The nativism behind the push to repeal or amend the Fourteenth is ugly and obvious.

The nativism behind the push to repeal or amend the Fourteenth is ugly and obvious.

Today, public understanding of our past and our system of government is pitifully low.

Love of country cannot be a supersized version of individual narcissism. True love of country-of this country-is love of our children, of a creed that promises them a better life before it promises us anything, and embraces the sacrifices needed to make that better life. True love of country is giving ourselves to a cause and a purpose larger than ourselves. And that cause is to make liberty worth having, to make the pursuit of happiness deeper than the quest for personal pleasure, and to leave a legacy of progress and possibility.

The boomers will eventually have to accept that it is not possible to stay young forever or to stop aging. But it is possible by committing to show up for each others in community after community, to earn a measure of immortality.

The Boomers have modeled a set of bad habits, and one grand gesture is not going to unwind all those bad habits.

In the end no segregationist scheme has withstood the force of a simple idea: equality under law.