On the morning after Election Day, my wife and I flew our family’s enormous American flag again for the first time since before Donald Trump was elected.

Why? Because for us, the day’s election results seemed almost sane again – high voter turnout, issues that mattered, some wins for each side. As New York Times columnist Frank Bruni put it, we may have reached the limit of crazy that will be tolerated.

Our family flag is actually much too big and heavy for our home flagpole. So we had to keep an eye out for the wind. But it’s the “casket flag” the Army gave us after my wife’s dad was buried in the military cemetery at Augusta – and so we love it, honor it and keep it.

I emailed our friends a photo of the flag on the pole and told them what we were doing. Most of them cheered. One of them, however, a retired journalist, said that in spite of the pro-democracy election results – and even though she too has the flag from her dad’s coffin – she didn’t feel patriotic enough to fly it “when we’re inching toward autocracy.”

I understood her. But it got me thinking.

For me, America is an ongoing 246-year-old experiment in creating a just society. And patriotism, if it means anything at all, means giving your heart to this experiment, warts and all.

For years now, my conservative neighbors have flown their flags as a mark of tribal solidarity – in their yards and on their pickup trucks. They seem to be saying: “We’re the real Americans.”

And that’s fine. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion. But it’s not hard to see that something’s wrong with this picture.

The American flag means more than that. America means more than that. One of the best things I learned in life is that “if you don’t deal with it, it never goes away.” The same thing is true for a country. Conservatives think the past was perfect. Liberals think the future will be perfect. They’re both wrong.

Yes, America has had an amazing past. But the truth is that it included epic disasters, too – the genocide of Native Americans, the theft of their homeland, the institution of slavery, the mistreatment of women and people of color, the overthrow of foreign governments, the continuing repercussions of all of these, the near absence of plans for reparations, the destruction of the environment and more.

These are plain facts. And gross, festering wounds. If we don’t deal with them as a nation eventually, they’ll never go away and will poison our future. Many liberals are already moving in the right direction, trying to build a reality-oriented understanding of their country in order to find just ways to heal – and then working from there. Conservatives deserve justice, too, and will move when the moment is right for them.

On the other hand, America has also had triumphs on an epic scale – in particular, the establishment of an ever-evolving democracy in which human beings finally threw off self-appointed autocrats and set forth to govern themselves freely, peacefully and by mutual consent.

Yes, we have a long way to go, with real ups and downs. (We’re in a down right now.) But overall, our upward progress is an objectively measurable fact. This is where the human race is headed. The tide is rising. And America is a leader in helping to make the world a better place.

I’m glad my wife and I flew our flag. We’re doing it again. It’s Veterans’ Day weekend! You can do it, too. Let’s reclaim the flag for all of us – for the real America, its high ideals and its inspiring progress toward them.