The wild horse runs across the high plain at dawn. He answers to nothing. He was made for the mountains.
The other horse stands in the pasture with his head down. The fence is low. He could clear it before breakfast. He waits for the next command. He has forgotten he was made for something more.
The American mind is the second horse. Made for the Mountains is the account of how he got there and the path back.
This is the account the textbooks left out. Not the political philosophy. Not the battlefield narrative. The formation tradition that built the freest mind in the history of the world, one preached sermon at a time, across seven generations, from the Atlantic crossing to the Lexington Green.
The Declaration of Independence is the closing charge of a sermon the colonial pulpit had been preaching since 1634. The men who signed it were not philosophers. They were the formation product of seven generations of the Word taken seriously.
The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis — John Trumbull, 1820
That tradition can be recovered. The texts have not changed. The Word has not changed. The mountains have not moved.
Lift your head. You were made for the mountains.
