Bicentennial Essay: Vice and Virtue: Our Moral Condition

The following Bicentennial Essay is the fourth in a series that will appear periodically into 1976 and will discuss how we have changed in our 200 years. ·

To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career. —George Santayana

In the midst of the War for Independence, the Continental Congress interrupted its routine to deliver an important message to the public. The American people, Congress implored, should beseech God that "vice, prophaneness, extortion, and every evil may be done away ... that we may be a...

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