I guess it’s appropriate that many people spend the days leading up to the Fourth of July engaging in the mild criminality of smuggling explosives across state lines. Dodging the cops, like tax fraud, is a pillar of the American way of life. Dressing up as an Indian is a less effective way to go about it now, though.

We’ll be spending the Fourth in the usual way, grilling at my in-laws’ farm and blowing stuff up. The State Department’s spokeswoman was on the T.V. this morning warning in perfervid terms that terrorist “sleeper cells” might be doing their thing on the holiday. I’m worried—about overzealous federal law enforcement, not terrorists. I look a bit like Saddam Hussein these days, and setting off bottle rockets might be tempting fate. On the other hand, “My Week at Guantanamo” would be a feature worth perhaps missing a column or two.

Here in Maryland, the weatherman promises a classic Independence Day, with a high around eighty degrees Fahrenheit and about fifty percent humidity. That’s about as good as it gets in Maryland in July. We’ll have hot dogs and burgers and watermelon and the mayonnaise-based salads that, in classic American defiance of physical reality, dominate our summer cuisine. We’ll have beer. The kids will have sparklers and red snappers and will probably do stuff with sprinklers or the hose or something. A good time will be had by all in the great, big, bloody old U.S. of A.

I find myself wondering about the only living American who is an actually ruling absolute monarch. Will Pope Leo have fireworks? Hot dogs? Cold brewskis in the Cortile del Belvedere? I hope so.

We’ve come a long way as a country. We’ve gone from republicanism to democratic imperialism, from a weird land on the edge of the world to the dog that wags the tail of the earth. (It’s something like if the Hanseatic League had become the pre-eminent power.) Not all the changes have been good: Why do we have soldiers in Syria and abortionists in Sioux City? Why does the electric company have a box that allows them to turn off my air conditioning? Why do I have to take my belt off in airports? (George McGovern was a terrible candidate who stumbled into one of our nation’s few moments of sublime political rhetoric: Come home, America.) But These States, for all their drawbacks, are certainly the most comfortable, amusing place to live, and moving anywhere else is like leaving the Yankees to play for the Altoona Curve. Mencken said it best:

In no other country known to me is life as safe and agreeable, taking one day with another, as it is in These States. Even in a great Depression few if any starve, and even in a great war the number who suffer by it is vastly surpassed by the number who fatten on it and enjoy it. Thus my view of my country is predominantly tolerant and amiable. I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

In Rome, there is a fascist-era building, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana or “the Square Colosseum.” Once a museum of the Italian people, it is now the corporate headquarters of Fendi. On it is inscribed a self-description: Un popolo di poeti, di artisti, di eroi, di santi, di pensatori, di scienziati, di navigatori, di trasmigratori, a people of poets, of artists, of heroes, of saints, of thinkers, of scientists, of navigators, of travellers. The Americans are a people of farmers, of miners, of engineers, of traders, of foresters, of astronauts, of riverboat gamblers, of street preachers, of journalists. We don’t have much polish, but nobody is sharper in business, or more fun in leisure. Nobody else has produced Moby-Dick or Huck Finn. We gave the world Thanksgiving, which is the best secular holiday ever conceived, and Independence Day, which ain’t bad either.

On the whole, it is great to be an American, even if and when we’re in bad decline. Long may this nation last; where else would you be? Come home, America. It’s Fourth of July, and the dogs are hot.