As an American, I am lucky enough to live in a country whose culture is one that has been consciously designed. Our culture is one in which we hold as self-evident the truth that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That is the culture we aspire to. That is America. But as Aaron Sorkin points out in the passage I quoted at the top of this post, America is not easy. This designed culture of ours, beautiful as it looks when written down on a sheet of paper, isn’t something we can just read passively and assume will exist for us without effort. We have to live it. And we have to defend it.