WIST

The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, “My country, right or wrong.” In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

Carl Schurz (1829-1906) German-American revolutionary, soldier, statesman, reformer
Speech, US Senate (29 Feb 1872)
Schurz expanded on the theme in a speech delivered to the Anti-Imperialistic Conference, Chicago (17 Oct 1899): "I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves [...] too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: 'Our country, right or wrong!' They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: 'Our country -- when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.'"

The subject of power is not a simple matter of which majority sits on which minority at any given time. Looking around the world today and back through history, we see the horrors to which interreligious conflicts can lead — Muslims versus Hindus, Orthodox Eastern Serbs and Croatian Roman Catholics against Bosnian Muslims, Catholics versus Protestants in much of Europe after the sixteenth century, not to omit our own lesser, but horrible, history of persecutions in colonial America and the martyrdom of Joseph Smith as well as a number of his Mormon followers. We see, too, the fragility of the lessons these oceans of blood should have taught. The powerless call out for tolerance. Achieving power, they may soon forget. The descendants of Rome’s Christian martyrs remember too well the role of the torturers rather than the agonies of their own ancestors.

Melvin Frank (1913-1988) American screenwriter, director
Faith and Freedom: Religious Liberty in America (1994)

My movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit, who is going to the place of his execution: so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares, to quit a peaceful abode for an Ocean of difficulties, without that competency of political skill, abilities, and inclination, which is necessary to manage the helm.

George Washington (1732-1799) US President, military leader
Letter to Henry Knox (1 Apr 1789)
To the Acting Secretary of War, just prior to Washington's assuming the Presidency.

A fair and honest narrative of the bad is a voucher for the truth of the good.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
Letter to Matthew Carr (1813)

Death is part of this life and not of the next.

Elizabeth Bibesco (1897-1945) Rumanian-English writer
Haven (1951)