"Our goodness is our greatness." This thought has been attributed to the French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville after his visits to this country in the nineteenth century. The same basic idea was expressed by Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. I’ve reflected on this idea, and I believe it’s fundamentally true. No country has ever occupied so dominant a place in the world as the United States does today. But if we’re to remain a great nation, we have to understand the providential role we’ve been given by history. We have 5 percent of the world’s population, 20 percent of the world’s economy, a third of the world’s military budget, and a fourth of the world’s research and development budget. Yet, if we want to maintain that American greatness, we need to remember that our greatness comes from our goodness. If we try to do what is good and right, we will continue to be great. But if we only try to do what’s great, then we will lose both the greatness and the goodness. I grew up going to Sunday school, and the America I knew as a youngster was a nation of based on Sunday-school values: work hard, treat your neighbors fairly, pitch in where you can, and do your best to be a good person. When I was elected to the U.S. Senate, I understood that America is not Washington, DC. It’s millions of people making millions of decisions every day that determine the greatness of this country. That’s why the culture is so important. If our culture honors goodness, it encourages virtue and benevolence. But if the culture silences goodness in the name of tolerance and celebrates vice, it encourages wickedness. Throughout most of our history, we’ve been able to count on a wonderful fail-safe device: the character and common sense of the American people. We’ve seen it in the response to 9/11 and a long list of national disasters. But that reservoir of moral character and shared beliefs has been weakened over the past several decades by a breakdown of the family. The American character may be struggling today, but it’s still there, and it’s especially exciting for me to see what’s happening with the younger generation. If character and moral judgment can be awakened in the hearts of all our people, we won’t have to worry about what the future may bring us. The future is as promising as ever, but we will need the dedication and perseverance of all our people if we’re to achieve our true destiny and purpose.