you can get a betsy ross flag easily. you can get a confederate flag on a mug.but if you want the union civil war flag, you have to special order it. people do not identify that strongly with the union side in the civil war. that is to even more so for reconstruction. to say that is us, that is where we came from, yes, it is divisive. when you talk about the declaration, when i first started thinking about this, that seemed obvious, it seemed unavoidable, it seemed unobjectionable. of course everyone can rally behind the declaration and of course you cannot expect the same support for reconstruction. but actually, i think neither of those things is true. when we tell ourselves this story, when we locate our ideals and the declaration of independence instead of reconstruction, we are not just using a convenient fiction, we are doing what i said the darker story of america shows, which is we are purchasing unity at the price of racial justice. can everyone rally behind the declaration and founders'consititution? can everyone say thomas jefferson stated my ideals?

betsy ross is only alive now thanks to an operation that removed large parts of her liver and diaphragm. so degraded, i might not survive. looking back, she started getting the 1st warning signs about 10 years before her diagnosis. over the years i had circulatory problems as a comb, you know, dizziness, high blood pressure, and then blood pressure fluctuations. we often had to call an ambulance because i collapsed. what she didn't realize was that parasitic larvae were growing in her organs. examination showed that there was something wrong with her liver, but the doctors assumed it was an alcohol problem. with let's say you are the last year before it got really bad. my liver values were borderline, wildly about there to cleanse that. so they probably thought i drank a lot, but in fact, i didn't drink much alcohol and i didn't smoke. oh no. non-specific symptoms went untreated. that's typical for rare infections that often only recognize that an advanced stage. the in the incubation time can be as long as 15 years. but the problem with this infection is that the symptoms only appear v

and most people would also think, that is our flag, that's the betsy ross flag. and you know this flag. and probably fewer of you would say that's our flag. that's my flag. some people would. even if you wouldn't say that, though, you know that flag. but what about this? does anyone say this is my flag? no. but what is this? this is the fort sumter flag. this is the union flag in the civil war. i got it put on a mug. to bring to my constitutional law class. but i had to custom design it. so you can get an american 50 state, 50 star flag on a mug very easily, you can get a betsy ross 13 stars on a mug, you can get a confederate flag on a mug, but if you want the union civil war flag you have to special order it. people don't identify that strongly with the union side in the civil war. and that's true even more so for reconstruction. so to say that's us, that's where we came from, well, yes, right, it's divisive. and when you talk about declaration, there's broader buy-in. well, when i first started thinking about this, that seemed obvious. it seemed unavoidable. i