The audacity of updates

So remember the other day, when I wrote that post about Barack Obama's election? And I said this:

From the days of the first colonists, when John Winthrop said of his Massachusetts Bay colony "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us," America has seen itself as a uniquely great nation. The mistakes that we have made have happened when we act to exert America's greatness, instead of working to make it great. When we fall back on America's might, instead of its ideals. When we treat our greatness as a birthright, instead of a goal to be strived for. The president-elect understands this. His election was historic—really, significant beyond my ability to put it into words. But the real work is yet to be done. His election is a symbol of a concrete change that we have to take up ourselves. It's a chance. We may take it. Or we may not.

And then remember when the new issue of New York magazine came out today, and Kurt Andersen's story about Barack Obama's election said this:

We acted true to the original Puritan vision of America “as a City upon a hill,” as opposed to the self-satisfied, we’re-Number-One-no-matter-what revisionism of the last few decades. John Winthrop’s phrase was a warning to do right so as to avoid the world’s disappointment and condemnation, not an eternal dispensation to do anything we wanted because we’re specially blessed.

Pithier, smoother, yes, but the same sentiment. Eh? Eh? Eh? How cool is that!