Ten Great American Achievements We Can’t Take for Granted

Our achievements as a country are real, but they’re imperiled by Trumpism and other threats.

American exceptionalism is an overblown and provincial tradition, but it’s our 250th birthday, so let’s indulge. As The New Republic’s USA 250 series showed—on newsstands now!—the country has gotten a lot wrong, but it’s also gotten a lot right. Here are some of the biggest achievements we can boast about, but which, in the Trump era, are eroding or precarious.

Welcoming immigrants: In his last speech as president, more than two years after signing the biggest amnesty for undocumented immigrants in world history, Ronald Reagan expressed the political consensus on the subject by quoting from a letter he’d received, “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, Turk or Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

Donald Trump was the first modern president to express an attitude toward immigration that was more hostile than that of the average member of his own party. Now, although the Supreme Court did at least uphold birthright citizenship this week, we have seen recent immigrants subjected to a reign of terror with violent deportations, cruel detentions, and immigration agents functioning as a fascist force.

Higher education: The U.S. has long been home to one of the best higher education systems in the world, with the greatest variety of majors, prestigious institutions that draw top talent from around the world, as well as accessible working-class schools like community colleges and regional universities. Our college sports are also unrivaled worldwide.

But it’s all falling apart. Tuition is unaffordable to many American families, and the number of college-age Americans is declining. While American higher education has long been a boon to overseas students—and vice versa, since they tend to pay full........

© New Republic