But Smart Americans are uneasy with patriotism. It’s an unpleasant relic of a more primitive time, like cigarette smoke or dog racing. It wakes up emotions that can have ugly consequences, from sports fans chanting “USA! USA!” all the way to the hypernationalism of the post-9/11 years. The shining city on a hill is heavily armed and dangerous. Bett

By the time Palin talked about “the real America,” it was in precipitous decline. The region where she spoke, the North Carolina Piedmont, had lost its three economic mainstays—tobacco, textiles, and furniture making—in a single decade. Local people blamed NAFTA, multinational corporations, and big government. Idle tobacco farmers who had owned and

Americans are usually too comforted by our stable creed and distracted by the flash of novelties to look hard at ourselves. Only a few times in history have we been forced to doubt the survival of self-government. It takes a very large shock to alert us that the engine room has gone silent. A shock on the scale of 2020.