I wish we would all remember that being American is not just about the freedom we have it is about those who gave it to us.

What does it mean to be an American? While each of us may have our own specific answer to that question we likely can agree on the basic principles of America: freedom equal opportunity and rights accompanied by responsibilities.

The American idea is as promising imaginative and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom - the frontier the ability to make a new future with your own bare hands.

I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.

As our federal government has grown too large and too powerful the real loss has been the freedom of people to govern their own lives and participate fully in the American dream.

The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation the expansion of women's rights or now gay rights I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.

I think the American people have become more reliant upon government and less reliant upon themselves and that they now tend to put security ahead of freedom but I think freedom is the most important aspect of our lives.

Americans are free to choose everything from what they eat drive and watch on TV to the President of the United States. Yet when it comes to allowing Americans to choose the health insurance that works best for them and their family the freedom to choose suddenly becomes un-American.

More than anything else let me be clear - we need to be willing to fight for freedom and free markets and traditional moral values. That's what the American people want to see this movement and this party return to.

All Americans value the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press and I believe this is essential for our continued way of life. But with this freedom comes responsibility. That responsibility has been abdicated here by some in the media and some in the government.