Andrew Sullivan is celebrating July 4th by posting a series of “Things We Love About America” –- quotes, poems, pictures, videos and other patriotic sentiments that have been submitted by his readers.

He’s assembled quite a collection and, as of mid-day, he’s still posting. For a look, see http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com.

I sent Andrew a quote from novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald that he hasn’t used yet. So I’m posting it as my own tribute to America on our national holiday. Here it is:

"France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter -- it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart."

The quote comes at the end of a story called, “The Swimmers”, that was published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1929. I don’t know precisely what Fitzgerald is alluding to when he speaks of “a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered.” It might have been, “This is a war to end all wars”, or “The world must be made safe for democracy.” Both were revealed to be empty as soon as the guns of the First World War fell silent.

But America’s “willingness of the heart” survived the postwar disillusionment and selfish hedonism of the 1920s –- and, indeed, it endures to this day.