\u201cWe will make America proud again!\u201d Donald Trump declared at a rally last summer<\/a>. This rhetoric is reminiscent. My father came of age in the midst of the Reagan revolution; I remember him saying that Reagan \u201cmade people proud to be American again.\u201d The nation had just weathered Vietnam, Watergate, the oil embargo, and the Iran hostage crisis. The period was so difficult\u00a0that historians have referred to it as a\u00a0\u201cdecade of nightmares<\/a>.\u201d Reagan promised \u201cmorning in America\u201d and a fresh start, and that resonated.<\/p>\n Today, \u201cmake\u00a0America proud again\u201d has a somewhat different meaning\u2014it\u00a0refers\u00a0not to the state of the nation in the world, which was doing just fine under Obama, but to \u201cliberal guilt.\u201d You can see this reflected in Trump\u2019s words during\u00a0a speech last summer:<\/a><\/p>\n Pride in our institutions, our history and our values should be taught by parents and teachers, and impressed upon all who join our society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Pride in our history<\/em>.<\/p>\n Many conservatives have come to feel that in conversations about slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, or Jim Crow, liberal academics have focused\u00a0too much on the negative aspects of our heritage and not enough on positive things like individual rights, widespread freedoms, and a democratic form of government. They prefer an overarching narrative that minimizes the mistakes in our nation\u2019s history while promoting patriotism and maximizing the things our forebears did right.<\/p>\n I remember being in a history class once and noting that, in some sense, the history of the U.S. is a history of overcoming and of advancing rights and freedoms. I pointed to those who fought to give women\u00a0the right to vote, and those who fought against Jim Crow. Yes, the instructor said. Yes\u2014but who were they fighting against? Those who strove to protect the status quo were American too.<\/p>\n This, I think, is what conservatives miss. There is absolutely much in our nation\u2019s history that\u00a0we can\u00a0be proud of. No one is saying otherwise. But there is also much in our nation\u2019s history that was wrong. We cannot make that go away by ignoring it. It did<\/em> happen. Sure, we weren\u2019t the only nation to have slavery. But we were<\/em> the only nation where slavery was so entrenched that it took a bloody civil war<\/em> to end it. We can\u2019t just pretend that didn\u2019t happen. We can\u2019t wish it away.<\/p>\n Let me make an analogy. Sometimes, in my day-to-day life, I\u2019ll make a mistake that I feel terrible about. I\u2019ve hurt someone, or I\u2019ve messed something important up, etc. Yes, I feel terrible<\/em>\u00a0when something like this happens. It\u2019s not a pleasant feeling! But simply\u00a0pretending it did not happen<\/em> is a horrible solution! It doesn\u2019t change what happened, and it doesn\u2019t help me make sure it won\u2019t happen again in the future. Far better to admit the error, fix it, and figure out what I did wrong so that I can avoid this mistake in the future.<\/p>\n But in many cases the problem is worse than just ignoring<\/em> what happened. In some cases conservatives have worked to literally rewrite history<\/a>. The Civil War wasn\u2019t really about slavery\u2014not at all! Slavery wasn\u2019t so bad, most slaveowners were kind, and honestly they were just as interested in finding a way to end slavery as anyone else\u2014it was the abolitionists who stirred up all the trouble! There are various levels to\u00a0this, of course\u2014there are those who would argue that the Civil War wasn\u2019t about slavery but not that slavery was benign, say\u2014but the motivation is similar. It wasn\u2019t that<\/span> bad<\/em>.<\/p>\n The Native Americans should have just\u00a0assimilated. No, really\u2014I had someone\u00a0tell me this. The Trail of Tears was an abomination, they said. The Cherokee had<\/em> assimilated and shouldn\u2019t have been removed. But many of the Native Americans\u2019 problems could have been avoided if they had assimilated rather than wanting to maintain their culture and practices.\u00a0We could have avoided all the problems we see on Indian Reservations today, the drinking, the hopelessness.<\/p>\n The problem here is both a conflict in values (a belief that Native Americans should have been willing to give up their own culture) and a conflict in historical fact (a belief that Native Americans wouldn\u2019t have faced racism and discrimination had they just assimilated, a lie made obvious by the Trail of Tears). There\u2019s also the lack of acknowledgement of the horrors of the Native American boarding\u00a0schools, an attempt to force Native Americans to give up their culture and their beliefs by forcibly removing and reeducating their children.<\/p>\n Ignoring or rewriting our mistakes does not make them go away\u2014and it does not help us learn from them, either. Interestingly, German schools do not shy away from<\/a> teaching the Holocaust<\/a>. The opposite, rather. Are we to believe that Germans have no pride in their country? Absolutely not. Instead, Germany\u2019s path makes clear that it is possible to acknowledge, own up to, and learn from the mistakes of one\u2019s country\u00a0in a way that points toward a brighter future while acknowledging a darker past.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m baffled that conservatives can\u2019t grasp that.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many conservatives have come to feel that in conversations about slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, or Jim Crow, liberal academics have focused too much on the negative aspects of our heritage and not enough on positive things like individual rights, widespread freedoms, and a democratic form of government. They prefer an overarching narrative that minimizes the mistakes in our nation’s history while promoting patriotism and maximizing the things our forebears did right.<\/p>\n Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":33610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[183],"class_list":["post-32982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-history"],"yoast_head":"\n