Americans have never settled the question of how best to love this country. Does patriotism mean prioritizing unconditional loyalty'the Pledge of Allegiance I remember repeating every morning of elementary school, right hand over my heart'or does it first demand skepticism and vigilance, a setting and resetting of expectations, a love that needs to be earned' This tension goes back to the very beginning, to the ratification of the Constitution, when Federalists and anti-Federalists debated whether there was enough glue to hold this new political entity together. To argue for a union was to willfully overlook the irreconcilable divisions between the states'slavery being the most obvious gulf. Our most fondly remembered Founding Fathers took a leap of faith. Whatever doubts they had, they threw an idealistic blanket over the whole enterprise, covering the mess by proclaiming that providence had decreed that this union had to exist, and therefore it should. The anti-Federalists were...
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