What are your spiritual thoughts on these verses by Tourgeneff?I'm looking for an online rpg for Vampire: Masquerade/Kindred: The Embraced. There are plenty of Twilight rpgs out there but I'm having a hard time finding one of these ones.
How can I express what’s in my heart to you
Show you the abundant love inside
What miracle can beseech my soul to you
To unleash the kindred spirit inside
How do I shed this loneliness shroud I wear
And awaken from countless eons of despair
What miracle will bring your love to me
To lift this soul with care
How do I awaken from this slumber
The hellish nightmare of empty days
What miracle will usher the moments
To bond this love for all days
How so often I do dream of you
Embracing the love that hides
What miracle your love has brought to me
To awaken and know your love is mine
My Poem for Review?my dad wants to watch it but i cant find any website that shows it w/o downloading...
any1 know any sites where i can watch it w/o downloading anything
Where can i find episodes of kindred the embraced?In the first 21 lines of this scene(Act 5 Scene 3), Shakespeare portrays Paris in such a way that the audience can't halp but be reminded of Romeo in the first scene of the play. What similarities do you see?
Act 5, Scene 3
SCENE III. A churchyard; in it a tomb belonging to the Capulets.
Enter PARIS, and his Page bearing flowers and a torch
PARIS
Give me thy torch, boy: hence, and stand aloof:
Yet put it out, for I would not be seen.
Under yond yew-trees lay thee all along,
Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground;
So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread,
Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves,
But thou shalt hear it: whistle then to me,
As signal that thou hear'st something approach.
Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee, go.
PAGE
[Aside] I am almost afraid to stand alone
Here in the churchyard; yet I will adventure.
Retires
PARIS
Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew,--
O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones;--
Which with sweet water nightly I will dew,
Or, wanting that, with tears distill'd by moans:
The obsequies that I for thee will keep
Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep.
The Page whistles
The boy gives warning something doth approach.
What cursed foot wanders this way to-night,
To cross my obsequies and true love's rite?
What with a torch! muffle me, night, awhile.
Retires
Enter ROMEO and BALTHASAR, with a torch, mattock, & c
ROMEO
Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.
Hold, take this letter; early in the morning
See thou deliver it to my lord and father.
Give me the light: upon thy life, I charge thee,
Whate'er thou hear'st or seest, stand all aloof,
And do not interrupt me in my course.
Why I descend into this bed of death,
Is partly to behold my lady's face;
But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger
A precious ring, a ring that I must use
In dear employment: therefore hence, be gone:
But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry
In what I further shall intend to do,
By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint
And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs:
The time and my intents are savage-wild,
More fierce and more inexorable far
Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.
BALTHASAR
I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.
ROMEO
So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that:
Live, and be prosperous: and farewell, good fellow.
BALTHASAR
[Aside] For all this same, I'll hide me hereabout:
His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.
Retires
ROMEO
Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food!
Opens the tomb
PARIS
This is that banish'd haughty Montague,
That murder'd my love's cousin, with which grief,
It is supposed, the fair creature died;
And here is come to do some villanous shame
To the dead bodies: I will apprehend him.
Comes forward
Stop thy unhallow'd toil, vile Montague!
Can vengeance be pursued further than death?
Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee:
Obey, and go with me; for thou must die.
ROMEO
I must indeed; and therefore came I hither.
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man;
Fly hence, and leave me: think upon these gone;
Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,
Put not another sin upon my head,
By urging me to fury: O, be gone!
By heaven, I love thee better than myself;
For I come hither arm'd against myself:
Stay not, be gone; live, and hereafter say,
A madman's mercy bade thee run away.
PARIS
I do defy thy conjurations,
And apprehend thee for a felon here.
ROMEO
Wilt thou provoke me? then have at thee, boy!
They fight
PAGE
O Lord, they fight! I will go call the watch.
Exit
PARIS
O, I am slain!
Falls
If thou be merciful,
Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet.
Dies
ROMEO
In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face.
Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris!
What said my man, when my betossed soul
Did not attend him as we rode? I think
He told me Paris should have married Juliet:
Said he not so? or did I dream it so?
Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,
To think it was so? O, give me thy hand,
One writ with me in sour misfortune's book!
I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave;
A grave? O no! a lantern, slaughter'd youth,
For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence full of light.
Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd.
Laying PARIS in the tomb
How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death: O, how may I
Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.
Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favour can I do to thee,
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
To sunder his that was thine enemy?
Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that, I still will stay with thee;
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again: here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
Here's to my love!
Drinks
O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
Dies
Enter, at the other end of the churchyard, FRIAR LAURENCE, with a lantern, crow, and spade
FRIAR LAURENCE
Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night
Have my old feet stumbled at graves! Who's there?
BALTHASAR
Here's one, a friend, and one that knows you well.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Bliss be upon you! Tell me, good my friend,
What torch is yond, that vainly lends his light
To grubs and eyeless skulls? as I discern,
It burneth in the Capel's monument.
BALTHASAR
It doth so, holy sir; and there's my master,
One that you love.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Who is it?
BALTHASAR
Romeo.
FRIAR LAURENCE
How long hath he been there?
BALTHASAR
Full half an hour.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Go with me to the vault.
BALTHASAR
I dare not, sir
My master knows not but I am gone hence;
And fearfully did menace me with death,
If I did stay to look on his intents.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Stay, then; I'll go alone. Fear comes upon me:
O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing.
BALTHASAR
As I did sleep under this yew-tree here,
I dreamt my master and another fought,
And that my master slew him.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Romeo!
Advances
Alack, alack, what blood is this, which stains
The stony entrance of this sepulchre?
What mean these masterless and gory swords
To lie discolour'd by this place of peace?
Enters the tomb
Romeo! O, pale! Who else? what, Paris too?
And steep'd in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour
Is guilty of this lamentable chance!
The lady stirs.
JULIET wakes
JULIET
O comfortable friar! where is my lord?
I do remember well where I should be,
And there I am. Where is my Romeo?
Noise within
FRIAR LAURENCE
I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest
Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep:
A greater power than we can contradict
Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away.
Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead;
And Paris too. Come, I'll dispose of thee
Among a sisterhood of holy nuns:
Stay not to question, for the watch is coming;
Come, go, good Juliet,
Noise again
I dare no longer stay.
JULIET
Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.
Exit FRIAR LAURENCE
What's here? a cup, closed in my true love's hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:
O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips;
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make die with a restorative.
Kisses him
Thy lips are warm.
First Watchman
[Within] Lead, boy: which way?
JULIET
Yea, noise? then I'll be brief. O happy dagger!
Snatching ROMEO's dagger
This is thy sheath;
Stabs herself
there rust, and let me die.
Falls on ROMEO's body, and dies
Enter Watch, with the Page of PARIS
PAGE
This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn.
First Watchman
The ground is bloody; search about the churchyard:
Go, some of you, whoe'er you find attach.
Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain,
And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,
Who here hath lain these two days buried.
Go, tell the prince: run to the Capulets:
Raise up the Montagues: some others search:
We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;
But the true ground of all these piteous woes
We cannot without circumstance descry.
Re-enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR
Second Watchman
Here's Romeo's man; we found him in the churchyard.
First Watchman
Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither.
Re-enter others of the Watch, with FRIAR LAURENCE
Third Watchman
Here is a friar, that trembles, sighs and weeps:
We took this mattock and this spade from him,
As he was coming from this churchyard side.
First Watchman
A great suspicion: stay the friar too.
Enter the PRINCE and Attendants
PRINCE
What misadventure is so early up,
That calls our person from our morning's rest?
Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, and others
CAPULET
What should it be, that they so shriek abroad?
LADY CAPULET
The people in the street cry Romeo,
Some Juliet, and some Paris; and all run,
With open outcry toward our monument.
