wounding a number of Sisler’s men. Seeing his line in danger of breaking, Sisler grabbed some extra grenades and charged forward from the weakened left flank himself. He shot at the advancing enemy troops and hurled multiple grenades, and the communist forces began to fall back. The official report later said: “This singularly heroic action broke up the vicious assault and forced the enemy to begin withdrawing.”61 But it was a fighting withdrawal, and as they left, the communists claimed another casualty—Lieutenant Sisler himself.

George Kenton Sisler, from Dexter, Missouri, Flyover Nation, USA, was killed in action half a world away in Vietnam on February 7, 1967. He would never jump out of another airplane. But the courage that had driven him to jump into raging infernos to help his community as a smoke jumper, the courage that had sent him flying into collegiate skydiving legend with a cast on his leg, the courage that had led him to volunteer to serve in Vietnam—that was the same courage that spurred him to leave the safety of his defensive position to rescue his comrades and repel the enemy’s attack.

For his gallantry, Ken Sisler was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The citation concluded: “His extraordinary leadership, infinite courage, and selfless concern for his men saved the lives of a number of his comrades. His actions reflect great credit upon himself and uphold the highest traditions of the military service.”62

His name lives on in other ways, not just on land but at sea too. The army named a building after him—Sisler Hall—at its Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, in 1988.63 Ten years later the navy christened a vehicle transport ship the USNS Sisler, an act the military called “a fitting tribute to all military and civilian personnel who have played an important role in the history of military intelligence and have paid the supreme sacrifice in their service to the nation.”64

The Sisler still sails the seas today—a long way from Dexter, Missouri. It carries to the far corners of the world the name of an adventurous kid from Flyover Nation, a champion skydiver who took the ultimate leap of faith by answering his country’s call many times over and gave his life in the fight against communism.

The soldiers and veterans of today’s global war on terror, risking their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, are a new generation of heroes, heirs to the tradition of duty and honor handed down by men like Ken Sisler. And like Missouri’s own Lieutenant Sisler, it would seem that most of the men and women serving in our country’s armed forces today came to the services after growing up in Flyover Nation.

The consumer financial analytics site WalletHub released a survey in 2015 that covered, among other things, military service by individual state. Its results in this area were split into two major categories: the percentage of the state’s residents who had enlisted in the military and the number of veterans per capita living in the state. Taking a look at the high and low ends of these lists doesn’t exactly yield a lot of surprises.

According to WalletHub, which cited data from government and nonprofit sources, the state with the highest percentage of enlisted residents was Georgia. Following the Peach State came South Carolina, Florida, Alaska, and Alabama—all places elites studiously avoid, unless it’s to jet to a fancy beach house in the parts of Florida set aside for tourists with money to burn.65

On the other side, the state with the smallest percentage of the population serving was North Dakota—definitely a Flyover state, but one currently in the midst of an energy boom. But not far from the bottom were classic coastal bastions Massachusetts and Connecticut (numbers forty-six and forty-seven, respectively). After all, who would want to risk the chance of getting deployed and missing the Harvard-Yale game?66

The states with the most veterans per capita can also be found squarely in Flyover Nation: Alaska tops the list, followed by Montana, Maine, Virginia, and West Virginia. The states with the fewest former service members include President Obama’s current home state, Illinois, Nancy Pelosi’s home state, California, and of course—rounding out the bottom of the list—New Jersey and New York. WalletHub found that Alaska had twice as many veterans per capita as New York.67

A look at the Department of Defense’s own data on enlistment from 2013 widens the lens a bit, looking at regions instead of individual states. This is what helps make crystal clear the difference between Flyover country’s contributions to our military forces and those of the more rarefied sections of the country.

According to DOD, 44 percent of recruits across all branches in 2013 came from the South. And the South is only home to 36 percent of Americans between eighteen and twenty-four years of age. By contrast, the Northeast, which holds 18 percent of all eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, contributed only 14 percent of new recruits into the military’s ranks, making that “the most underrepresented region of the country” in the armed forces, according to Business Insider. Business Insider further confirmed that in 2013 “some of the lowest rates of state-by-state enlistment are in New England and the Northeast, Maine notwithstanding.”68 God bless those Mainers. The other New Englanders think they’re crazy and only like to talk to them when they’re catching lobsters for the Connecticut- and Massachusetts-registered yachts docked in Bar Harbor.

