The document discusses the history and promise of America. It describes how America was once seen as a land of opportunity where people would travel for a chance at a better life. It has since become a diverse, thriving society that embraces many cultures and religions. America's diversity has become one of its greatest strengths and competitive advantages globally. The document argues that America must continue promoting freedom, equality, education, and opportunity to realize its full potential and ensure future prosperity.

1. THE PATH OF PROMISE
“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation
requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.”
~Frederick Douglass~
"We live in deeds, not years: In thoughts not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should
count time by heart throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."
~Aristotle~
Yesterday, America was the land of promise and the light of the world. It was a place where
thousands would travel over troubled waters and leave behind broken dreams, in the hopes of a
brighter future. From a distance, America would appear as a dream, seem as an idea and form only in a
vision. No such land before was the home of dozens of cultures or dared to blend races and religions
and the bartering of goods was the business of banking and commerce. This was to be an experiment of
ingenuity and an examination of scientific impracticality. Every nation throughout the history of the
world has been limited to its own confines of constraints and inhibited by its self-reflecting views of a
world that continues to be far-reaching and vast. The concept of freedom has never been new but its
embrace and exercise was never truly dared by a body of people, only individuals who would later be
exiled or exterminated. Inadequate leaders from all pockets of the global society sought to exact fear, to
teach ignorance and control the imaginations of their followers with the hopes that their minds would
ultimately contract and never explore. This was the form of rule, the domain of demonization and the
proverbial walls of which power would prevail. This pervasive methodology of leadership lasting for
centuries was at the root of cynicism for America and inexorably is the reason for America’s birth.
Yesterday, it was improbable that two could become one and impossible that many would merge. The
history of division, separation and ignorance was the darkness of despair and few were allowed to
dream, hope and rise.
But that was yesterday.

2. THE PATH OF PROMISE
“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation
requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.”
~Frederick Douglass~
Today, the demographics of America are home to over 150 nations, every religion, every culture
and dozens of languages spoken within the subsets of a free and thriving society. The American
businessman is now also the American businesswoman and the shades are more bright than the
brightest of rainbows. The engine of innovation has transcended experience while college-aged youths
elect industry over subordination and submission. Women have expanded their organizational skills
beyond the household into the boardrooms and formatted Fortune 500 companies to the rewards of
record profits and new horizons. Senior citizens that once retired at 55 to 65 have enjoyed a vitality that
leads them by leading others into the workplace and widening the gaps of industrialization and
continuing to be an essential component to our varying society. The segregated propaganda that
created America has proved to be its greatest challenge but has also proved to be its greatest victory.
It’s a victory that belongs to us but is celebrated by the world. Free and enlightened minds from every
segment of our global society quietly believed that such a land was achievable and the temerity of poor
pockets coupled with rich spirits has made it possible, as we move forward towards a society without
inequity and opportunity awaits each of us. The man-made divides that questioned our own capacity for
civility have been denounced by men and women alike and together, joining forces in boardrooms,
courtrooms, staterooms, classrooms and communities beginning with each household one-by-one.
What we now see is the brilliance of diversity finding its way into the forefront of our nation which is a
unique richness that no other nation can claim or enjoy. The prevailing inevitable question that will
continue to arise in other nations around the world is: How might we be more effective in a global
economy if in fact we are without access to what drives the global market? This is an overriding but
understated competitive advantage that America must continue to explore and exploit. It must be
exploited to the point that we are indirectly forcing other nations into a democratic and free enterprise
society. Furthermore, that exploitation will force politics, religion and most of all business, to the
question of: How will it work and where? If other nations (lacking diversity) can only market their goods
and services to their citizens, then there economy is “capped”. They are by design limiting their range of

