The Real v. the Ideal

Mitt Romney: Prizing Freedom Here is an excerpt from Republican politician and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney's book "Prizing Freedom."

Nations are shaped by their founders, often for many generations and centuries after those founders are gone. The culture and character of America reflects the nature and convictions of the men and women who founded it.

I’ve often imagined what it must have been like for those very first people who left Europe to immigrate to America. They left behind home, family, security, and predictability in exchange for a life-threatening ocean passage, the possibility of hostile indigenous people, and uncertain shelter, food, and climate.

Some who came here sought fortune. Others sought the right to practice their religion according to the dictates of their conscience. In almost every heart, it was a strain of liberty that drew them here — religious liberty, economic freedom, freedom to pioneer, or freedom from oppression. The thirst for freedom drove these American colonists. And it is very much a part of what we are as a people today — we love freedom.

That first choice of freedom by the Founders — incomplete and only perfected by Lincoln four score years later–has made all the difference. People from all over the world who prized freedom — the innovators, the pioneers, the

dreamers — came to America. And so they continue today. This is who we are as a people — it is in our DNA. It is this love of liberty and the accompanying spirit of invention, creativity, derring-do, and pioneering that have propelled America to become the most powerful nation in the history of the world.

I had to nod my head when I read what Sylvester Stallone had said: “I think America apologizes too much.” He’s right, of course. No nation has done more to promote world peace and liberty than America. No nation has done more to combat disease and to salve humanity when it is suffering than America. No nation has done more to promulgate economic principles that have lifted billions of people from poverty than America. Of course we have made mistakes and of course we can do even more for others, but this nation has from the beginning done what it believed was right and good, and the ultimate sacrifice made for liberty by so many hundreds of thousands of our sons and daughters is unrivaled in human history. Do not apologize for America.