Afterword: Chris Lauzen

America's Voice

If America could speak, what would she say?

What has she said through the voices of men and women who have personified her ideals, personality, character, and aspirations?

Here is a sample of great thoughts that can be memorized and imprinted in our minds and on the hearts of our children and grandchildren who intend to carry on America's dream.

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"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain (in)alienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

— Thomas Jefferson, 1776, Declaration of Independence

"We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

— James Madison & Gouverneur Morris, 1787, U.S. Constitution

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedoms we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well-fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.

And if you and I don't do this, then we may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."

— Ronald Reagan, 1961

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

— Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

"So, my Fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you . . . ask what you can do for your country."

— John F. Kennedy, 1961

"America is great because it is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle."

— Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

"Folks are usually about as happy as they decide to be."

"A house divided against itself, cannot stand."

— Abraham Lincoln, 1858

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived (in Liberty) and so dedicated (to the proposition that all men are created equal), can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. . .

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

— Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, Gettysburg Address

"With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - - -to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

— Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865, Second Inaugural Address

As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1844, "America is another name for Opportunity."

May God bless you, your family, and the United States. Happy 250th Birthday, America.