America The Beautiful Deconstructed

But in a way that makes you appreciate it more. “Here is a hymn to those who brought the spirit of freedom to a new land, and a prayer that we Americans dedicate ourselves to self-control and the rule of law to protect the freedom we have won,” Christopher Nelson writes in an essay which appeared in The Imaginative Conservative. “This is a noble anthem that we would do well to call up from time to time—a song worth making our own, as members of a community bound together by the will to protect an idea of freedom in the pursuit of happiness.”

“This is, after all, the republic that has made it possible for this College, dedicated to cultivating the arts of freedom, the liberal arts, to thrive since before the formal founding of this nation. We in turn, as well educated and independent thinking citizens, will prove to be the necessary guardians of this republic.”

Nelson is the former president of St. John’s College in Annapolis.

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