The collective American spirit is manifestly destined to escape its Manifest Destiny, which has wildly overgrown our sea-washed, sunset gates and now consigned itself to the material homestead. It was upon this shore, and many others, that we ended our mutually cooperative and voluntary venture into pastures of plenty. We were never meant to expand anything more than our hearts.

I learned to be an American from the stories and folksongs which bind our history—the tales that teach us citizenship, brotherhood and empathy. I have always held those beliefs to be self-evident, but in my education, and in our most recent fractures of morality, I cannot acknowledge that all Americans share those same beliefs.

I still sing those songs because they keep alive the distant voices of the past, who strived, who broke, who feasted, who starved and who burned bright a common identity of hope, reminding us all that no serpentine tongue will ever hellbend this long, American arc away from imminent justice. And so I sing with the hope that other Americans will sing too.