The Freedom Mutation

As we enter America’s 250th year, I want to take a second to reflect on what makes this country so great.

I think when you grow up in America, you are taught a lot about American exceptionalism, and the city on a hill, and all these ideas that are sort of hard to fully appreciate when you are young. We also live in an era in which the U.S. has been so financially and militarily dominant that most of what gets said about America ends up being critique. Pointing out where America is not so great. Pointing out its flaws. Pointing out the whataboutisms. And while I do not want to undermine those critiques, I do think it is worth trying to formulate what I think makes this country truly, truly unique, and what I hope sustains it through the next 250 years.

When people say America is a country of immigrants, I think they often mean it as a way of saying diversity is good in and of itself. And of course it is true that one of the great things about America is that you can get incredible bagels, incredible sushi, incredible Indian food, incredible tacos, incredible Korean barbecue, and the list goes on and on. But while all of that is true, I do not think that is actually what “a nation of immigrants” means in its most fundamental and important way. To be a nation of immigrants actually lends itself to a special mindset. For much of America, somewhere in their family history, there is what I call The Freedom Mutation.

For most Americans¹, their family was living somewhere else in the world, and had probably lived there for most of human history. Their parents lived in that town. Their parents’ parents lived in that town. Their great-grandparents lived in that town. If you know someone from another country who has done 23andMe, you may have noticed that their results often come back overwhelmingly from the region they already live in. Their family has been there forever.

But then, at some point, something strange and weird happened. Someone in their lineage looked at their lives and they said, “it is time for me to leave.”

Maybe it was by force. Maybe it was because of poverty, or persecution, or violence, or political upheaval. Maybe they were Holocaust survivors. Maybe they came to get a PhD. Maybe they fled gang violence. Maybe they came to be a caretaker or nurse. Maybe they fled militant communism or authoritarianism. But they looked at their history, looked at everything they had been raised with and known, and dreamed of a better future. They put themselves on a boat, or a plane, or crossed a border, and came to this country.

My parents are immigrants. They left South Africa as the social and political structure of the country was changing. And before that, their parents and grandparents fled Europe during the rise of Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany. I see what happened to their friends and family who did not make the same choices.

The Freedom Mutation has interesting side effects. I think it is part of the reason why America is so dynamic. I believe it is part of the reason why there are so many creative and hard-working people here. It is part of the reason people are so willing to change the status quo and ask questions in a way that doesn’t exist in the same concentration in many other countries.

More people here feel like the decisions they made have led to the outcomes they earned. They feel empowered by their own choices, and by the choices and sacrifices their families made, and so they are resistant when the government tells them what they owe to the collective.

The Freedom Mutation gives us dynamism, but it also gives us a deep suspicion of authority. It is part of the reason why people in this country want to be taxed less. That same individualism leads people to cling to their guns or refuse to put on a mask. There are moments where I wish people would embrace the warmth of shared responsibility over rugged individualism a little bit more.

But I think the thing that gives people that stubbornness is also the thing that gives people such strong conviction. It is the thing that makes people believe they can change their lives. It is the thing that makes people leave everything they know and come here.

So yes, America is flawed. And yes, there are things I wish were different. But the Freedom Mutation is still the thing I think makes this country special. It is the belief that the life you are born into does not have to be the life you accept. And as America enters its next 250 years, I hope this belief is the thing that carries us for the next 250 years.

Jul 3, 2026

Footnotes

1. Two notable exceptions are, of course, Native Americans, who did not immigrate here, and the ancestors of most Black Americans, who were brought here by force. I think both histories lead to their own unique American story and experience, though this specific anecdote may not be part of every family’s American story. ↩