JEFF: You got a dollar?
JOSH: Yeah.
JEFF: Take it out. Look at the back. The seal, the pyramid, it’s unfinished. With the eye of God looking over it. And the words Annuit Coeptis. “He, God, Favors our Undertaking.” The seal is meant to be unfinished, because this country’s meant to be unfinished. We’re meant to keep doing better. We’re meant to keep discussing and debating and we’re meant to read books by great historical scholars and then talk about them.
The West Wing, Ep. 118, “Six Meetings Before Lunch”
Surely there is no argument that our country is unfinished. The equality mentioned in the founding documents of the U.S. nearly 250 years ago is not yet achieved in our society and in our minds.
Our minds are the most important thing. We need, as Jeff says in that scene, to keep reading and discussing and debating. We need to keep agitating and speaking up and leading others and following the people we believe in.
There is a strain of anti-curiosity, anti-intellectualism in our country right now, and that goes against everything I understand this country to be. My curiosity, my striving, my commitment to being better tomorrow than I am today is born, in part, of what I believe this country to be and what I believe this country can be.