1 November 2010
Our quote of the day is actually a headline by Sissy Willis at her blog, sisu:
We believe in American exceptionalism and can see the Shining City from our front porch
The Shining City on the Hill was Ronald Reagan’s vision of America, drawn from the Gospel of Matthew, 5:14-16. At Reagan’s funeral, and upon his request, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor read from a 1630 sermon of Massachusetts governor John Winthrop‘s which was based on the same “city upon a hill” scripture from Matthew 5:14.
“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.”
President Ronald Reagan used the image in his 1984 acceptance of the Republican Party nomination and in his January 11, 1989 farewell speech to the nation:
I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still.
Like Sissy, and so many other Americans, we believe America is an exceptional place. Not because it is perfect, but because it is free. Please vote tomorrow…vote for liberty, for opportunity, for your freedom.
Cast your vote for the shining future of these exceptional United States of America.
Update: We urge you to read Doug Powers’ essay Last Call for Liberty. H/T American Power.
