Happy Fourth of July.

Bryan Stevenson was on Ezra Klein’s show today, and it’s unsurprisingly a great conversation that’s worth hearing.

A few bits caught in my mind, including this one. Klein asks:

One of the sources of [MAGA’s] political strength and also the engine of their political argument is that there is an organized faction trying to corrupt the story of America, trying to force us into a space of endless repentance to acidify the bonds of solidarity between us.

We are a nation. Nations need stories everybody believes in. One thing they offer the country is the ability to be proud of America.

What do you think of that?

Here’s an excerpt of Stevenson’s reply:

I think public health, human health, is a really great way to think about this. It’s like saying we don’t want physicians to tell people that they have high blood pressure or diabetes because that’s depressing, that’s demoralizing. That it’s going to make people feel bad when they walk out.

We could ban physicians from ever giving that diagnosis, but the people who have high blood pressure, the people who have diabetes, are going to get sick. They’re not going to be healthy, and eventually, it will kill them in ways that they don’t have to die.

That’s a good argument: addressing our shortcomings is the only way we can overcome them.

There’s another, related one that was Barack Obama’s signature:

What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this, what greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

This version is more lyrical: we love the nation because of its striving. The imperfections are real, but in working to address them we are at our best.

I agree with both those sentiments, but I want to offer my own, one that is simpler and maybe angrier: You cannot love your country if you don’t love all of it.

The persistent efforts by MAGA to downplay and deny the wrongs America has committed, and is still committing, tell me how shallow and weak their patriotism is: it cannot survive confrontation by the nation’s imperfections.

I’ve known since the first time I left the country to visit family as a child that this is my nation, not because I chose it but because it is simply home. I know about the atrocities and blunders in our history, and I want us to rise above them, but I’m not patriotic because we try to be better. It goes the other way: once you know that this is your country, it’s patriotism that makes you want to do that work. Is it surprising that a movement that can’t bear to acknowledge America’s shortcomings has no commitment to addressing them, and indeed spends its days creating new ones?

Today, I’m looking forward to turning the page on this era and putting people in office who love our country for everything it is and can be.