Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses. Our greatest weaknesses are our greatest strengths. Our greatest pitfalls are those principles that define us and that we cannot be who we are without. We can do this thing called America well or we can mess it up badly. It is a risk worth taking. At the core of who we are there lives a people who are free and whose human dignity is codified in our annals, whose realization of their freedom is always in process, and whose understanding of the nature of our community is never complete. Against the backdrop of a land of beauty and plenty, conquered, reconquered, corrupted, blood-stained, disputed, vanquished, wild, and settled, is a system. It is a system rooted in values that not even the framers of their articulation fully grasped. It is a body of literature and a grand idea that has been entrusted to us to flesh out and carry to its extremities of application. It is an aspiration that founders had for themselves but held back from others. Yet, it was larger than them, larger than their comprehension, larger than their generation. Liberty, dignity, freedom, and self-government are the building blocks upon which each new generation must build a righteous government, a compassionate society, and a beloved community. America, God has shed His grace on thee. May He now crown our good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.