"You have to tell an alternative story. You have to tell a story: No! The American foundation was the best thing to happen for human liberty in a, in a millennium. Yes, slavery was implicitly in, acknowledged. But the declaration of liberty, this is again Lincoln, declares that all men are equal and I would make sure that American Civil War is taught... 600, now it's estimated 700,000 Americans died to end slavery. 750,000 people fought to preserve the Union and keep it on a course where slavery was on a course of eventual extinction. That is sort of World War I levels of casualties. It's huge, white boys from the north fought and died so that slavery would be put in the course of extinction. Not that slavery was justified, not that this wipes out the sin of slavery. Lincoln never would've said that sin, that slavery was anything other than a sin which would stain our soul for as long as we existed. But we made acts of contrition and expiation and we paid for it in blood. So the story of the American institutions is one of institutions which are capable of self rectification and progress. American institutions are capable of extending this to other people."
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Stephen Peter Rosen, interview with Bill Kristol (2016), transcript
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/United_States
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United States
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