Nothing better illustrates how deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible the American Republic is than the Great Seal of the United States, familiar to anyone who has ever seen a U.S. passport or any other official document of the federal government.
A bald-headed eagle, native and peculiar to North America (and thereby symbolic of it), bears an olive branch in one talon and a clutch of arrows in the other. Jointly they symbolize America’s disposition to extend peace to all who are willing to reciprocate, combined with its preparedness to deploy arms against whoever declines to do so. Protecting the eagle’s breast (and thus symbolically protecting the continent for which it stands) is a shield with a band of blue above 13 vertical red and white stripes, representing the original 13 states. The blue band represents the U.S. Congress, which unifies and renders the states a working republic. In the eagle’s beak is a ribbon bearing in Latin the slogan, “From Many, One.”
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