devotion

Meph lays down a few thoughts on John McCain’s view of patriotism:

This line jumped out at me while reading Gail Kerr's column in this morning's Tennessean titled "Selfless Acts Inspire New Concepts of Patriotism". She lists several folks who have obviously gone above and beyond but this one....

On this day, I give to you George Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism.

Sen. Obama gave a pretty good speech today in Missouri on the topic of "patriotism". In it, he wove in past experiences with his family, watching the Astronauts come ashore in Hawaii with his Grandfather, or being taught about the Declaration of Independence by his mother in Indonesia.

As you may have guessed, that rarely happens–seeing as how many of Time’s columnists and I do not really, shall we say “see eye to eye” on things.

But this is a gem I couldn’t pass up passing along:

"But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

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