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We are the United States of America, the most
misunderstood country in the world. Yes, we make mistakes, sometimes
huge ones, and no, we're not perfect, though some of our politicians and
business people and entertainment people would like to make the world think
we are--they're the ones who create the image of the United States as aggressor,
as colonialist, as imperialist.
But we who are the United States are its people, those who
live in the neighborhoods and the towns who try to help our neighbors, who
take pride in our country and its ideals, and who do our best every day to
maintain the dreams and visions of our forefathers.
We contribute greatly to the world. Technologically,
we give a lot. Spiritually, we give a lot. We provide a model
of democracy that has worked for almost two and a quarter centuries--a
long-running experiment that has succeeded so far where others have failed.
Financially, we aid many countries in distress because of economic
crises or natural disasters. We send people and doctors and rescue
workers to those natural disasters. And people from all over the world
send their children to American colleges, for they know that the higher
educational system here, despite all the flaws that we all know about, is
still the best in the world.
We live, we dream, we breathe, we hope, we love. We grieve
when violence gets out of hand, we laugh when we see something funny. We
are human beings, and we're doing our best in an unforgiving world.
The United States of America is not the political machine
of the newspapers, not the ultra-violent society portrayed in newspapers
or Hollywood productions, not the super-selfish businessmen who will do anything
they can for profit. Yes, we have those people among us, but who doesn't?
We are America--you and I, the common people, and our power is in our
love, in our sense of community, and in our hope for a better
tomorrow.
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Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Emma Lazarus, 1903 |
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I
aspire to stand for the best of American values. That's
not easy. Living in freedom is hard work. I know of
no other people on earth who are more generous, who are more
open, almost to the point of distraction. I know of no
other people who act with better motives, though that doesn't
mean we always do the best. So I aspire as a journalist
and as a human being to be guided by the best of America, but
also to recognize the bad. And I accept the responsibility
to do what I can to keep government honest and to see the
injustice doesn't go unnoticed. That's American to me.
Peter
Jennings |
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Four score and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth on this continent,
a new nation, conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that
all men are created equal. . . . That this
nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom--and that government
of the people, by the people,
and for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863 |
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We
are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts,
foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a
nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood
in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
John
F. Kennedy
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So we pray to Him now for the vision
to see
our way clearly-- to see the way
that leads to a better life for ourselves
and for all our fellow people--to the
achievement of His will to peace on
earth.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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America,
I saw, truly is the first universal nation; it is facing
challenges of
integration that no other nation has ever
contemplated. Its destiny
is to discover for humanity the
deeper meaning of individual, community,
and their
interdependence. There is a freedom, I realized, encoded
in the
inscription on its dollar bill, E Pluribus Unum, Out of
the Many, One--a riddle
the country still has to unravel. The old polarity of self and other
is beginning to be more and
more difficult to sustain
in a world of increasing
interdependence.
Roger
Housden
Sacred America |
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Freedom of religion, freedom of the press,
and freedom of person
under the protection of the habeus corpus, these are
the principles
that guided our steps through an age of revolution and
reformation.
Thomas Jefferson
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all people are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. . . For
the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance
on the protection
of the Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other,
our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
The Declaration of Independence |
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America seeks no earthly empire built on blood
and force. No ambition, no
temptation, lures her to thought of foreign
dominions. The legions which she
sends forth are armed, not with the
sword, but with the cross. The higher
state to which she seeks the
allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of
divine origin. She
cherishes no other purpose save to merit
the favor of Almighty
God.
Calvin Coolidge
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If you want to be respected
for your actions,
then your
behavior must be above
reproach. If our lives demonstrate
that we are peaceful, humble,
and trusted, this is
recognized by others.
Rosa Parks
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It must be a government which submits loyally
and heartily to
the Constitution and the laws--the laws of the nation and
the
laws of the States themselves--accepting and obeying faithfully
the whole
Constitution as it is. Resting upon this sure and
substantial foundation,
the superstructure of beneficent local
governments can be built up, and not
otherwise.
Rutherford B. Hayes |
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When Americans say that
they love their country, they mean not only that
they love the New England hills, the prairies glistening
in the sun, the wide
and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea.
They mean that they love
an inner air, an inner light in which freedom
lives and in which
a person can draw the breath of self-respect.
Adlai Stevenson |
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O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good
with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
Katharine Lee Bates |
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Plymouth Rock Inscription:
This spot marks the final resting-place of the
Pilgrims of the Mayflower. In
weariness and hunger and in cold, fighting
the wilderness. . . they here laid the
foundations of a state in which all
men for countless ages should have liberty to
worship God in their own way.
All ye who pass by and see this stone remember,
and dedicate yourselves
anew to the resolution that you will not rest until
this lofty ideal shall
have been realized throughout the earth.
