Saturday, February 28, 2026
Allegiance
To this crowd, Gu is actually a success story. Perhaps that’s why the corporate press is fawning over her despite her allegiance to an American adversary. She’s the embodiment of the America they promote: an economic zone where citizens of the world can enrich themselves with zero loyalties attached. As Mike Pence put it, “cheap goods are a big part of” the American dream.
But if you understand that the American dream is not about economic enrichment, but rather the freedom to live virtuously and to secure that freedom for posterity by participating in self-government, you understand that Eileen Gu is a failed American and a traitor. Being born in San Francisco did not make her American, in any meaningful sense, any more than wanting to earn more money or being tired, poor, and huddled turns masses of economic migrants into Americans.
America is a heritage descended from the greatest civilizations of the world, refined on the frontier, and dedicated to man’s freedom to dutifully live as he ought. She has gladly welcomed many who seek the same goal — like the family of Alysa Liu, an American Olympic figure skater whose father fled the same country Gu represents. But wanting to enrich yourself doesn’t make you an American, and it’s time to stop humoring the pretense that it does. The proof is in the person of Eileen Gu.
