I was singing America the Beautiful" by Katherine Bates and Samuel Ward during our church service yesterday and I was struck by a part of the second verse. It reads:
"America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self control, Thy liberty in law."
It is interesting that these were the words chosen. That the author thought that the way for the country to keep its "soul" was through self control and the way to save our rights was through the law. It is important for the country to make sure that our rights are protected with all the force and power that we can muster but it is equally important for us to keep that part of us, the essence, of America by maintaining self control. In order for us to keep the dream of America, that idea that we are the best country in the world and the place of all opportunity, we need to exercise self control.
This needs to come in our personal lives (the housing crisis for example), from our government (priorities first then wants), and from our political stands.
We as parents and adults have the obligation to teach this idea to our children. Self control will save the countries soul and our own.
I can't echo this sentiment strongly enough. We have some teenagers in our neighborhood who think it's acceptable to smear peanut butter and raw eggs all over someones car because this person yelled at them for driving too fast or too close to a child on the side of the road.
ReplyDeleteI've been stopped in the middle of Safeway and yelled at by someone who thought I had been right on their rear bumper all the way up 203. When I told the person it wasn't me, he just got louder and more aggressive.
As a species, we often feel like we are on moral high ground and are entitled to tell others what to do by virtue of being 'right'. The problem with that mentality is, at least in my experience, that when we are most confident that we are on moral high-ground is when we most need to step down and look at things from another perspective and we'll most often find that our moral high ground isn't all that high.
"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."
ReplyDeleteSamuel Adams, letter to James Warren, February 12, 1779
Well said Samuel Adams. And as our founding fathers feared, we are now in danger of losing our virtue and surrendering our liberty to the party fighting to control
"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."
ReplyDeleteGeorge Washington
I don't know about you but I am just about out of patience.