The United States of America has always been a great country. From her "first people" to the current variety of the twenty-first-century populace: with her natural beauties such as the Grand Canyon and the Redwood Forests, to her rivers, streams, and falls, such as the great Niagra, to her growing diversity in peoples and their cultures. Not one of us has exclusive rights to the richness and beauty of America. If anything, we have a duty and responsibility to the land and each other to preserve and enhance that richness of diverse cultures and beauty of the land for future generations, while teaching them to do the same. In the words of the late Woody Guthrie, "This land was made for you and me." But, in our nearly 250 years, have we, as a civilized nation, lived up to those words in the way we have treated each other in the past and the present?