The trend goes back even further. In 2010 then–Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—a veteran of both Democratic and Republican administrations—laid out the issue in a speech at Duke University in North Carolina, itself an elite institution that draws heavily from California and New York.69 Secretary Gates noted:

In this country, [the] propensity to serve is most pronounced in the South and Mountain West, and in rural areas and small towns nationwide—a propensity that well exceeds these communities’ portion of the population as a whole. Concurrently, the percentage of the force from the Northeast, West Coast, and major cities continues to decline.70

In effect, the young people of the South and the Mountain West are signing up to shoulder the burden of defense for the rest of the country and are particularly picking up the slack for the people of the “Northeast, West Coast, and major cities.” I wouldn’t expect anything less.

Yet those people are only too happy to look down on both the military itself and the “redneck flyover folks” who fill its ranks. They see the military as fit only for loser high school dropouts (in fact, enlisted military personnel were found to be “significantly more likely to have a high school education than their peers”).71 Of course, coastal elites have no problem entrusting the defense of the nation to these people they despise, so long as it leaves them free to concentrate on the pressing business of negotiating leveraged corporate buyouts and organizing tennis parties.

Simply put, the elitist snots don’t want to serve, so they don’t do it. According to Kathy Roth-Doquet, who cowrote AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service and How It Hurts Our Country, less than 1 percent of Ivy League graduates enter the service. She points out that while previous generations of elites—including the Kennedy and Bush political dynasties and the Sulzbergers of New York Times fame—signed up to do their duty, today’s elites aren’t even giving it a thought. Why? Roth-Doquet suggests that “narrow self-interest, a sense of other priorities or a misguided sense of moral preference means most of the upper class never considers military service.”72

This bodes well for the nation, doesn’t it? The progeny of the people who are supposed to be running the show blow off any sense of duty to their country because of self-interest, “other priorities,” or “moral preference.” The last of these just might be the most sickening. It is yet another example of that classic elitist tendency to try to dictate the moral compass of the rest of the country, to make all of us rubes follow their version of “San Francisco values.”

Roth-Doquet takes a guess at the source of elites’ “moral” distaste for military service. “In my own travels to talk about this issue,” she writes, “the most problematic comment I’ve come across is an idea expressed by many, including many in the upper classes, that it is somehow more moral to refrain from military service than to serve, because that way one can avoid an ‘immoral’ war.”73

If you listen closely to coastals talk, you start to realize they perform a kind of sacrifice sleight of hand. Every politician talks about making sacrifices for one’s fellow countrymen. But if you look at the details, you realize we’re often talking about two very different things. When someone enlists, he or she is going down a much more difficult life path in order to protect the people he or she knows and loves. In Flyover we know how to volunteer for a lot of sacrifices: for our families, for our God, for our neighbors, and for everyone standing along that parade route at Freedom Fest. But when the coastals talk about sacrifice, they usually mean forcing you to give up money for someone else somewhere who is never going to show up to a parade to honor you.

When you hear a coastal put their hand over their heart and say “sacrifice,” you can bet the other hand is going into your pocketbook.

 • • • 

Those who make the choice to serve do not have the luxury of cherry-picking the conflicts in which they engage. That’s not how the military works. It’s about defending the country, not about the finer points of political arguments. As Roth-Doquet points out, it’s not political at all: “The oath given at the ‘pinning on’ ceremony for a second lieutenant or a general involves not a promise to fight a particular war or support a given president but to protect and defend the Constitution.”74 That being the case, what is the true “moral preference” of the elites? Do they simply not think the country—which has clearly given them so much—is worth defending?

I would like to pose that question to a young Ivy League graduate of today—assuming, of course, he or she is not one of the minuscule number who see fit to serve. I’d also like to ask them just what their priorities are. If military service is so distasteful, what would they rather do? Go out to the western desert and weave baskets and “find themselves”? Or on the other extreme, maybe they’d rather make a beeline for Wall Street and join a hedge fund or investment bank. They’ve got to find something to do until the trust fund kicks in, so why not join the crony capitalist express? I guess they don’t have a “moral preference” against making piles of money off subprime mortgages while Flyover folks end up losing their homes. At least the elites can always rely on the kids from Flyover Nation to fill the ranks of the military and make the world safe for corporate raiding.

