In my first column I spoke about the importance of political language. In this, my final column, I speak to you now about the importance of a single word—America.

America is more than a piece of land. It is an idea. The idea, broadly stated, is that there ought to be a place on this Earth where men and women are free to pursue happiness in all its permutations so long as it does not infringe on the happiness of others. This is perhaps the most wondrous idea that civilization has produced.

Civilization, broadly defined, is how a species organizes itself once it gets a handle on some of its baser emotions. The most primal of these, some evolutionary biologists say, is fear. It can be useful. It warns us of danger. It ensures our survival. But it now threatens the survival of that simple, beautiful idea we call America.

We have lived under a cloud of fear for too long. Fear of terrorism. Fear of Communism. The quiet but deep existential fear of nuclear annihilation. Despite our best intentions, this fear often gets the better of us, resulting in problems such as wars, Red Scares and witch hunts. At times we fall prey to hysteria and restrict

speech, find scapegoats, turn on one another. I am sorry to say that the 21st century has thus far been one of those times.

Currently, lawmakers are proposing bills that would cut funding to successful social programs, restrict speech, and enshrine bigotry in the Constitution. If we embrace this restrictive vision of America, we risk our collective imagination becoming small and petty, too.

We are in the midst of building an invisible prison for ourselves. This prison is made up of bad ideas like the USA PATRIOT Act, flag-burning amendments, and gay-marriage bans. We cannot see the prison bars because we’re too distracted and exhausted most of the time. By school and work. By just trying to make ends meet. By tabloid news and a puddle-deep consumer culture. Fear builds this prison, and apathy is our jailer.

If we could see those bars, perhaps we might conclude that there is moral squalor in denying two loving adults of either sex the legal rights that attend marriage, that there is injustice in spending billions of dollars on war while millions at home go hungry and unsheltered. That it is unseemly that a nation of immigrants would seek to restrict the flow of those who seek the same refuge our grandparents sought.

There is, however, another vision of America, one that hews closely to that original, beautiful idea, of an America that uses the law as a shield for the many, not a sword for the few. An America that won’t trade liberty for a false sense of security. One that uses its wealth to help those who cannot help themselves, and that uses the military for defense, and not for attack.

Courage and compassion are the agents of our jailbreak. It’s right there in our national anthem: we’re the land of the free, the home of the brave. If we’re to live up to our ideals, we have to cast aside our bad ideas, however comforting they once were, and embrace a more generous idea of ourselves.