Quote of the Day - Peggy Noonan Edition

Several years ago Peggy penned a piece about "tough history coming."  Saturday, her Wall St. Journal column echoes that earlier piece a bit:

People are increasingly fearing the divisions within, even the potential coming apart of, our country. Rich/poor, black/white, young/old, red/blue: The things that divide us are not new, yet there's a sense now that the glue that held us together for more than two centuries has thinned and cracked with age. That it was allowed to thin and crack, that the modern era wore it out.

What was the glue? A love of country based on a shared knowledge of how and why it began; a broad feeling among our citizens that there was something providential in our beginnings; a gratitude that left us with a sense that we should comport ourselves in a way unlike the other nations of the world, that more was expected of us, and not unjustly — "To whom much is given much is expected"; a general understanding that we were something new in history, a nation founded on ideals and aspirations —— liberty, equality —— and not mere grunting tribal wants. We were from Europe but would not be European: No formal class structure here, no limits, from the time you touched ground all roads would lead forward. You would be treated not as your father was but as you deserved.

"Shared knowledge."  Education.  That had to go first.

RTWT.