The Civil War thus became a test of whether democracy, with its promise of liberty and equality, could survive, whether the last best hope on earth could endure. The challenge of our time is to revitalize our civic life in order to realize a new birth of freedom. All of our people left, right and center have a responsibility to examine and discuss what unites us as a country, about what we share as common American values in a nation comprised of so many divergent groups and beliefs. For too long, we have let what divides us capture the headlines and sound bites, polarizing us rather than bringing us together. The conversation that I envision will not be easy.
Public life seems barren and vacuous.
And gallant efforts to reconstruct public mindedness in a Balkanized society of proliferating identities and constituencies seem farfetched, if not futile. Despite the difficulties, the conversation must proceed. The objectives are too important to abandon. What I envision is a national conversation open to all Americans, a conversation in which all voices need to be heard and in which we must struggle seriously to define the meaning of American pluralism. It is a conversation that is desperately needed, and the National Endowment for the Humanities is in the process of encouraging that conversation through a special program of grants, through a film intended for national broadcast on television but which will also be repackaged for use in the nation's classrooms, through the ongoing activities of the state humanities councils, and through creative partnerships with organizations throughout the country that can help to stimulate and facilitate the discussion among citizens from all walks of life.