Creating a Strong, Unified America Driving down the road, I admire blurs of red, white, and blue beyond my field of vision. I am, of course, referring to the large number of American flags hanging from the cars of local residents and residents across the country. This sudden burst of patriotism can be attributed to the war, but that does not mean that patriotism did not exist before that war: it has also existed during every American war, alongside the cries of anti-war protesters. But is patriotism as strong in peacetime? One of the many duties of citizens is to love the nation they were born into, because a nation depends on individuals who understand what it means to be a citizen. To begin to understand citizenship, we must first have some idea of ​​America's past. In David McCullough’s essay “Why History?” he writes, “The Department of Education reported that more than half of high school students lacked even the slightest basic understanding of American history” (88). We need to know our history to know where we come from, and according to a speech by Alan Kors, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, it is important for us to understand the mistakes our nation has made in the past in order to not to “…lose sight of human moral weakness…”(9). The moral weaknesses Kors refers to are anti-Semitism, racial discrimination, corruption of power and, of course, slavery. Kors explains that we should not look down on our nation for the existence of these flaws, but rather look at how they have been mostly abolished. America welcomes Jews; Racial injustices were addressed in the 14th and 15th Amendments. Slavery, which is “the most universal of all human institutions” (Kors 9), was labeled an immoral practice by American “values ​​and free will” (Kors 9) and was abolished. A nation cannot exist without citizens who understand the morals and values ​​by which it was created as well as the responsibilities they must assume. In an essay by Peter Gomes, he quotes the American judge at the Nuremberg Trials as saying: "...it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error" (Jackson, quoted by Jackson)..