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I sought for the greatness and genius of America
in her commodious
harbors and in her ample rivers, and it was not
there.
I sought for the greatness and genius of America
in her fertile
fields and boundless forests, and it was not
there.
I sought for the greatness and genius of America
in her rich mines
and her vast world commerce, and it was not
there.
I sought for the greatness and genius of America
in her public
school system and her institutions of learning, and it
was not there.
I sought for the genius and greatness of America
in her
democratic congress and her matchless constitution, and it was not
there.
Not until I went into the
churches of America and heard her pulpits
flame with righteousness did I
understand the secret of her genius and power.
America is great because America is good, and
if America
ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be
great.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Bill of
Rights
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion,
or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to
petition the government for a redress of grievances.
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Above all, we must realize that no arsenal,
or no weapon in the arsenals
of the world, is so formidable as the will and
moral courage of free men and women.
Ronald Reagan
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The Americans
A spoken song by Gordon Sinclair from the early 70's
The United States dollar took another pounding
on German, French, and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest
point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since
1971, and this Canadian thinks it's time to speak up for the Americans as
the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people in all the
world.
As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read
newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Well,
who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did, that's
who. They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges,
and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Mississippi is
underwater, and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany,
Japan, and to a lesser extent Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris
of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other
billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the
interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When the franc
was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it
up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris--and
I was there, I saw that. When distant cities are hit by earthquake,
it's the United States that hurries in to help; Managua, Nicaragua is one
of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities
have been flattened by tornadoes--nobody has helped. The Marshall Plan,
the Truman Policy--all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged
countries, and now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent,
war-mongering Americans.
Now, I'd like to see just one of those countries that
is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes.
Come on, now you--let's hear it! Does any country in the world
have a plane to equal the Boeing jumbo jet, the Lockheed Tristar, or the
Douglas Ten. If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international
lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on
earth even consider putting a man or a woman on the moon? You talk
about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German
technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy,
and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times, and safely
home again. You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right
in the store window for everybody to look at. Even the draft dodgers
are not pursued and hounded. They're right here on our streets in Toronto.
Most of them, unless they're breaking Canadian laws, are getting American
dollars from ma and pa at home to spend up here.
When the Americans get out of this bind, as they will, who could
blame them if they said to hell with the rest of the world. Let somebody
else buy the bonds. Let somebody else build or repair foreign dams,
or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes. When
the railways of France and Germany and India were breaking down through age,
it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad
and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose.
Both of them are still broke.
I can name to you five thousand
times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can
you name to me even one time when someone raced to the help of the Americans
in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San
Francisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone. And
I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around.
They'll come out of this thing with their flag high, and when they
do, they're entitled to thumb their noses at the lands that are gloating
over their present trouble. I hope Canada is not one of these. But
there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American
Red Cross was told at its 48th annual meeting in New Orleans this morning
that it was broke. This year's disasters, with the year less than half
over, have taken it all, and nobody, but nobody, has helped. |
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Our abundant plains and mountains would yield little if
it were
not for the applied skill and energy of Americans
working together as fellow
citizens bound up in common
destiny. The achievement of brother- and
sisterhood
is the crowning objective of our society.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Democracy
is not a mathematical deduction proved once and for all time.
Democracy is a just faith fervently held, a commitment to be tested
again and again in the fiery furnace of history.
Jack
Kemp
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The foundation of this nation we call America is the
simple yet practical
complex notion of "liberty for all." Freedom!
Never was a nation founded on ideals and principles as pure as those
the founding fathers laid down for this great nation. They
envisioned a land
where men and women could live together in harmony and peace. They
imagined a prosperous land, one where the people would help and
encourage
one another to lead good lives in service of the common good. A
land where
people would rather help you up than pull you down, a land where men and
women could pursue their dreams. They had in mind a nation
governed by
men and women from all walks of life, with different views, but
dedicated to
their common purpose of affirming the highest values of the human
spirit.
Has their vision been realized? Has their dream been forgotten?
Mottoes and philosophies such as "If it feels good, do it"
and "To each his own"
are destroying the founding fathers' vision and robbing us of our
freedom. Such
philosophies lead us to have one more beer or one more shot--because it
feels
good. These attitudes lead us to cheat on our wives, even if it is
her best friend--
because it feels good. Then, before you know it, children start
walking into
classrooms and shooting their teachers and classmates--because it feels
good.
After a while, our children are hungry and have holes in their
shoes--because the
thrill of gambling feels good. And it goes on, and on, and on,
reaching into every
corner of our lives and our society.
Where did it all start? Where did we get lost? What went
wrong? How do we
make it right? The foundation of great nations is freedom. The foundation of
freedom is not strength, but character. The foundation of
character is discipline.
Matthew Kelly
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quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
-
our
current e-zine
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
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