I felt physically sick viewing this picture, but the sickness in my heart was much, much worse.
I can not help but think of Joshua Chamberlains speech for the movie Gettysburg:
This is a different kind of army. If you look back at history you will see men fighting for pay, for women, for some other kind of loot. They fight for land, power, cause a king tells them or just because they light killing. We are here for something new, this has not happened much in the history of the war. We are a man out to set other men free. America should be free ground, all of it, not divided be a line between slave state and free, all the way. From here to the Pacific Ocean, no man has to bow, no man born to royalty. Here we judge you on what you do, not who your father was. Here you can be something, here is the place to build a home, but its not the land, there is always more land. Its the idea that we all have value, you and me. What we are fighting for, in the end, we are fighting for each other.
I am sorry Colonel Chamberlain for the squandering of your scarificies and that of so many who have given their all to keep us free. We have traded all you and your brothers fought and died to give us for the empty promise of hope and change and we are now all lower than the lowest peasent who was trod under Stalins boots, my heart weeps for the lost of the America that was and for the America I leave to my great children.
and we are now all lower than the lowest peasent who was trod under Stalins boots, my heart weeps for the lost of the America that was and for the America I leave to my great children.
So you lament this latest round of Federalism by pining for the romantic movie version of rampant Federalism?
No wonder this country is so screwed up.