Begin with the United States of America., the greatest force for freedom and change in history. We, the American people, are humankind’s pioneers. Our ancestors cultivated a natural wilderness. Americans of the twenty-first century confront a wilderness of flesh and blood in a world terrified by the virtues that we treasure, from religious tolerance to the rule of law, from the dignity of every man and woman to the rejection of hereditary power. Erupting with freedom, America challenges the world. We expose lies that justified thousands of years of tyrannies, proving that birth need not determine destiny. We demonstrate freedoms potential for all. And those we robbed of authority will never forgive us.
Each day we expand the frontiers of human possibility. Those who insist on limits are our enemies. It is their choice, not ours. The great struggle of the twenty-first century will rage between those, led by America, who believe that men and women have the right to shape their own lives, and those who believe themselves entitled to shape the lives of others. We will prevail, but the rearguard actions fought on behalf of decayed traditions and murderous beliefs will rage beyond our lifetimes.
Without the sacrifices of our forebears, most human beings – perhaps all – would live under tyranny. Without teh Americans of today and our English speaking brethren, dictators would again rise without hindrance. Because of us, freedom an dthe dignity of the common man and woman have become the ideal of a reordered humanity. We have lifted the weight of history from the shoulders of many millions.
And we are far from finished.

Our country is a force for good without precedent. We embody the revolutionary proposition that men and women can govern themselves from below, to the benefit of all, instead of being governed from above, to the benefit of few. Our pride does not rely upon purity of blood or religious monoploy, but uopn what multiple races and creeds have built with sweat and sacrifice. Our ancestors were not children of privilege,but men and women who refused to accept the limits of the lands they left behind. The new Americans who arrive to increase our strength are the spiritual kindred of teh earliest colonists. Old and new, Americans rejected the saftey of submission for a chance to stride upright. And we have learned to live together without hatred, if not without passing rancor. It is an achievement few other lands can claim – and none could claim it but for our example.

Our progress has not been easy. Some of our ancestors fled chains. Othewrs arrived in chains. Some wore chains as they lived upon our soil. Our past has been imperfect. But unlike others, we do not deny our mistakes. We do not embrace history as an excuse for continued failure.
That alone sets us apart from the rest of the world.
When Americans stumble, we get back up. We do not wallow in a self-made mire and call it the will of God or the hand of fate. To err may be human, but to roll up your sleeves and fix what went wrong is American. We bear with us all the faults humanity can manifest. But we do not surrender to those faults. While others cling to past glories, we know that our greatest days still lay ahead.

For all the complaints we must bear about America -the price of our success and the product of human jealousy – only imagine what this world would be like without us. Some may answer that proposition smugly, mocking us from foreign realms of failure. But their children line up by the millions to apply for U.S. Visas. And those who complain about their American birthright rarely leave to live their lives abroad.
All men and women dream. Americans forge their dreams into reality

We are not hated for what we have done to others, but for what we have done for ourselves. The example of our success is humiliating and bitter to all those who cling to traditions our power reveals as inadequate. Even the American capacity for hard work excites the hostility not only of our enemies , but of fair weather allies. Perhaps the cruelest thing European governments have done to their citizens over the past half century has been to destroy the sense that work fullfills a life. An unemployment payment is no substitute for a job, and welfare for the able robs human beings of their dignity, creating moral slaves. Most Americans ,on the other hand, cannot imagine a life without work. We win the lottery, then get back behind the wheel of the delivery truck. Our passion for work and achievement is a tremendous source of our strength.
As an American citizen, I see quiet heroism in the parent who labors at a grinding job, year after year, in order to raise a family, in the common citizen who will never enjoy celebrity or financial wealth, but whose steadiness and moral intergrity make this country go. America has no greater reserve of strength than the honest man or woman who, instead of scheming to beat the system, keeps that sytem running day after day.

Of course few of those Americans see themselves as revolutionaries. Yet we live in the most revolutionary society in history. We upset oppressivetraditions that endured, unchallenged, for millennia. Defiantly, we created new possibilites. The average American with an SSN, a drivers license , and a mortgage is a revolutionary to a degree that reveals Karl Marx and Che Guevara as dilettantes. While revolutionaries elsewhere sought to impose arid philosophies on humankind – at the cost of hundreds of millions of lives – we created a perpetual revolution of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The American Revolution isn’t a single event summed up by the date 1776. Our revolution began when the first colonists arrived with their backs turned to an old, limiting world and began to carve a new Jerusalem from virgin timber. Our revolution never stopped – even our Civil War was a revolutionary struggle, the only civil war ever fought to free a never enfranchised, powerless group. We have changed nearly every aspect of the social and economic orders that prevailed fo rcenturies. An dour openess to the new threatens those whose allegiance lies with the barren, dying order – even within our own population. As we pioneer change each day of our lives, those who fear and reject change yearn to stop us, whether we speak of Islamic terrorists in love with a punitive god, French presidents embittered by the loss of status for which their citizens lacked the courage to fight, or the dwindling ranks of domestic bigots.

The distance between us and the rest of the world is growing greater, not lessening.

Consider how much has changed in a half century of American life, in this great age of revolutions, and you begin to understand how threatening our society appears to those who live their lives in thrall to yesterday..

May God continue to Bless America.