But of course that's not what the screenwriter meant. To right-thinking people, the "past" — that nebulous era when everyone wore hats and blacks couldn't vote and cars had fins — was a time where one could say "The American Way" without irony, because they were uninformed, and President Bush hadn't invaded Iraq yet. Nowadays you cannot tout "The American Way" without adding footnotes about slavery and the Philippines war and pre-FDA meat safety and women's suffrage and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Did you know they blocked the fire exits? Women jumped to their deaths. And you think we're something special?

Well, yes. Especially given the alternatives. Especially when considering the vast record of oppression, lawlessness and miserable inescapable poverty that has characterized most of human civilization up to, and including, noon today. When compared against some ideal country — say, a solar-powered pan-ethnic secular Switzerland with a socialist economy based on bartering hemp — the messy realities of America past and present come up short.

But this has always been an imperfect nation. Accepting our faults, correcting our wrongs and using the revolutionary founding concepts to improve ourselves further: That's the American way.