This work is a demonstration of the resilience that should rightly characterize America's response to terrorism. Atlas is in the foreground, holding up, not the world, but a gigantic American flag, indicating the eternal vigilance and effort required to sustain a free society. The rising bald eagle glances at Atlas with a sharp supervision; in all of Roolaart's works, the eagle is a symbol of principled devotion to freedom, of the sort that should, indeed dominate over the mindset of someone attempting deliberately to preserve a country of liberty.