This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American

people. Up next, the first episode of our series about us. That is the story of America. Here to tell

it is Hillsdale College Professor Bill McLeigh, author of the fantastic book, Land of Hope.

Take it away, Bill.

In the beginning, America was an idea even before it was actually a place.

This idea that the West was a special direction, a place toward which adventurous souls were drawn. It was the idea of the West as a land

of plenty, a place of wonder, a place of renewal. This goes back to the Greeks. The West had this

sort of magical appeal, even before we knew what was there. And America, in a sense,

comes into being with that legend, that story. So we have to begin with that idea that overrides

and undergirds a lot of the merely material explanations for what America is.

It's a land of hope from the very beginning.

It's a land of hope.

I think a great place to begin thinking about early American history is with a quotation that I love,

and that is from the architectural historian and critic Lewis Mumford.

He said, the settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe.

So to start with, we ought to know what was being unsettled. I think you go back

to a time when there was kings crowned by clergymen, the Middle Ages, the high Middle Ages,

the era of the great cathedrals and of this great unity.

All of that started to come down bit by bit due to a number of forces, the rising influence

of nationalism, of national identity, of commerce, the culture of cities built up around the

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