Bret Devereaux

I was struck, in reading Andrew Wolpert's Remembering Defeat (2001), in how central the act of communal redefinition was to restoring the Athenian democracy in the aftermath of the Thirty Tyrants. 2/

In speech after speech, inscription after inscription, that same formula - 'that is/isn't what we are' - recurs. The 'real Athens,' speakers insisted, was the one that had lived in exile, the one that had remained committed to the democracy. Not the Thirty. 3/

And I know that can feel like whitewashing the history. Wolpert notes that in some sense it was, that obviously there must have been a great many former collaborators with the Thirty in those Athenian assemblies and juries who were being told 'what they were' was democrats. 4/

But that exercise in self-definition was prescriptive, not descriptive and I think that is too powerful a message for us to give up. We, not the insurrectionists, not the neo-Confederates, *we* are America, and we get to decide what America is today. 5/

And there is tremendous power in redefining the core attributes of a community. People want to fit in! They want to belong. Succeeding in redefining what we 'are' in that vague, metaphysical sense can exert a real pull on what people *do.* 6/

And that's the light that I think efforts by leaders to 'define out' our worst elements should be seen in. Not as an effort in white-washing, but an effort in forward-looking group definition. Because 'we are' exerts a stronger pull on the human mind than 'you should.' 7/