3. THE PATH OF PROMISE
“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation
requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.”
~Frederick Douglass~
ideas, their scope of services and their political prospectus to a rebellion and that rebellion may well be
the re-birth or a birth of a New America on a soil of acceptance. Some might argue that’s already taking
place despite the French resistance.
The model of a free society is as simple as the freedom to exercise that same freedom of which the mind
already enjoys. Those freedoms include but aren’t limited to: enterprise, trade, market, bargaining,
religion and politics. Politics, Religion and Business are the architects and engineers that determine the
constructs of which a society may form the foundation for freedom or the obstructionists that will
eventually deteriorate the life, soul and body of a society. History has shown that free societies have
been borne out of a dogmatic resistance to injustice because until hearts are won, minds will never be.
Therefore, freedoms and liberties must be distributed equitably and without restraint. Albert Einstein
once said: “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important
than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” This is the essence of freedom
and where all of us begin and never end. It is the duty of a nation and now the global community to tap
into that very essence in each child and maintain that effort all the way into the winters of our lives. This
is the science of generational progression and the art of immortality. The freedom Einstein speaks of is
that to dream, explore and dare as our thoughts carry us across an endless universe from the depths of
never-scraped seas. In order for one to grow, the mind must leave the body, thus leading the expansion
of the soul and then the spirit will flourish in ways only previously imagined by one. There’s a miraculous
mystery inside all of us just waiting to be discovered. This freedom we speak of transposes its inner self
like that of a Rembrandt to Renoir, an Amadeus Mozart to Miles Davis, a Moses to Mandela and a
Gandhi to a Dr. King. There are no limits to what the mind may conceive. We have mastered the art of
flight because man witnessed a bird soaring above the trees. We have mastered the joy of riding
because a man saw a rock one day roll and we have warmed through the mastery of sourcing the sun by
bridging it with the elements of the earth. ALL of these pleasures we enjoy today are because one’s

4. THE PATH OF PROMISE
“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation
requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.”
~Frederick Douglass~
imagination ventured beyond another, time after time after time. Today these subtleties are
commonplace but they were never common dreams. They were dreams realized because of the
freedom of thought, the persistence of exercise and a desire for more beyond ourselves and seemingly
capabilities. It all seems so simple and that’s only because it is.
The challenge before every nation is to define a construct and infrastructure that not only allows
everyone that freedom to imagine and dream but to encourage those enterprising minds, young and
old, so that the nation itself may maximize its fullest potential as each citizen maximizes theirs. The
transmogrification of a nation must mirror the maturation of the mind through education and support,
the body by way of what is natural and the unity by way of equitable justice and boundless opportunity.
This is why what Abraham Lincoln once said is so important: “None are free, until all are free.” If one
nation alone is operating in its fullest capacity of a free and expansive society, then that body of energy
will be transferred to others (nations) and those creative minds will design something for all the world to
embrace, embody and enjoy. America is special because we are already home to the most special of
natural resources in the history of the world, the mass collection of people. Those people are from every
walk of life, thus providing us with a compilation of ideas that no other nation has assembled and none
can compare, let alone compete. America’s best days are ahead of us but only if we continue to rotate
the wheels of equitable justice, fuel the engines of education and commission the consortium of minds
and talents right here at home. When you read a Shakespearean poem, he has painted a picture so that
you may see what he sees. When you listen to Beethoven’s symphony, his desire was that you feel what
he feels. As you scale the inordinate lines of a Picasso painting, his hopes were that you may follow his
flows of freedom. When the heart speaks to the mind, it says: “Let me be, but help me be …free.”
America must fight each day to not recapture but systematically revive that spirit of limitless freedom. In
order to maintain the course of climatic rise, we must unite like we have so many times before and fight
the invisible foes of complacency and cynicism. The energy of interdependence that led us here will be

5. THE PATH OF PROMISE
“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation
requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.”
~Frederick Douglass~
the same fuel that leads us to be a nation of energy independence. America was built with far-reaching
minds working in unison with far-reaching souls and it’s that marriage of improbability that will continue
to reward our union. When your child sets out for school, remind them to resolve in learning the
promise of America. When you seek to worship on Sunday and each morning, give thanks that your land
is one of acceptance. When you sketch out a course to open a business, remember that in no other
country is that opportunity more facile. And when you take a look at the world beyond you, take a
moment to see what they see…America, the path of promise.
J. R. Parler
“Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to
be cruel to be tough.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt~

6. THE PATH OF PROMISE
“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation
requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.”
~Frederick Douglass~