From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan,

where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored,

this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

Of course America has its issues and challenges.

All countries do, but there is no government like this beautiful experiment.

This is your host, Scott Bertram.

Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

That was Allison Ellis, editor of the new book, Finding Our Words, Words That Made America, a collection of some of the most inspiring words spoken by American leaders since our founding.

More on that coming up later on in today's program.

First, we're joined by Sam Connect, Master Painter, and Hillsdale Professor Emeritus of Art.

Sam, thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you, Scott.

I'm glad to be here.

Glad to have a chance to plug the new video course for the college course on American Painting.

It's called American Paintings, and our listeners can find it at Hillsdale.edu slash new course.

Hillsdale.edu slash new course for American Paintings with Sam Connect. This course covers a wide variety of subjects,

portraits and landscapes, even battle scenes. We'll talk a bit more about some of those later on.

What ties those diverse works together as American? What makes it American art? Well, Scott, I think what is American

about all of this is that most of the artists are Americans grew up here, but there are a few

imports, especially in the days of the revolution where there was an Englishman, an Irishman

and so on. But they really

got embedded in the American story. And what is that story? Well, I think, among other things,

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