Secretary Gates speculated in 2010 that “the military’s own basing and recruiting decisions” were a major factor, leading to heavy recruitment from areas with a significant military presence and among individuals “whose friends, classmates, and parents have already served.”75 A Defense Department spokesman took a similar line in 2014, telling Business Insider that “one reason might be exposure to large military bases in states where there are higher enlistment rates.”76 Promilitary areas produce more recruits, who then go on to serve and live on bases in promilitary areas, and the cycle repeats. This idea has been expressed by, among others, Benjamin Luxenberg—who managed to breach the elite confines of Harvard and Brandeis and serve in the Marine Corps—who observed that “inadvertently, America is forging a military caste, separate from the larger electorate and distinct from its future leaders.”77

It’s not hard to see that America’s elites and the military personnel who keep the country safe for them—and for all of us—are worlds apart. I know which group I’d rather spend time with any day of the week. But it can’t all be chalked up to the location of military bases and the freedom-loving pockets of the population centered on them. It’s about values too. Flyover Nation doesn’t send more recruits into the service just because it already has some bases there—it’s also because people who grew up in that environment understand the value of service. They appreciate what America has given them and choose to put their lives on the line in order to repay that debt.

When you’re already insulated by layers of money and power, it’s easy to lose sight of that. Deciding whether to sail to Bermuda or the Caymans this summer becomes a more pressing priority. But for the substantial percentage of members of the military who hail from Flyover Nation, the choice is very simple: It’s about duty, honor, and service.

A 2008 deep dive into the demographics of the military by the Heritage Foundation included a good look at the makeup of the American servicemen that can’t be gleaned from data alone: “A soldier’s demographic characteristics are of little importance in the military, which values honor, leadership, self-sacrifice, courage, and integrity—qualities that cannot be quantified.”78 It’s true—those cannot be quantified. But in Flyover Nation we know them when we see them. And we see them an awful lot. One of the biggest drivers of the disconnect between the military and the rest of the country transcends regional differences and goes straight to the top. It should come as no surprise that the root of this problem is found in Washington, DC, among our political elites. In this rarefied group, the percentage of veterans is at its lowest level in decades.

There was once a time when military service was almost a prerequisite for election to the House of Representatives, the Senate, or the presidency. The Democrats understood this just as well as the Republicans. John F. Kennedy was a decorated war hero, and Jimmy Carter, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy just after World War II, served in nuclear submarines. Daniel Inouye, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, earned the Congressional Medal of Honor serving with a Japanese American unit during World War II, losing an arm in the process. His fellow Democrat Max Cleland of Georgia lost an arm and both legs in Vietnam.

Now, among both Democrats and Republicans, the number of veterans serving in the legislative branch of the government has plummeted. Sadly, there are only one fourth as many veterans serving today as there were in the wake of the Vietnam War. In 1976, 77 percent of all senators and House members had previously served in the military, according to American Legion data. In 2014, the Legion and the House Armed Services Committee calculated that that number had dropped to 20 percent.79

When the 113th Congress began its first session in January 2013, there were eighty-nine veterans in the House and nineteen in the Senate, so Congress still maintains some heroes among its ranks.80 Texas representative Sam Johnson and Arizona senator John McCain were both decorated pilots—Johnson in the air force and McCain in the navy—and were both held prisoner by the North Vietnamese for extended periods. But those ranks are thinning. New Jersey Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg, the last World War II veteran in the Senate, died in 2013. The following year the House lost its last two WWII vets—Democrat John Dingell of Michigan retired and Republican Ralph Hall of Texas lost a primary election. Dingell closed his career in public life at the age of eighty-eight, and Hall was ninety-one. We desperately need more veterans in elected office.

It’s not just members of Congress themselves who are increasingly discharging their duties without the benefit of military service. Their children, part of the next generation of elites, seemingly want nothing to do with the armed forces either. Just 1 percent of all federal legislators have a child in the service, according to Kathy Roth-Doquet in AWOL. And as she points out, “the Capitol building is no different from other places where the leadership class in this country gathers—no different from the boardrooms, newsrooms, ivory towers and penthouses of our nation.”81 This doesn’t just mean that Congress as an institution has less of an idea about the realities of war. It also weakens the patriotism of the entire body. The further removed Congress—and other elites—are from our military, the more they risk losing sight of what it is our servicemen and servicewomen are fighting for, what exactly makes America great.

 • • • 

Some might call this “American exceptionalism.” This is the idea that the United States of America is somehow special, different from any other nation on earth. This is not a new idea. Alexis de Tocqueville first described it. Writing in his report on a visit to the relatively new United States in the early nineteenth century called Democracy in America, he stated, “The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional.”82

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich explains that our unique founding is the basis for this exceptionalism:

The ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and the unique American identity that arose from an American civilization that honored them, form what we call today “American Exceptionalism.”83

Gingrich is absolutely right. No other country came into being like ours did. Our founding documents have guided the nation from the beginning and continue to guide us today. The Declaration of Independence set us on a course and the Constitution forms the bedrock of our system of government. The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, set in stone the freedoms guaranteed to every American. If staying committed to those freedoms, guarding them vigilantly, and being ready and willing to defend them by any means necessary is part of being “exceptional,” I’ll take it.

