[stars & stripes forever]

When a nation goes down it is because people forgot from WHOM they came.

[LouAvul]

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to Spiritual Truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, Conservative prime minister of Britain in 1868 and 1874-80. Of Sephardic Jewish descent, he was born on Dec. 21, 1804; in 1817 his father, the writer Isaac D'Israeli, converted the entire family to Christianity.