To Live and Grieve in America

A republic, if we can keep it.

Photo by the author, South Carolina Lowcountry, April 2022

“I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.” — Molly Ivins

“So what, my dear compatriots? How will you label me now? Un-American? It won’t fit, I’m afraid. I’m even more American than you, only against the grain. Which, if you will think a moment, serves to put me in the tradition.” — Henry Miller, STAND STILL LIKE THE HUMMINGBIRD, 1962

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” — James Baldwin, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, 1955

It has been my observation that people who most deeply love their country are generally the ones most sharply critical of its self-created mythologies. I think this is because their love is for the real…