PRINCE
What fear is this which startles in our ears?
First Watchman
Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain;
And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,
Warm and new kill'd.
PRINCE
Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.
First Watchman
Here is a friar, and slaughter'd Romeo's man;
With instruments upon them, fit to open
These dead men's tombs.
CAPULET
O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!
This dagger hath mista'en--for, lo, his house
Is empty on the back of Montague,--
And it mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom!
LADY CAPULET
O me! this sight of death is as a bell,
That warns my old age to a sepulchre.
Enter MONTAGUE and others
PRINCE
Come, Montague; for thou art early up,
To see thy son and heir more early down.
MONTAGUE
Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night;
Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath:
What further woe conspires against mine age?
PRINCE
Look, and thou shalt see.
MONTAGUE
O thou untaught! what manners is in this?
To press before thy father to a grave?
PRINCE
Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,
Till we can clear these ambiguities,
And know their spring, their head, their
true descent;
And then will I be general of your woes,
And lead you even to death: meantime forbear,
And let mischance be slave to patience.
Bring forth the parties of suspicion.
FRIAR LAURENCE
I am the greatest, able to do least,
Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me of this direful murder;
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned and myself excused.
PRINCE
Then say at once what thou dost know in this.
FRIAR LAURENCE
I will be brief, for my short date of breath
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife:
I married them; and their stol'n marriage-day
Was Tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely death
Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from the city,
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth'd and would have married her perforce
To County Paris: then comes she to me,
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some mean
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay'd by accident, and yesternight
Return'd my letter back. Then all alone
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But when I came, some minute ere the time
Of her awaking, here untimely lay
The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
And bear this work of heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But, as it seems, did violence on herself.
All this I know; and to the marriage
Her nurse is privy: and, if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,
Unto the rigour of severest law.
PRINCE
We still have known thee for a holy man.
Where's Romeo's man? what can he say in this?
BALTHASAR
I brought my master news of Juliet's death;
And then in post he came from Mantua
To this same place, to this same monument.
This letter he early bid me give his father,
And threatened me with death, going in the vault,
I departed not and left him there.
PRINCE
Give me the letter; I will look on it.
Where is the county's page, that raised the watch?
Sirrah, what made your master in this place?
PAGE
He came with flowers to strew his lady's grave;
And bid me stand aloof, and so I did:
Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb;
And by and by my master drew on him;
And then I ran away to call the watch.
PRINCE
This letter doth make good the friar's words,
Their course of love, the tidings of her death:
And here he writes that he did buy a poison
Of a poor 'pothecary, and therewithal
Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.
Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.
CAPULET
O brother Montague, give me thy hand:
This is my daughter's jointure, for no more
Can I demand.
MONTAGUE
But I can give thee more:
For I will raise her statue in pure gold;
That while Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at such rate be set
As that of true and faithful Juliet.
CAPULET
As rich shall Romeo's by his lady's lie;
Poor sacrifices of our enmity!
PRINCE
A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Romeo and Juliet?ok. what's it called?
it wasn't 'dark shadows' (70's), it wasn't 'kindred the embraced', it wasn't 'forever knight'
if my memory serves correct then:
it had an old man who owned an occult store and fought evil creatures like a vampire who lived in his city who was suave and famous. But the old man knew the secret that he was really a vampire.
The old man was helped by a young guy (his grandson i think) with dark hair and a young girl with bright red hair.
it was good, i think.
early 90's occult t.v. show with vampires!?Just for the heck of it and because it's one of my favorite categories of TV, movie, or book, I'm trying to remember TV series based on vampires. Not movies or one-offs, just series of any length. Of course, the first one that pops to mind is Buffy, then Angel. The first one I can remember being broadcast, oh so long ago, is Dark Shadows with Jonathan Frid...I guess the remake with Ben Cross can be counted seperately. My favorite of all times is Kindred: the Embraced, which was only 8 episodes long. And of course, Blade. Any others? (And I'm not including cartoons.)
