April 4, 2025

To criticize one’s country is to do it a service…Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism—a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.

J. William Fulbright (1905–1995), US senator, The Arrogance of Power (1966), Seldes p.153

What helpful criticism of your country—not its politicians—can you offer and are you at all interested in doing something about it? Are you clever enough to see a path forward?

You cannot—at least in America—form “…a more perfect union” by claiming perfection is already achieved. Or that whatever the founding fathers created cannot be improved upon. An opportunity for improvement will never be pursued without the readiness to criticize something.