I want to welcome everyone to a very special episode of The American Idea.

I'm Jeff Sickinga, your host, and the executive director of the Ashbrook Center.

For listeners who are joining us for the first time,

the American Idea is a podcast from the Ashbrook Center,

dedicated to exploring what we think is the most important question for us as citizens. What does it mean

to be an American? To do that, we have conversations with scholars, thinkers, and public figures

who can shed some light on the great documents, debates, and issues that have defined America

since our funding. But today's episode isn't a

conversation. It's a story. A story of hope and freedom. A story of overcoming tyranny and

oppression. A story of finding love for a country and its ideas. This is the story of Peter Schramm.

Peter was born in Hungary in 1946.

Fleeing the Soviet invasion of Hungary ten years later,

Peter asked his father why they were going to America.

Because son, his father replied, we were born Americans, but in the wrong

place. Peter would devote the rest of his life to studying and teaching what that meant. He received

his BA degree from California State University Northridge and went on to earn a PhD from the Claremont Graduate School.

With help of figures like Harry Jaffa, Peter came to understand what his father already knew.

Why, as Peter's hero, Abraham Lincoln put it, America truly is the last best hope of Earth.

Peter was a co-founder of the Claremont Institute

for the study of statesmanship and political philosophy

and became its founding president.

He later left Claremont to work for Bill Bennett in the Reagan administration.

...