Reading this speech from the great historian David McCullough was very moving. Sometimes we need to be reminded of just what it means to be an American. How we got here. What sets us apart. The legacy of our past is no less great than the challenges we face as nation to honor the spirit of our founders by continuing this “grand experiment” in the 21st century and beyond. Our freedom and liberty were not gifts bestowed upon us by providence, there were bought in blood and toil. To forget our obligations to those who went before, or to fail in upholding the values and traits that make us uniquely American, is the surest way to lose all that we cherish and revere.

As McCullough said so well:

We all know, in our own lives, who those people are who’ve opened a window, given us an idea, given us encouragement, given us a sense of direction, self-approval, self-worth, or who have straightened us out when we were on the wrong path. Most often they have been parents. Almost as often they have been teachers. Stop and think about those teachers who changed your life, maybe with one sentence, maybe with one lecture, maybe by just taking an interest in your struggle. Family, teachers, friends, rivals, competitors – they’ve all shaped us. And so too have people we’ve never met, never known, because they lived long before us. They have shaped us too – the people who composed the symphonies that move us, the painters, the poets, those who have written the great literature in our language. We walk around everyday, everyone of us, quoting Shakespeare, Cervantes, Pope. We don’t know it, but we are, all the time. We think this is our way of speaking. It isn’t our way of speaking – it’s what we have been given. The laws we live by, the freedoms we enjoy, the institutions that we take for granted – as we should never take for granted – are all the work of other people who went before us. And to be indifferent to that isn’t just to be ignorant, it’s to be rude. And ingratitude is a shabby failing. How can we not want to know about the people who have made it possible for us to live as we live, to have the freedoms we have, to be citizens of this greatest of countries in all time? It’s not just a birthright, it is something that others struggled for, strived for, often suffered for, often were defeated for and died for, for us, for the next generation.

Nothing fills me with as much pride and honor than to be called an American. I pray that I prove to be worthy.

Via PowerLine