Okay, so this final talk of the workshop is titled, What is an American?

I have been informed that that's a very important question that we all have to be talking about now. What is an American?

And the original title for the talk was not that, but then I found out it's the question we all have to answer, so I figured I better answer it before they do.

And the answer, the original title was the Foundations of American Liberty. So you can look

at it either way. That was the intention that I had. But it actually answers the question. What is

an American? It's people who believe in the foundations of American liberty. But I actually give an

answer right from the start, which is Americans are citizens of the greatest, freest, most prosperous,

and most righteous nation that has ever existed on the earth.

That's what an American is.

But the trick, there's always a trick, there's always a fly in the soup, is I said that we're citizens of all these great things, most righteous nation. So we have to

understand what is a nation. Also, I don't actually feel too strongly about having to answer

the complicated question of what a nation is, but I want to let you know that there are other

people thinking about this question, and then I have thought about this question historically. So we'll start, as we started with another one of the talks,

with one answer to what a nation is from our beloved vice president.

You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea.

And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty,

things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation.

But America is not just an idea.

It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future.

It is, in short, a nation.

Now it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers.

But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms.

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