id america become america in 1619, or 1776, or some other year? There is no objective answer. The answer is a choice, an expression of values, and the choice implies a story. Politics is a competition between stories—and it’s as politics that the new fatalism leads to a dead end. On a landscape strewn with the deflated remnants of old myths, with the country’s essence distilled to its meanest self, what moral identity is it possible to build? Punctured myths make us better students of history, but they leave nothing to live up to. Shame is a shaky foundation for any project of renewal. You can’t tell someone that he’s made a mess of his life because of his own bad character and then expect him to change. “National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals,” Rorty wrote: “a necessary condition for self-improvement.”

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