Time & Perspective Quote by Robert Matsui

Patriotism gets sharper when it includes the courage to be embarrassed by your own flag. Robert Matsui is praising the United States, but he does it by refusing the easy kind of praise: the myth of effortless virtue. His line leans on a quiet comparative jab at the rest of the world - "very few countries" - while also implying that America, too, usually resists the mirror. The compliment lands because it acknowledges how rare political self-indictment is.

The grammar tells on him. "Its act" stays conspicuously vague, a politician's protective casing around something specific and painful. In Matsui's case, that vagueness points straight to Japanese American incarceration during World War II and the later federal apology and reparations (the Civil Liberties Act of 1988). Matsui, born in 1941, carried that history in his own biography: he was interned as a child. So the remark isn't abstract civic theory; it's a lived argument that a democracy's legitimacy depends on its ability to admit when it used law as a weapon.

The subtext is also tactical. By framing apology as exceptional - almost a marker of national maturity - Matsui makes accountability feel less like self-flagellation and more like strength. "Apologize" and "make amends" appear as parallel obligations, a reminder that contrition without material repair is just branding. In an era when politicians often treat history as a prop, Matsui insists it is a ledger. The point isn't that America is innocent; it's that it can choose not to stay guilty in the same way forever.