An excerpt from a mencement address by Mark Helprin, “Defend Civilization Itself,” delivered at Hillsdale College on May 24, 2002:

I ask you to join this brotherhood, and, in your own way, whatever that may be, to defend and champion the sanctity of the individual, free and objective inquiry, government by consent of the governed, freedom of conscience, and the pursuit — rather than the degradation and denial — of truth and of beauty. I ask you to defend a civilization so buoyant with the presence of God that it need pel others in His name. I ask you to defend a civilization that rather than deliberately obscuring the difference batants and batants, struggles to maintain and respect it. I ask you to defend a civilization of immeasurable achievement, brilliance, and freedom. I ask you to defend civilization itself.

HT: Professor Plum’s EducatioNation