Americans

We'll eat hot dogs and hamburgers on red and blue paper plates with white napkins this afternoon. As night approaches, we'll head to the ball field, where we'll ooh and aah as fireworks fill the sky with mesmerizing explosions of shapes and colors that, I swear, get better every year. There's a pleasant predictability to Independence Day that is as satisfying as a ripe summer peach. Or so it has been. I wonder what will be different today. This is, after all, the first Fourth of July after the 11th of September - the first scheduled celebration of American independence after the latest war, the war on terrorism, has begun.

It was either the slick pitch of Royal Bakofeng Stadium or the slick gloves of English goalkeeper Robert Green, but as a result of its 1-1 draw to England last Saturday in Rustenburg, renewed confidence has emerged among the Americans. The Stars and Stripes are walking - and talking - tall heading into their second game of FIFA World Cup play today in Johannesburg against Slovenia, an unassuming team that battled Algeria in its opener and emerged with a 1-0 victory, currently sitting atop Group C with three vital points.

"If I don't get excited about this soccer stuff," Slats said, "does that mean I ain't a good Chicagoan?" This is a unique event for our city and the nation. The World Cup is the biggest sports event on the planet. Billions of soccer-loving foreigners are watching on TV. "So what? All that proves is that most of the world is too poor to build bowling alleys, golf courses, tennis courts or baseball fields. There's hunnerts of millions of people still ain't got indoor plumbing, but that don't mean there's something great about an outhouse.

Pierre Brondeau thinks that President Obama should dial down on his tax-the-rich rhetoric and that Mitt Romney should get real on economic details. "I was hoping for a major breakthrough with one of them doing the math in public," Brondeau, the head of Philadelphia's FMC Corp. and the newest American citizen among top Philadelphia executives, said Wednesday morning after the second Romney-Obama debate. "A big statement on how they are going to tackle the deficit," Brondeau added.

The Europeans were decided underdogs in the 33d Ryder Cup Matches. They had players ranked too low in the World Golf Rankings. They had too many rookies. They lacked experience. They weren't used to Ryder Cup pressure, especially away from home. Blah-blah-blah. On a sunny and windy day in suburban Boston, Europe got great play from such veterans as Colin Montgomerie and such rookies as Sergio Garcia and threatened to blow out the United States on the very first day of competition, winding up with a 6-2 lead over the Americans at the Country Club.

When Marty Clark was playing squash at Harvard just a couple of years ago, he was regarded as one of the two or three best hardball players in the country. Grown men would quake in their tennis shoes as they ducked into a squash court to face him. His forehand was lethal. If you were good, really good, Clark might let you linger for a half-hour or so before he sent you packing. And then Clark graduated from college, and his squash life changed. He decided to test his wicked right hand on the international squash tour.

Making sacrifices My parents speak of the sacrifice that all Americans made during World War II. Both civilians and soldiers gave up a lot, every day, for what they believed in. Now it seems that only the soldier - and his or her family - makes a sacrifice. The rest of us go about our daily business, working and playing, hardly even noticing that we are at war. Look at the front pages and only rarely do you see anything about the soldiers we have sent to war. This Memorial Day, Americans should ask themselves: What am I willing to sacrifice to be an American?

Juli Inkster saw flags waving, heard chants of "U-S-A!" and felt a lump in her throat on the practice range, the intensity building before the first match yesterday at the Solheim Cup in Carmel, Ind. She gathered all the American players she could find. With their hands together in a collective fist, they broke huddle with a shout that carried them to victory and kept their record perfect on home soil. "Finish!" "That was our key phrase," Paula Creamer said. "They don't remember how you start, but how you finish.

Let's stop being critical of the National Rifle Association and celebrate its triumphs. We Americans are rapidly moving toward that glorious day when every man, woman and child in this nation is armed. Let us celebrate the growth in firearms to the 201,837,000 the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco estimates to be in circulation. That's a growth of 42 percent in just the four years between 1984 and 1989. Try and name another American industry that even comes close to those numbers.

George Bush prides himself on his foreign policy. Even the Democratic presidential candidates pay tribute to his expertise abroad, but suggest he ought to face the music here at home. Both miss the modern reality that foreign and domestic policy are inextricable. Like its domestic policy, the Bush Administration's foreign policy is failing us because the President isn't in touch with the lives of working Americans. Bush is forfeiting the historic opportunities we face at the end of the Cold War. He has failed to change our priorities, failed to build a new international policy, failed to sculpt a sensible trade policy, failed to respond to the challenge posed by the environment.