For 243 years America has been kept together as a union because the majority believed there were certain values worth fighting for. Those values were enshrined in a Constitution. Primacy was given to the idea that all men were created equal. White or black, rich or poor, man or woman, straight or gay, we were to see each other as equals. This has been the guiding impulse of the Republic. It's an ideal. Beautiful but fragile. When we swear as citizens to uphold the Constitution, we give our word. We don't always keep it. Maybe we fall away. But the words are who we are. The framers knew we might fail but the ideal remained as the light. They knew we would be tested as we have been but they also knew that somehow, in some hearts and some minds, the better angels of our nature would prevail. In this present darkness when a pandemic is wreaking havoc and killing thousands, when our Congress has been attacked, when those who represent us are threatened with violence and foreign enemies conspire against us, we stand in the flames ready to be counted and our love for country and what it represents burns more fiercely than hatred or despotism. It's difficult which makes it worthwhile.