Rumspringa for the Republic

Every now and then, America drags its elites out of the faculty lounge and into the street fair. It doesn’t matter if the excuse is a war, a crisis, or—this time—the 250th birthday of the country. Eventually, the people who think they’re running the story are reminded that they’re just living in it. That’s what’s happening now: the same class that spent a decade deconstructing the flag is being told to wave it. The same pundits who said “America was never great” are now workshopping how to make patriotism sound inclusive.

The Great Patriotic Heist, they called it—the Left’s plan to steal back the language of the Republic before Trump’s fireworks light up the sky in 2026. But something unexpected is happening. The performance is starting to take.

At first, this was supposed to be patriotic drag—ironic flag-waving, focus-grouped “love of country” speeches, and diversity parades that felt as managed as corporate training videos. It was meant to be safe, even antiseptic. But you can’t play with fire without getting burned. Pretending to love something, especially something as big and unruly as America, has a way of sneaking past the mask. Before long, the act starts to feel like belief.

That’s how America wins—not through conquest, but through absorption. It’s cultural judo. The Default Republic doesn’t shout down its critics; it invites them to the barbecue. It doesn’t exile dissenters; it makes them neighbors. Everyone who tries to overthrow it eventually becomes part of it. The Puritans became merchants. The rebels became regulators. The hippies became consultants. The Republic doesn’t punish revolution—it digests it.

Now it’s digesting the Left’s moral managerial class. The people who spent years treating patriotism like a symptom of privilege are suddenly out in the sun with people who don’t apologize before loving their country. And it’s changing them. Because the thing they thought they were parodying—this easy, unselfconscious affection for the Republic—is exactly what they’ve been missing.

The great secret of American normalcy is that it isn’t ideological. It’s a temperament—a default mode of stubborn optimism. The 80 percent of Americans who still think the country’s worth arguing over don’t live on Twitter. They don’t see patriotism as a brand or a trauma; it’s just part of the background music of belonging. They grill, they vote, they raise kids and hope they do better. They’re the ballast—the rowers in the galley who keep the ship moving while the captains yell about ideology from the deck.

That’s why every attempt to control the national mood eventually dissolves. The Default Republic doesn’t fight back; it absorbs. It takes whatever the intellectual class invents—critical theory, corporate virtue, even performative patriotism—and turns it into background noise.

The irony is that while the Left thinks it’s teaching America to be moral again, America is teaching the Left how to be human again. The activist who goes to “monitor extremism” at a small-town parade ends up humming the marching-band tune. The journalist covering “reactionary patriotism” wipes a tear during the fireworks. It’s not conversion; it’s contagion.

By 2026, the great rebranding of patriotism will look less like propaganda and more like repentance. The country’s critics will have become its defenders without realizing it. They’ll call it progress, or “inclusive nationalism,” but the rest of us will just call it Tuesday.

Because in America, everyone eventually comes home. The Republic doesn’t need to win the argument; it only needs to outlast it. And when the fireworks burst again over the National Mall, the nation won’t be healed—just reminded that underneath all the noise, the Republic is still there, humming along, unbothered, undefeated.

The Default Republic always wins—not because it’s right, but because it never stops inviting people back.