I still remember America’s 200th birthday, or at least I remember it the way a five-year-old remembers things: not in policy or politics, not in historical nuance, but in colors, sounds, and feelings. It was the summer of 1976, and I was growing up in a little town in northeast Arkansas where red, white, and blue seemed to show up everywhere. There were flags, parades, fireworks, patriotic songs, television specials, and that strange Bicentennial magic that made even small-town America feel as if it were standing in the middle of history.

Back then, America felt simple to me because childhood has a way of making everything feel simple. America was the good guy. America was freedom. America was the nation that defeated tyranny, landed on the moon, and promised liberty and justice for all. Like most children, I inherited the story before I learned the history, and I accepted the myth before I understood the cost.

Now, fifty years later, as America turns 250, I find myself standing in a very different emotional place. It isn’t that I love this country less. In some ways, I may love it more honestly now than I did then. But the love I have now is not the untested patriotism of childhood. It is not the paper-flag patriotism of school programs and fireworks shows. It is a love that has been bruised by history, challenged by reality, and reshaped by listening to the stories of people whose America was never as innocent as mine seemed to be in 1976....