List of vampire series on TV?In the year of our lord 2007 the United States faces a challenge we remain reluctant to recognize in full and opportunities we fail to recognize at all. We are the greatest -and most virtuous- power in history. For now our existence is not at stake, although the lives of our citizens, the degree of our freedom and the well-being of our allies are at risk. There is no doubt that we will survive and triumph. But the decisions we make will determine the costs our enemies extract along the way. And we DO have enemies, old and new, mercilles and uncompromising, who hate us for our success, our freedom, and our power, as well as for the global transformations we inspire.
The United States is cast in the role of a doctor during a plague. No matter how hopless the situation may seem, the crisis demands our courage and perseverence. The risks we take are the only hope for avoiding a greater disaster for humanity. Despite the errors we have made in the middle east, the vitriol spit in our direction by the regions inhabitants isn't really aboutr us, its about them. The middle east has grown so inhumane and weak that it craves a "great satan" to explain away its ineptitude. The greatest power on earth will have to do. Indeed the middle east remains the world's sick civilization. Because of our virtuous efforts, Iraq may become the Middle Easts beacon of liberty. Or it may end as another Arab pyre. The Iraqi's, not us, will determine their ultimate fate. Their choices will shape a civilizations future.
Of course there is much more to the world than the struggling Muslim heartlands. Europe is in ther midst of an identity crisis of its own, haunted by a brutal past and insulted by Americas upstart success. The old powers are still far from forgiving us for supplanting them in the stretigic arena - or for our generosity toward them in the last century. Had we only been as cruel as europeans themselves in the wake of the twentieth century's great wars, we would be much better liked. The primary intellectual goal of Western european societies for the past half century has been to prove that the United States is as cruel and corrupt as they themselves have been. When your heritage is genocide, wars of agression, or cowardly surrender, the record of the United States can be hard to bear. The old powers cannot avoid measuring themselves against us, but the disparities they discover are so great that europes moral delinquents cannot resist comforting themselves with lies about our naivete, our purported clumsiness, our violence and our crudity ( without pausing to ask themselves how such pathetic mediocrities could have built the richest, most powerful, most desirable and exemplary society in history). Indeed when it comes to self examination, the heartlands of Europe are simply the middle east lite.
Yet Europe is likely to be good for a number of surprises-surprising not the least to Europeans themselves. With our short historical memory (one American quality Germans welcome), we thoughtlessly accept that, since much of Europe appears to be passive, so it shall remain. But no continent has exported as much misery and slaughter as Europe has done, and chances are better than fair that Europe is simply catching its breath after the calamities it inflicted upon itself in the last century.
We last saw widesperad pacifism just before 1914 and again during that half time break in that great European civil war that lasted until 1945 (or 1991 east of the Elbe).
Europes current round of playing pacifist dress up was enabled by Americas protection during the Cold War. We allowed our European wards to get away with a minimum number of chores. The United States did (and still does) the dirty work, seconded by our direct ancestor Britian. Even NATO merely obscured how little was asked of Europe. For almost a century the work of freedom and global security has been handeled the great Anglolateral alliance born of a struggle against tyranny of Continental European philosophies hatched on the Rhine and Danube. Our struggle continues today - against fanaticism and terror.
It is unlilkely that Europe's present pacifism will last. Indeed, there are many different Europe's. The new Europe in the east understands that freedom has a price and cannot be purchased with appeasment. Southern Europe is undergoing a complex second renaissance. The United Kingdom, for all its grump resentment of the United States, will always align with us in a severe crisis: Our mutual values are far closer than any Briton shares with France or Germany. Anglo-American sparing can be vicious, but outsiders fail to grasp that its a family feud. And the family closes ranks to outsiders. France and Germany are Europes starkest problems (They are also vehemently anti-American). They wish to lead but lack the vision, power and generosity required to build enduring alliances. Germany and France are sick inside, having gobbled up immigrant populations they are unwilling and unable to digest. For all their fabulous critisism of American society ( where their calanders stop at around 1954), th extent of racism and bigotry in Continental Europe rivals that of a long gone American South and threatens to exceed it.
