Summarize in one sentence The reality is often quite different, a great national striving consisting frequently of failure.
Many of the oft-told stories of the most pluralistic nation on earth are stories not of tolerance, but of
bigotry. Slavery and sweatshops, the burning of crosses and the ostracism of the other. Children
learn in social studies class and in the news of the lynching of blacks, the denial of rights to women,
the murders of gay men. It is difficult to know how to convince them that this amounts to "crown
thy good with brotherhood," that amid all the failures is something spectacularly successful.
Perhaps they understand it at this moment, when enormous tragedy, as it so often does, demands a
time of reflection on enormous blessings.