What does it mean to be an American?

The stories inhabit some mind that bind us together as a people.

For most Americans growing up in the 50s, the answers were pretty simple.

We were hard-working and freedom-loving, rugged individualists with a can-do spirit.

We opened up the frontier and built mighty industries and allowed everybody to get their

piece of the American dream.

We were, on the right side of history, having defeated Hitler and liberated Europe.

We now stood sentinel against a godless, totalitarian communism to make the world safe for democracy.

We watched the same TV shows and listened to the same radio programs.

We loved westerns and baseball, hot dogs and apple pie, fast cars, and 4th of July parades.

That's the story we told ourselves anyway, but it wasn't the whole story.

It left a bunch of stuff out.

Whether it was the continuing discrimination against black and brown people, or all the ways

that women were still expected to stay in their place, or some of the ugly realities

of our foreign policy during the Cold War.

Bruce and I came of age as young people were challenging a lot of America's most cherished

myths about itself.

The result was a growing and bitter divide in the country, a political and culture war

that, in a lot of ways, we're still fighting today.

But before we got into the heavy stuff, I got behind the wheel of the vintage Corvette

that Bruce keeps in his barn, and we went for a little joyride.

One that didn't make my secret service detail all that happy.

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