With astonishing regularity, Americans have held fast to these ideals, despite the clickbait stories that portend calamity. And America has too often fallen short of these standards. Both of these things are true at the same time. America has been just, and it has perpetuated injustice. We have been peaceful, and we have perpetrated acts of violence. We have been—and are—good. And we have done terrible things to people who didn’t deserve them. It has been the land of the free while simultaneously sanctioning oppression. Such is often the experience of any government run by fallible human
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