Meanwhile, "Old Europe" is rapidly becoming, truly, old Europe. With aging populations, bankrupt retirment systems, arthritic economies, educational stagnation and punitive taxation, it appears at first glance that the continent is headed for senility, for conditions under which its dwindling youth will neither be able to man the continents already enfeebled militaries nor support the overhang of the elderly.
Dont bet on a weak, pacifist Europe doing nothing as the immigrant time bombs with explode, while demographic pressures stress its outer borders. Behind all the American scolding and empty swagger Europe is uncertain of its future. And afraid. And when Europe is uncertain and afraid, its impoverished immigrants and neighbors had better start worrying.
The most laughable preictions of the the past two centuries have been those forecasting the decline of the West (especially the US). The formal empires may be gone, but the Anglolateral world enjoys power, wealth and freedom without precedent, while continental Euope has never lived so safely or so well as under the Pax Americana. The last half century has been the most prosperous and peacful in European history and Europeans dont want the party to end. But its long past midnight. Europe can no longer afford the lavish social welfare systems it constructed over the decades while America paid the strategic bills without demur.
The trouble with Europe is of course, its dark side. If its racist populations feel sufficiently threatend by its Muslim millions within their divided societies and by terror exported from the islamic heartlands, Europe my respon with a cruelty unimaginable to us today. Afterall, Europe is the continent that mastered ethnic cleansing and genocide after a thousand years of practice. We Americans my find ourselves in the unexpected position of confronting the Europe of tomorrow as we try to restrain its barbarities toward Muslims.
This should be the true American century where we move atlast beyond the poisonous European divisions of the world and help create a genuine"new world order" - although not one based upon the murderous nonsense of the left.
America is the most revolutionary state and culture in history. Now its our turn to export revolution.
Scince the end of the Cold War every conflict in which the United States has been involved has been to some degree a legacy of Europes colonial era - including the liberation of that frankenstein's monster of a country Iraq. We are cleaning up the messes left by Paris, Berlin and even London, while Europeans chide us self-righteously. We need to lead the world away from continental Europes cynical approach to human rights, which consists of theatrically mourning the dead but doing nothing to protect those still alive and threatend. Weakness never saved a human life!
In an age of global pessimism and fear, Americans still believe that change is not only possible, but likely to be good. Weather we wish it or not, we lead humanity. At times we will have to lead with bayonets,but, more often, we will lead through our ideas. If remain wise and just, as well as resolute, ever more of our fellow human beings will follow willingly.
The United States of America is the greatest force for freedom and change in history. We, the American people, are humankind's pioneers. Our ancestors cultivated a natural wilderness. Americans of the twenty-first century confront a wilderness of flesh and blood in a world terrified by the virtues that we treasure, from religious tolerance to the rule of law, from the dignity of every man and woman to the rejection of hereditary power. Erupting with freedom, America challenges the world. We expose lies that justified thousands of years of tyrannies, proving that birth need not determine destiny. We demonstrate freedoms potential for all. And those we robbed of authority will never forgive us.
Each day we expand the frontiers of human possibility. Those who insist on limits are our enemies. It is their choice, not ours. The great struggle of the twenty-first century will rage between those, led by America, who believe that men and women have the right to shape their own lives, and those who believe themselves entitled to shape the lives of others. We will prevail, but the rearguard actions fought on behalf of decayed traditions and murderous beliefs will rage beyond our lifetimes.
Without the sacrifices of our forebears, most human beings - perhaps all - would live under tyranny. Without teh Americans of today and our English speaking brethren, dictators would again rise without hindrance. Because of us, freedom an dthe dignity of the common man and woman have become the ideal of a reordered humanity. We have lifted the weight of history from the shoulders of many millions.
And we are far from finished.
