All countries are unique. They are because of their ethnicity, or their race, or language,
or culture, or geography. But America is unique for a different reason:
Because of its value system.
Now please understand, that in no way means or implies that Americans are necessarily
better than anyone else. There are kind and good people in every nation, and there are
bad people in America -- as there are everywhere else. But these values have molded a particularly
decent and open society, and one that has -- at great sacrifice --
promoted liberty around the world; more than any other country in history.
This unique value system has made the American experiment -- in building a free, open, affluent,
non-race-based, non-ethnicity-based society -- the greatest social experiment in world history.
The name I give to the American value system is The American Trinity.
Now, it's not to be confused in any way with the Christian Trinity, that's a theological statement of Christianity.
The American Trinity consists of the three core American Values.
Now, I discovered the American Trinity looking at a coin one night, as I emptied my pockets.
These three values had been staring me in the face all my life, emblazoned on every
American coin. Yet I had completely missed their significance.
They are: E pluribus unum, In God we trust, and liberty.
E pluribus unum is Latin for "From many, one". Meaning that Americans don't care where you're from.
We don't care about your blood origins, your ethnic origins, your racial origins,
your religious origins… From many, one. When you become an American, you are one of us
-- no different than an American who's ancestors came to America hundreds of years ago.
This is not as true elsewhere. If, for example, you're Turkish and you emigrate to Europe,
you will likely be regarded as a Turk for generations. You are not considered a
fellow German, or a fellow Swede, or a fellow Dane nearly as much as somebody from Turkey
would be considered an American within a day of becoming an American citizen.
The second value of the American Trinity, In God we Trust, means that America is founded
on the idea that God is the source of values. America's Declaration of Independence proclaimed
that humans have "Inalienable rights," but solely because these rights come from the
Creator, not from a King, or a government, or even from reason. Therefore, since they
come from God, they can never be taken away by people. What God are we talking about?
The one introduced by the Hebrew Bible. The God of the Ten Commandments, the God who judges
all nations and all individuals, and the God to whom all citizens -- all people --
must feel morally accountable for their actions.
And the third part of the American Trinity is liberty.
Now, you might ask, "Didn't the French Revolution proclaim liberty, along with equality and fraternity?"
and "Don't other nations hold liberty as a basic value?" Well the answer is yes.
Americans are not the only ones to enshrine liberty, but we are the only ones to enshrine liberty
along with e pluribus unum, and In God we trust. Also, the American concept of liberty
is not the same as the French, for example, because the French enshrined equality as well as liberty,
and equality is not part of the American Trinity -- that's a European value. Of course America
affirms that all humans are born equal and that we are all to be equal before the law,
but ending up equal -- the European value: egalitarianism -- is not an American value.
Why? Because enforcing equal outcomes diminishes liberty and America is preoccupied with liberty.
America is preoccupied with enabling you to have the liberty to end up wherever your talent,
hard work, (and yes) luck take you. If some people end up much wealthier than others and
have attained their wealth honestly, that inequality is a pretty small price to pay
to ensure liberty.
That's the American Trinity:
From many, one.
Liberty.
And God.
And like the Christian Trinity, you cannot remove any one of the three. Because if you do,
you will no longer have America.
I'm Dennis Prager.