American wish

Llara, Rick and I were at Carcassonne airport waiting for our flight to Edinburgh. I took my daughter's passport and started thumbing through, checking her border stamps. At the top of each page was a sentence.

They were what I USED TO BELIEVE my birth country stood for.

"The principle of free government adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains." Daniel Webster

"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair." George Washington

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
U.S Constitution

"We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God that America will be true to her dream." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Let every nation know,whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,,support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." John F. Kennedy.

"This is a new nation, based on a mighty continent of boundless possibilities." Theodore Roosevelt

"Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the word must first come to pass in the heart of America." Dwight D. Eisenhower

"For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest of sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say, 'Farewell?'Is a new world coming? We welcome it -- and we will bend it to the hopes of man." Lyndon B. Johnson

"May God continue the unity of our country as the railroad unites the two great oceans of the world."
Golden Spike, Promontory Point 1869

"We send thanks to all the Animal Life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We are glad they are still here and we hope it will always be so." Excerpt from the Thanksgiving Address, Mohawk version.

"The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party of a class -- it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity." Anna Julia Cooper.

I hope it gets back to living those ideals.