Our country is a force for good without precedent. We embody the revolutionary proposition that men and women can govern themselves from below, to the benefit of all, instead of being governed from above, to the benefit of few. Our pride does not rely upon purity of blood or religious monoploy, but uopn what multiple races and creeds have built with sweat and sacrifice. Our ancestors were not children of privilege,but men and women who refused to accept the limits of the lands they left behind. The new Americans who arrive to increase our strength are the spiritual kindred of teh earliest colonists. Old and new, Americans rejected the saftey of submission for a chance to stride upright. And we have learned to live together without hatred, if not without passing rancor. It is an achievement few other lands can claim - and none could claim it but for our example.
Our progress has not been easy. Some of our ancestors fled chains. Othewrs arrived in chains. Some wore chains as they lived upon our soil. Our past has been imperfect. But unlike others, we do not deny our mistakes. We do not embrace history as an excuse for continued failure.
That alone sets us apart from the rest of the world.
When Americans stumble, we get back up. We do not wallow in a self-made mire and call it the will of God or the hand of fate. To err may be human, but to roll up your sleeves and fix what went wrong is American. We bear with us all the faults humanity can manifest. But we do not surrender to those faults. While others cling to past glories, we know that our greatest days still lay ahead.
For all the complaints we must bear about America -the price of our success and the product of human jealousy - only imagine what this world would be like without us. Some may answer that proposition smugly, mocking us from foreign realms of failure. But their children line up by the millions to apply for U.S. Visas. And those who complain about their American birthright rarely leave to live their lives abroad.
All men and women dream. Americans forge their dreams into reality
We are not hated for what we have done to others, but for what we have done for ourselves. The example of our success is humiliating and bitter to all those who cling to traditions our power reveals as inadequate. Even the American capacity for hard work excites the hostility not only of our enemies , but of fair weather allies. Perhaps the cruelest thing European governments have done to their citizens over the past half century has been to destroy the sense that work fullfills a life. An unemployment payment is no substitute for a job, and welfare for the able robs human beings of their dignity, creating moral slaves. Most Americans ,on the other hand, cannot imagine a life without work. We win the lottery, then get back behind the wheel of the delivery truck. Our passion for work and achievement is a tremendous source of our strength.
As an American citizen, I see quiet heroism in the parent who labors at a grinding job, year after year, in order to raise a family, in the common citizen who will never enjoy celebrity or financial wealth, but whose steadiness and moral intergrity make this country go. America has no greater reserve of strength than the honest man or woman who, instead of scheming to beat the system, keeps that sytem running day after day.
Of course few of those Americans see themselves as revolutionaries. Yet we live in the most revolutionary society in history. We upset oppressivetraditions that endured, unchallenged, for millennia. Defiantly, we created new possibilites. The average American with an SSN, a drivers license , and a mortgage is a revolutionary to a degree that reveals Karl Marx and Che Guevara as dilettantes. While revolutionaries elsewhere sought to impose arid philosophies on humankind - at the cost of hundreds of millions of lives - we created a perpetual revolution of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The American Revolution isn't a single event summed up by the date 1776. Our revolution began when the first colonists arrived with their backs turned to an old, limiting world and began to carve a new Jerusalem from virgin timber. Our revolution never stopped - even our Civil War was a revolutionary struggle, the only civil war ever fought to free a never enfranchised, powerless group. We have changed nearly every aspect of the social and economic orders that prevailed fo rcenturies. An dour openess to the new threatens those whose allegiance lies with the barren, dying order - even within our own population. As we pioneer change each day of our lives, those who fear and reject change yearn to stop us, whether we speak of Islamic terrorists in love with a punitive god, French presidents embittered by the loss of status for which their citizens lacked the courage to fight, or the dwindling ranks of domestic bigots.
The distance between us and the rest of the world is growing greater, not lessening.
Consider how much has changed in a half century of American life, in this great age of revolutions, and you begin to understand how threatening our society appears to those who live their lives in thrall to yesterday..
America. Why we fight for her!?
