Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-10-2006

Abstract

To define ourselves as Americans, we often like to invoke the still-potent idea, inherited from the Puritans, of a "city upon a hill." Steeped in a mythic discourse on our earliest conception of America as an elect nation, this phrase envisions the community at large as "the pilot society for the world" engaged in a noble experiment of innocence, consensus, justice, and freedom for all, while driving to achieve myriad forms of greatness. But when this community at large is found fallen from the ideal conception of itself and conducts itself contrarily to its communal responsibilities towards its smaller communities of citizens – for instance, in the form of the forced removal, resettlement, confinement, or migration of these citizens from their own native soil - how do the members of that smaller community endure and survive such a lapse before they can re-form and finally heal themselves?

Download
COinS