Saturday, November 15, 2008

Veteran's Day Thoughts

"There is, I fear, a tendency to give to patriotism merely an interest in making our country unconquerable-- a feeling that our chief aim is to see that our army and our navy are sufficient for our protection. That is but a part of our patriotic duty.

Our country is, in a sense, continually at war. Against the ramparts of liberty, equality and justice, on which our Republic is founded, surge constantly the evil forces of greed, of materialism, of selfishness, headed by those who cynically deny that there is any prosperity or goodness that cannot be expressed in dollars and cents, or happiness except in bank balances.

Continually, they seek to sap, to undermine, to destroy finally those high ideals without which our nation can no more survive than could those great nations of the past-- those nations whose bodies died because their souls were dead.

It is your duty as good soldiers of the faith not merely to keep alive the memory of those who gave their lives for their country's safety, but to fight militantly, tirelessly, against the moral enemies of our Republic wherever and whenever they appear. Your flags have rallied around your country's banner. Make that no empty symbol."

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Nov 11, 1929.

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