finding a balance

Can we condemn what goes bad and praise what's done right about the same institution at the same time? I think we can. I liked this in a column on the testimony of the police heroes of January 6:

Police aren’t perfect. And because they wield the power of life and death with the backing of the state, we have every right to hold them to a higher standard and to demand that they be held accountable when they get it tragically wrong. But this doesn’t blind me to the importance of law enforcement or their countless acts of heroism.

And I found a writeup from The Week of a piece by Max Boot about US history and the 1619 Project. (I don't know how old this is, as it's from a Week promotional pamphlet including some stuff that's at least two or three years old.) It says, quoting Boot in the middle,

Schools should find "a middle ground that fully acknowledges the sins of U.S. history - which continue to haunt us to the present day - while also showing that generations of Americans have struggled, sometimes at great personal cost, to realize the highest ideals of the Founders." Both of these stories are true.

Both of these stories are true. Hold on to that, and never forget to tell both of them.