On its 250th birthday, America is a nation that tells itself only flattering stories.
That’s a sign of decline, not greatness.
That thought came to mind while reading a recent essay, “How America Gave Up on Its Own History,” by Yoni Appelbaum in The Atlantic, about America’s struggle to reach a shared understanding of its past and present.
History is not history if it is merely a collection of legends designed to make us feel good about ourselves.
Nor is it history if it becomes a catalog of grievances meant to convince us that everything has always been broken.
History is an honest account of what happened.
And honesty is rarely neat.
The American story is complicated because human beings are complicated.
The same nation that proclaimed that all men are created equal tolerated slavery.
The same Constitution that expanded liberty excluded many from fully participating in that liberty.
The same country that inspired millions around the world often failed to live up to its own ideals.
These are not contradictions to be hidden.
They are realities to be understood.
Too often, our debates about history devolve into arguments over whether America was good or bad, noble or flawed, worthy of praise or deserving of criticism.
But history is not a courtroom where we render a final verdict.
History is a conversation between what we aspired to be and what we were.
The story of America is not that we woke up one morning and decided to become great.
The story is that we articulated a set of ideals and then spent nearly 250 years arguing over what those ideals meant and who they applied to.
Equality.
Liberty.
Justice.
Opportunity.
Self-government.
Those values did not fully materialize.
They arrived as aspirations.
Generation after generation has struggled to bring reality closer to principle.
Sometimes we succeeded.
Sometimes we failed.
Often, we did both at the same time.
That is why attempts to sanitize history are so misguided.
A polished past may be comforting, but it is not honest.
More importantly, it misses the most inspiring part of the story.
The value of history is not that it shows perfection.
The value of history is that it shows progress is possible.
A nation that has always been perfect teaches us nothing.
A nation that recognizes its failures, confronts them, and strives to do better teaches us everything.
The abolitionists did not reject America’s founding ideals.
They appealed to them.
The suffragists did not reject America’s promise.
They demanded inclusion in it.
The civil rights movement did not argue that liberty and equality were meaningless.
It argued that the nation should finally honor them.
The heroes of American history were often those who pointed out where America fell short.
Their criticism was not an act of disloyalty.
It was an act of faith.
They believed the country could become better than it had been.
Journalists perform a similar role.
At our best, we are not in the business of protecting myths.
We are in the business of seeking the truth.
That pursuit is sometimes uncomfortable.
It often exposes mistakes, failures, hypocrisy, corruption, and injustice.
But exposing those realities is not an attack on the country.
It is an act of confidence that citizens can handle the truth, and that self-government depends on it.
A healthy democracy requires both historians and journalists willing to tell the full story.
Not the heroic version.
Not the cynical version.
The honest version.
The pursuit of a more perfect union was never a destination.
It was always a journey.
The journey remains.
If America is to avoid decline, it will not do so by telling itself more flattering stories.
It will do so by telling its true stories.
That is the work of honest historians.
It is the work of independent journalists.
And it is the responsibility of every citizen who believes this country can still become better than it is today.
The story worth telling is not that America has always lived up to its ideals.
The story worth telling is that Americans have repeatedly recognized the gap between their ideals and their actions and have struggled to close it.
That work is never finished.
Nor should we expect it to be.
The pursuit of a more perfect union was never a destination.
It was always a journey.
The journey remains.