Cheryl Magness tells us how the recently departed author Elie Wiesel’s message will continue to resonate.

As Americans we are taught, and most of us believe, that there is something special about America. We speak reverently of the independent and pioneering spirit that sparked a new nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” We cherish the “rugged individualism” that enabled us to build a “shining city on a hill.” We think of ourselves as being the most generous and compassionate people on the face of the earth.

This view of ourselves as something unique in history, a nation markedly different from, and superior to, any other, has the potential both to motivate us for good and to lead us into laziness and neglect. For it is in believing too fully in our pedestal that we have the greatest capacity to fall off of it.