David Brooks: The first invasion of America

I was an American history major in college, back in the 1980s.I’ll be honest with you. I thrilled to the way the American story was told back then. To immigrate to America was to join the luckiest and greatest nation in history. “Nothing in all history had ever succeeded like America, and every American knew it,” Henry Steele Commager wrote in his 1950 book, “The American Mind.”To be born American was to be born to a glorious destiny. We were the nation of the futur