INTRODUCTION

ARE WE THERE YET?

If you grow up near Philadelphia, sooner or later you end up at Independence Hall. If you're anything like me, you'll end up there three or four or five times over the course of childhood. I was raised in the Philadelphia suburbs of the 1970s, when the city was busy getting ready for—and then recovering from—the national bicentennial. My parents dressed me up as a peanut (they were Jimmy Carter fans) and forced me to march in a 1976 bicentennial parade. The costume was itchy and uncomfortable. It is my first historical memory.

Today, I can see that my childhood trips to places like Independence Hall were more than get-out-of-school-free cards. They're part of an American ritual, in which we visit the places where history happened to figure out who we are in the present. A few years ago, with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence looming, I returned to my childhood stomping grounds for a check-in. Security is tight these days at Independence Hall, which is now protected by gates, guards, and metal detectors. Mostly, though, it was just as I remembered: the tidy brick building with its white clock tower and cupola, a vision of symmetry and order in a chaotic land.

A ranger from the National Park Service led my tour group into the first-floor courtroom, where we received a quick lesson in English common law. Then came the big reveal: the chamber where the signings of the Declaration and the Constitution took place. By today's standards, it's not much to look at: a gray-and-green-themed room with a dozen or so tables, each holding a quill pen for document-signing purposes. In 1776, though, it was one of the most spectacular public spaces in the thirteen colonies, and thus a fitting site for the momentous events—Declaration, Revolution, Constitution—that have served as the foundation of American history ever since.

The nicest chair in the room belonged to General George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention from a raised dais up front. Our ranger instructed us to look closely at the back of the chair, an ornate mahogany creation meant to stand out in all the humdrum gray. Lo and behold, there is something special there: a half-round sun, its rays peeking out over the horizon, carved into the wood and painted in gold. As the convention drew to a close, Benjamin Franklin supposedly remarked that he had been pondering whether that sun was rising or falling on the nation that had been created. Our ranger assured us that Franklin thought the sun was rising and that the future of the United States looked bright. But, she added, it was up to the rest of us to ensure that the sun would "continue to rise" over the country we inherited.

* * *

We are once again at a moment when many Americans are wondering if the sun is rising or setting over our republic. In poll after poll, citizens express a deep sense of uncertainty, even dismay, about where we are as a country and where we might be going. For generations, Americans buoyed themselves at such moments with a story of progress, in which the future could be made better than the past. That story has been told and retold for 250 years: as a narrative of conquest and continental expansion, of innovation and economic power, of military and strategic might. In recent decades, it has often been invoked as a parable of expanding rights, in which a nation that once enslaved millions of Africans and their descendants, massacred indigenous peoples, restricted citizenship to white residents, and excluded women from the polity slowly evolved into a more egalitarian nation. In the 21st century, though, many of us are wondering how much of that is true anymore.

Reasons vary. Some believe that there was once a glorious moment when the country was great and the economy was booming and individual freedom flourished; all we need to do is make the country great again. Others think that progress has been too slow or that the country is moving backward in the areas that really matter—that systemic inequalities of race, class, gender, and sexuality are baked into the nation's DNA. American exceptionalism has always had its critics, but at its best it was aspirational. It described the United States as a place with a special mission and therefore a special set of obligations, conflicts, and duties. Today, what's exceptional about America can seem more like a litany of miseries and embarrassments: mass incarceration, obesity, government dysfunction, gun violence, billionaires with their own space programs.

Like many Americans, I grew up on the progress story. As it was told to me, the United States was a place of real flaws but also great promise, devoted to the idea that "all men are created equal." I was taught early on that women had become equal too, and that 1972 was the best possible moment in all of human history for a little girl to be born. American progress meant that I could be anything: an astronaut, a CEO, even president of the United States. So could millions of other people who had once been excluded from the American dream due to race, religion, or national origin. And I believed it, or at least I wanted to. Out in the brand-new suburban subdevelopment where I grew up, it was easy to think that my parents' generation had thrown off the deadweight of history in exchange for something better.