Unlike every other nation in the history of the world, America was not founded simply upon the bases of communal physical considerations such as geography, tribe, caste, race, or religion. Rather, it was founded upon the shared, evolving, and occasionally conflicting ideals of liberty and equality of opportunity and with the hope that the fulfillment of these ideals would enable its citizens to realize significant individual and collective achievements.

This is the American dream, and as pervasively as possible, the United States government should endeavor to propagate those ideals by providing every human being - regardless of race, gender, lineage, religion, or nationality - with an equal opportunity to realize their dreams, however they might choose to define them.

How we choose to do so, our means and our methods, are fit topics for debate; that we do so is requisite. Our secular and democratic mores are ascendant throughout the world, but many challenges remain, both at home and abroad. Our nation cannot fall into the ancient imperial trap of safeguarding the results of achievement rather than preserving our potential for it - of dividing the people of the world into those who have and those who want and of assessing the stagnation of stability as superior to the productivity of change. These challenges are mortal threats to our national legacy.

The purpose of government is to permit its constituents to enjoy their lives, liberties, and opportunities, free from the twin tyrannies of anarchy and oppression. A government created by of and for the people and that defends the inviolability of human and civil rights is both our collective birthright and a noble trust. Having been created and defended by the sacrifices of the patriotic, today, this legacy is jeopardized by the indolence of the affluent and the sanctimony of the smug. The quest to honor our heritage by embracing its values and not its accomplishments must be perpetual.

Although we cannot hope to attain the absolute realization of these American ideals in our lifetimes, we cannot be disheartened by this impossibility because the act of striving both enhances and ennobles. Until human beings are perfect, Elysium will elude us, but our quest for it must endure. We cannot be lulled into complacency by the substance and import of our own achievements because there is so much more yet to achieve.

The United States is the greatest nation in the world, but neither America nor the world in which it exists is as great as they could be. Making them so should be the primary objective every patriotic American and is the primary objective of this collection essays, or as our nation’s first president and the father of his country said to his fellow citizens in his farewell address of 1796: “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”