Acknowledging America’s Sins While Instilling Faith in Its Promise Can Revive American Patriotism

While historical revisionists of the left wish to define America solely by its flaws, and reduce everything about it to the story of slavery and racism, revisionists of the right have cast doubts on the ideals of the American founding themselves. In his book Land of Hope, Wilfred McClay shows why and how American patriotism should be reclaimed, that the United States has always been animated by the interplay between its universalist ideals and its particular loyalties, and that its history can be taught in a way that acknowledges its sins while instilling faith in its promise. McClay discusses this and much more—from Abraham Lincoln’s religious development to W.E.B. Du Bois and the New York Times’s “1619 Project”—in conversation with Meir Soloveichik. (Video, 70 minutes.)