In Herman Melville's book "White Jacket" that he wrote in 1850, before he wrote "Moby Dick, he shares the following challenge.

It is almost an eerie challenge that seems quite appropriate for our day and time... almost prophetic in it's appeal for Americans to see the value of the American dream.

Many opine that the dream is dead... yet... in the heart of every believer is not only the desire for freedom, but a passion for that same freedom for all humanity.

Could we hear this voice from the past... today?

Escaped from the house of bondage, Israel of old did not follow after the ways of the Egyptians. To her was given an express dispensation; to her were given new things under the sun. And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people--the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

Seventy years ago we escaped from thrall; and, besides our first birthright-- embracing one continent of earth--God has given to us, for a future inheritance, the broad domains of the political pagans, that shall yet come and lie down under the shade of our ark, without bloody hands being lifted. God has predestinated, mankind expects, great things from our race; and great things we feel in our souls. The rest of the nations must soon be in our rear. We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path
in the New World that is ours.

In our youth is our strength; in our inexperience, our wisdom. At a period when other nations have but lisped, our deep voice is heard afar. Long enough, have we been skeptics with regard to ourselves, and doubted whether, indeed, the political Messiah had come. But he has come in us, if we would but give utterance to his promptings.

And let us always remember that with ourselves, almost for the first time in the history of earth, national selfishness is unbounded philanthropy; for we can not do a good to America but we give alms to the world.

"Long enough, have we been skeptics with regard to ourselves, and doubted whether, indeed, the political Messiah had come. But he has come in us..."

Consider and ponder this.

XtnYoda, shalomed