So I'm seeing the same set of reactions to the line "this isn't what America is" which is to respond with the obvious truth that...well, yes it is.

The United States has been lots of things, good and bad and this sad moment is one of them.

But I think that misses the point. 1/

I was struck, in reading Andrew Wolpert's Remembering Defeat (2001), in how central the act of communal redefinition was to restoring the Athenian democracy in the aftermath of the Thirty Tyrants. 2/

In speech after speech, inscription after inscription, that same formula - 'that is/isn't what we are' - recurs. The 'real Athens,' speakers insisted, was the one that had lived in exile, the one that had remained committed to the democracy. Not the Thirty. 3/

And I know that can feel like whitewashing the history. Wolpert notes that in some sense it was, that obviously there must have been a great many former collaborators with the Thirty in those Athenian assemblies and juries who were being told 'what they were' was democrats. 4/

But that exercise in self-definition was prescriptive, not descriptive and I think that is too powerful a message for us to give up.

We, not the insurrectionists, not the neo-Confederates, *we* are America, and we get to decide what America is today. 5/

And there is tremendous power in redefining the core attributes of a community.

People want to fit in! They want to belong.

Succeeding in redefining what we 'are' in that vague, metaphysical sense can exert a real pull on what people *do.* 6/

And that's the light that I think efforts by leaders to 'define out' our worst elements should be seen in. Not as an effort in white-washing, but an effort in forward-looking group definition.

Because 'we are' exerts a stronger pull on the human mind than 'you should.' 7/

Does that change what America was yesterday? No. Obviously. I'm a historian, I believe in the importance of the past. Nor should past crimes and failures be forgotten.

But I draw from the Athenian example the importance of defining ourselves so as to change our future. end/8