President Ronald Reagan famously said:

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” click here for more of the Declaration of Independence, the “why” of America.

Benjamin Franklin’s response to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question, September 17, 1787: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

“A republic, if you can keep it.”