CLEVELAND, Ohio – I remember tearing up as a kid, watching fireworks shoot and shimmer over Geauga Lake, as Lee Greenwood boomed through the darkness of the crowd.
“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.”
That was the 1980s, and I wasn’t even an American. I was a Canadian whose family had moved here for my dad’s job in the rubber industry. But the crying response was automatic, as emotion-inducing as a graduation photo slideshow set to Natalie Merchant’s “Kind & Generous.”…