Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers

by Nick Offerman

“We’re like a family that fights a lot, but it’s out in the open. The scarier family is the one that pretends like there’s not a problem.” He pointed out, in reference to the recently released CIA torture reports, that while some of the activities our country gets up to may be shameful, he is not comfortable judging people in whose shoes he has not walked, and so it’s healthy to “let it bleed. Let it out. . . . That makes our country very unique—I don’t know that there’s very many other countries in the world where they would say, ‘Look what we did.’ I mean, the Japanese are having trouble acknowledging sixty years ago in World War II. We’re saying ‘We did this four, five, six years ago.’ . . . I think that’s a very positive quality that this country has; the civil rights debates and arguments and violence were all broadcast at the height of the Cold War, and it was an embarrassment to us, but . . . we let it bleed. We let it out, let people see what we are.” I said, “That’s poignant. I’m grateful for your perspicacity.”