A Nation Like No Other by Newt Gingrich

After that, they played better than they had played all season, and even though they still lost, they gave their head coach a sideline Gatorade shower as if they had just won the state championship. More important, they left the field that night forever changed.
    Following the game, both teams came together to pray. A Gainesville player intoned, “Lord, I don’t know how this happened, so I don’t know how to say thank you, but I never would’ve known there was so many people in the world that cared about us.”
    As the Gainesville coach left the field, he grabbed Hogan and said, “You’ll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You’ll never, ever know.”
    Coach Hogan described the message he intended to send to the youth of Gainesville State that night: “We love you. Jesus Christ loves you. You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.”
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    Perhaps the most revolutionary concept espoused by America’s Founders and enshrined in our Declaration and Constitution was that every life has equal value and worth. It is the same ideal that motivated the Founders to go to unprecedented lengths to protect religious liberty.
    Indeed, our entire American system of government is premised upon a deeply religious ideal. The proposition that “all men are created equal” expresses a profound religious principle that recognizes God as the ultimate authority over any government. Men are only equal if they are, in fact, created . Only if we assume we have a Creator can we assert that our
rights have been “endowed” to us by God—and only then are those rights “unalienable.”
    While these concepts may seem commonplace features of our government today, constituting a government based upon them was radical for the Founders’ generation.
    If all men are created equal, then not even the most powerful man, group, or government on earth has the power to infringe or trample upon your rights.
    If all men are created equal, then all human beings are equally flawed and equally susceptible to the appeal of power and to the inherent temptation to dictate how others should live their lives. Thus, the best government is a limited one; one that restricts the rule of man by instituting the rule of law, which applies to everyone from presidents to parking lot attendants.
    If all men are created equal, then every person is equally accountable to God and to his fellow man to live a life of virtue, productivity, and personal responsibility. This life can only be realized in a society in which each person has the freedom to choose between right and wrong. For freedom to endure, it is vital to cultivate the values that make it possible to sustain such freedoms.
    If all men are created equal, then each and every individual has equal dignity and inherent worth, regardless of his or her station in life, ethnic background, political beliefs, or personal failures or achievements.
    If all men are created equal, then every life is, in fact, as valuable as any other person on planet Earth—whether youths from the Gainesville State detention facility or the family of Faith Christian fans who cared enough to cheer for someone else’s child and to call them by name.
    The story of Coach Hogan illustrates two key truths about American Exceptionalism: the dignity of the individual—the idea that every person does indeed matter—and the centrality of God and faith in American families and communities.
    An America that openly rejects faith and the faithful will undermine the surest supports of human dignity in American life. That anti-religious America would soon cultivate a utilitarian culture that elevates the
powerful and crushes the weak. But an America that continues to welcome faith and the faithful as integral to American public life will transmit to the poorest and most forgotten segments of society the hope that they too have a right to the