As this semiquincentennial summer celebration continues, our founding history is front and center. We remember what happened in 1776 because it set our nation's course in motion.

Ideals shape nations, and so do memories. Many of our national memories are inspiring. Others are embarrassing. Some are distressing.

Even a shining city on a hill must confront shadows, and there are dark periods and atrocious events of U.S. history we would go back and undo or re-do differently if we could.

Some of our worst memories have left scars. It's important to not forget that the path we've forged in our national journey included much suffering--slavery, the Civil War, mistreatment of Native Americans, lynching, Pearl Harbor, 9/11.

But it's also important to remember there are many more horrific memories we don't have. A notable aspect of America's exceptionalism is what never happened to us as a people or a nation.

Part of our perspective must include how our country has been shaped--and how our attitude today should still be shaped--by the tragedies we've escaped, by the horrors that never showed up on our soil.

One great challenge of inherited liberty is that it's inherited. Our baseline of freedom can feel like the natural order of things because it was written into our national charter.

Even when it has fallen short for some Americans--in cases........

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