The Iraq War sparked the first big political fight I had with my father. Like many in my generation, Iraq awakened me to the reality that America occasionally does bad things — and sometimes evil things, as in the case of Abu Ghraib. And yet, my father, the most moral and intelligent person in my life (a description that still holds), defended the war and the politicians behind it.

The disconnect baffled me. So I waved placards, wrote protest songs and letters to the editor, cut a heart-shaped hole out of an American flag , and hung it in my college apartment. I became a real piece of work, as my father might have described me at the time. He knew, as I did, that all of my “activism” was really just an extension of our argument played out in public. I couldn’t wave my liberal pieties

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