The Reconstruction of America

Somewhere in America this Sunday in a small wooden church a meek and grateful congregation will hold their heads and worn songbooks high and proudly tell about the old old story. Somewhere in America this week in an elementary school classroom a teacher standing near an American flag will proudly tell her young students the story of our nations founding how the many institutions and freedoms they know about today or will soon encounter were once mere ideas the subjects of great debates and then a declaration and then a war. Americans invented and constantly reinvent the unique aspects of our spiritual government and secular institutions. From the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence to the first amendment to the Constitution our founders recognized the preeminent place our Creator and the free exercise of religion must hold in a nation that protects individual liberties. We know that both inside and outside our great nation there are many consumed with the passions of jealousy cynicism pessimism and evil hard at work to tear down the institutions culture and freedoms that the great majority of Americans live fight and die for every day. This book is an effort to reconstruct the great heroes icons and institutions of America. To tell a story of the people places and ideas that inspire us make us smile and make us cry yet remind us of the inherent goodness of our country. Our nation like her citizens is a living symbol of something bigger than itself. It is a nation and a people that project across the oceans the limitless potential of mankind yet remain humbled by an innate spirit of thanksgiving.