My child argued that Southerners who lay claim to Confederate heritage and honor—their commitments to distancing themselves from the nation’s name and focusing instead on bravery, leadership, and even heroism, their appeal to the ideal of state self-determination—have a lot in common with all American patriots. After all, when American exceptionalism is extolled, it requires us to set aside genocide, slavery, colonialism, and all manner of shameful deeds to trumpet national honor.
