Listen as our Nation speaks to us. I am the Nation. I was born on July 4,1776 and the Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate. The blood lines of the world run in my veins, because I offer freedom to the oppressed.

I am 250 million living souls-and the ghost of millions who have lived and died for me. I am Nathan Hale and Paul Revere. I stood at Lexington and fired the shot heard 'round the world.

I am Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry. I am John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys and Davy Crockett. I am Lee and Grant and Abe Lincoln.

I remember the Alamo, the Maine and Pearl Harbor.

When freedom called, I answered it and stayed until it was over, over there. I left my heroic dead in Flanders Field, on the Rock of Corregidor, on the bleak slops of Korea, and in the steamy jungles of Viet Nam.

I am the Brooklyn bridge, the wheat lands of Kansas and the granite hills of Vermont.

I am the coal fields of Virginia and Pennsylvania, the fertile lands of the West, the Golden Gate and Grand Canyon. I am Independence Hall, the Monitor and the Merrimac.

I am big. I sprawl from the Atlantic to the Pacific -my arms reaching out to embrace Alaska and Hawaii - three million square of miles throbbing with people and with industry.

I am more than 5 million farms. I am forest, field, mountain and desert. I am quiet villages - and cities that never sleep.

You can look at me and see Ben Franklin walking down the street of Philadelphia with his bread loaf under his arm. You can see Betsy Ross with her needle. You can see the lights of Christmas, and hear the strains of "AULD LANGSYNE" as the calendar turns.

I am Babe Ruth and the World Series, the Super Bowl, the NBA playoffs. I am 130 thousand schools and colleges, and 320 thousand churches where my people worship as they think best.

I am a ballot dropped in a box, the roar of a crowd in the stadium and the voice of a choir in a cathedral. I am an editorial in a newspaper and a letter to a congressman.

I am Eli Whitney and Stephen Foster. I am Tom Edison, Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell. I am Horace Greeley, Will Rogers and the Wright Brothers. I am George Washington Carver, Daniel Webster and Jonas Salk.

I am Longfellow, Harriet Beacher Stowe, Walt Whitman and Martin Luther King.

Yes, I am the Nation, and these are the things that I am . I was conceived in freedom, and God willing, in freedom I will spend the rest of my days. May I possess always the integrity, the courage, and the strength, to keep myself unshackled, to remain a citadel of freedom and a beacon of hope to the world.