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Armed Forces Day 2021
“Today let us, as Americans, honor the American fighting man. For it is he – the soldier, the sailor, the Airman, the Marine – who has fought to preserve freedom. It is his valor that has given renewed hope to the free world that by working together in discipline and faith our ideals of freedom will always prevail.”
– Admiral Forrest P. Sherman
*Color Guard of the U.S. 6th Infantry (source)
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Free Speech
“No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government. Daniel Webster called it a homebred right, a fireside privilege. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence. . . .
“. . . Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”
– Frederick Douglass,
from “Plea for Free Speech in Boston,” 1880 -
A Godly Mother
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Unite to Renovate the Age
“Let Divines, and Philosophers, Statesmen and Patriots unite their endeavours to renovate the Age, by impressing the Minds of Men with the importance of educating their little boys, and girls — of inculcating in the Minds of youth the fear, and Love of the Deity, and universal Phylanthropy; and in subordination to these great principles, the Love of their Country — of instructing them in the Art of self government, without which they never can act a wise part in the Government of Societys great, or small — in short of leading them in the Study, and Practice of the exalted Virtues of the Christian system.”
– Samuel Adams,
letter to John Adams, 1790*Students pledging allegiance to the flag, Washington, D.C., 1899 (source)
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The Gentleman
“The gentleman is solid mahogany; the fashionable man is only veneer.”
– Josiah Gilbert Holland
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Be Strong
Be strong!
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift,
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift.
Shun not the struggle; face it. ‘Tis God’s gift.Be strong!
Say not the days are evil, – Who’s to blame?
And fold not the hands and acquiesce, – O shame!
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God’s name.Be strong!
It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day, how long.
Faint not, fight on! To-morrow comes the song.– Maltbie Davenport Babcock
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Family Values
“Some have suggested that in today’s world, the family has somehow become less important. Well, I can’t help thinking just the opposite: that when so much around us is whispering the little lie that we should live only for the moment and for ourselves, it’s more important than ever for our families to affirm an older and more lasting set of values.”
– Ronald Reagan
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Saving Time
“Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.”
– Will Rogers
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Falsehood of Tongue and Heart
“He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.”
– Thomas Jefferson,
letter to nephew Peter Carr, 1785 -
The U.S. Enters World War I
One hundred and four years ago today, the United States entered World War I by declaring war on Germany. Below are excerpts from President Woodrow Wilson’s address to Congress on April 2nd, 1917:
“It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.
“. . . There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.
“. . . We are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. . . . The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.
“It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts,—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”
(Full address available here)
*President Woodrow Wilson addressing congress (source);
a soldier boy saying good-bye to his sweetheart (source);
young Americans welcoming the chance to fight (source)