Not surprisingly, this idea attracts plenty of criticism, even in the United States. The leftist academic Howard Zinn, for instance, has praised the “growing refusal to accept U.S. domination and the idea of American exceptionalism” and proclaimed, “The true heroes of our history are those Americans who refused to accept that we have a special claim to morality and the right to exert our force on the rest of the world.”84

As if all that made America exceptional was “exerting force” on other countries. Obviously there’s no pleasing the professional Left.

But one person, no matter what their political persuasion, should be able to accept that the United States is special, especially if they intend to lead that nation—right? Presidents of the United States are politicians, sure, and their positions will be different from other politicians’. But anyone who wants to be president should be able to agree that the country they want to lead is exceptional . . . shouldn’t they?

Not if that president is Barack Hussein Obama II. His view of how exceptional his country is is just a little bit . . . different. He would probably call it “nuanced.” It could also be called “cowardly.” Here’s the Obama definition of “American exceptionalism”: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”85

The wording of this statement Obama made in April 2009, just months after taking office, raises the question: If every country thinks of itself as “exceptional,” how truly exceptional can any one nation be? It’s as though, in Obama’s view, the “exceptional” label is to be handed out like participation trophies at a kids’ soccer game or free cars at an Oprah taping. I’m exceptional! You’re exceptional! The whole world is exceptional! Kumbaya, you guys!

That comment generated a lot of criticism, and rightly so, as people questioned how this man they’d just elected really felt about his country’s place in the world. Since then, Obama has made plenty of statements with stronger wording, like his declaring, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” at West Point in 2014.86 Though his actions are more consistent with his earlier, unvarnished pronouncement. A leader who thinks of his nation as truly exceptional does not base his foreign policy on the idea of “leading from behind.”

But we saw signs of this. It’s not like it was a surprise. The language was there when Obama was just a first-term senator making his “audacious” run for the presidency. In July 2008 he lectured to an audience in Powder Springs, Georgia, about the need for Americans to be more worldly, starting from a young age. “Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English—they’ll learn English—you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.” He went on to detail his “embarrassment” in the face of multilingual European tourists:

It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup.87

Sometimes it feels like Obama has based his entire presidency on this kind of “embarrassment” by his uncultured fellow Americans. We’re not exceptional—we’re embarrassing because we don’t speak enough languages.

Also during the 2008 campaign, Obama mocked “bitter” voters in “small towns in Pennsylvania” and “a lot of small towns in the Midwest” who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”88 The best part? He was speaking to a room full of donors in San Francisco. That must be how you explain Flyover Nation to Bay Area elites.

Shortly before the election, Obama told a crowd in Missouri: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”89 Apparently this didn’t raise enough red flags in the next five days. But the message seems clear—if you love your country, especially if you find it “exceptional,” why exactly is your goal to “fundamentally transform” it?

It’s not just Barack Obama who seems to feel less than patriotic about this country. It’s a family affair, with his wife, lunch czar Michelle, getting into the act as well. This is the woman who notably announced—not once but twice, at two different campaign rallies in Wisconsin in 2008: “For the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country.”90 Elsewhere on the campaign trail she echoed her husband’s call for transformative change:

We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.91

It looks like one of the traditions she aimed to change was respect for our nation’s most prominent symbol. In 2011, during a 9/11 commemoration ceremony, she turned to her husband and muttered something that looked—to people reading her lips—a lot like “All this—for a flag?”92 She then shook her head, and her husband nodded.

America is an exceptional nation, and our leaders need to appreciate that. Patriotic leadership is essential for maintaining this country’s place in the world. This is the kind of patriotism you see in the young men and women—most of whom come from Flyover Nation—who make the decision to serve their country in the armed forces. You see it in the celebrations that take place in Middle America every Fourth of July, as communities come together to celebrate with pride the country they love. Elites like Barack and Michelle Obama consider it uncultured to be patriotic—why celebrate being an American when you can be a multilingual citizen of the world? That’s why they dismiss anyone who doesn’t think like them as a “bitter” malcontent who “clings to guns or religion”—because, of course, only bitter people would be driven to own a gun or go to church.

They’ll never understand Flyover Nation, and frankly, we’re just fine with that.

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Perhaps the real divide over the military comes from the coastals’ fear of guns and the people who know how to use them.

So what is it about guns that coastals just can’t seem to understand?