Inspiring thoughts
I've been griping about so many things -- swearing, the UN, the state of higher education, etc. -- that I thought I'd make the effort, every day, to come up with something inspiring. I thought I'd start today with a quotation from the speech Winston Churchill made on September 3, 1939, immediately after England entered WWII:
This is not a question of fighting for Danzig or fighting for Poland. We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defense of all that is most sacred to man. This is no war of domination or imperial aggrandizement or material gain; no war to shut any country out of its sunlight and means of progress. It is a war, viewed in its inherent quality, to establish, on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual, and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man. Perhaps it might seem a paradox that a war undertaken in the name of liberty and right should require, as a necessary part of its processes, the surrender for the time being of so many of the dearly valued liberties and rights. In these last few days the House of Commons has been voting dozens of Bills which hand over to the executive our most dearly valued traditional liberties. We are sure that these liberties will be in hands which will not abuse them, which will use them for no class or party interests, which will cherish and guard them, and we look forward to the day, surely and confidently we look forward to the day, when our liberties and rights will be restored to us, and when we shall be able to share them with the peoples to whom such blessings are unknown.Gosh, the man could spin words of gold, couldn't he? Wouldn't the Patriot Act have been a better sell if someone could have described it in these terms?
<< Home