Say Anything Blog

Have you noticed the disappearance of stirring rhetoric among politicians? Particularly among Democratic politicians? JustOneMinute puts up an interesting contrast of three men, either President or running for President:

John Kennedy, Jan 20, 1961:

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.

John McCain at Annapolis, April 2, 2008:

We are the heirs and caretakers of freedom; a blessing preserved with the blood of heroes down through the ages. One cannot go to Arlington Cemetery and see name upon name, grave upon grave, row upon row, without being deeply moved by the sacrifice made by those young men and women.

And those of us who live in this time, who are the beneficiaries of their sacrifice, dare not forget what they did and why they did it, lest we lose our own love of liberty.

Barack Obama, Philadelphia debate, April 2008:

Well, look, I revere the American flag, and I would not be running for president if I did not revere this country.  This is—I would not be standing here if it wasn’t for this country.

And I’ve said this—again, there’s no other country in which my story is even possible; somebody who was born to a teenage mom, raised by a single mother and grandparents from small towns in Kansas, you know, who was able to get an education and rise to the point where I can run for the highest office in the land.  I could not help but love this country for all that it’s given me.

And so what I’ve tried to do is to show my patriotism by how I treat veterans when I’m working in the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee; by making sure that I’m speaking forcefully about how we need to bring this war in Iraq to a close, because I think it is not serving our national security well and it’s not serving our military families and our troops well; talking about how we need to restore a sense of economic fairness to this country because that’s what this country has always been about, is providing upward mobility and ladders to opportunity for all Americans.  That’s what I love about this country.  And so I will continue to fight for those issues.

The Democratic Party, that left me long ago, has gone from

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” -JFK

to

“we will sit on any committee, abandon any people struggling for freedom if it means we have a little more to spend on special interest groups (which might just buy me a few votes!)"

Patriotism has taken quite a hit in the last two score years.

Perhaps Obama’s lapel isn’t the only thing that’s vacant?


Cross posted at Proof Positive