“If I have become so pathetically dulled that I hold freedom as my right and the privileges of liberty as my due, I can stand beside the stilled graves of a thousand soldiers fallen in defense of freedom and not feel a thing. And my most solemn prayer is that I will never be this.”
“Rights’ are ‘privileges,’ and if I am arrogant enough to demand the former without respecting the latter I will lose both.”
“I think we need to consider a radical rewrite of any form of patriotism that serves the individual at the expense of the community, as that is nothing more than patriotism to one’s own small and solitary cause.”
“It is at the precise moment that I take something for granted that I have placed myself in the precarious position of losing that very thing. And if that thing I risk losing is liberty, taking it for granted is foolishness of the most foolish sort.”
“The birthplace of anarchy is the cemetery of freedom.”
“I would entertain the apparently fading idea that patriotism that serves the self is greed dressed in the garments of liberty and adorned with the fashion accessories of other associated patriotic notions.”
“Rare are the handful of principles that incessantly drive us to stand even when we face the stark realization that we will likely perish in the standing. And rarer still is the person who will surrender all to protect such principles. Yet, the rudimentary principles of freedom and liberty pristinely untarnished by greed and selfishness took captive the hearts of simple people and raised this nation up from untamed wilderness and unchecked tyranny. And let us all be warned that without renewed adherence to these principles, we will rapidly return this nation to untamed wilderness and unchecked tyranny.”
“Real patriotism embraces the wholly immovable belief that without freedom, the essence of the human soul and the life-breath of the human spirit is doomed to perish for lack of space and absence of light.”
“The most elusive and ultimately impossible act of liberation is freedom from sin and self, and no document or declaration of man regardless of how exquisitely penned can do that. Such an astonishing act of liberation could only have been penned in one place: the cross.”
“A nation aimlessly drifting away from God is a nation for which prayer is a rudder and praise is a sail. And it is the man or woman on their knees that builds the former and gives wind to the latter.”
“I am thankful that there are those among us who have sacrificed dearly on behalf of us. And I ardently pray to God that I might be less like myself and more like them.”
“Freedom brings the privilege to make decisions and the need to learn once again how to rightly make them.”
“The sacrifice ‘of’ self for the greater good is the greatest calling imaginable, and it is the bedrock of the greatest nations. The sacrifice ‘for’ self is the most pathetic calling imaginable, and it is the quicksand within which nations perish.”
“Because we weren’t there when the price was paid doesn’t mean that the price wasn’t paid. And if we don’t believe that, maybe we need to consider the solider who never came home so that we could.”
“Freedom is a privilege, not a right. And as such, I have no right to ask anything of it, but I have the privilege of giving everything to it.”
“Somewhere along the way, someone sacrificed enough to crush the rot of tyranny in order to plant the seeds of freedom. And if we don’t carefully tend to the harvest we will eventually inherit the tyranny.”
“May the many monuments that abound remind me of the desperate need for courage, the inestimable value of valor, the honor evoked of sacrifice, and the fact that a life spent in the service of self embodies none of these.”
“Without freedom, the soul of man perishes long before the body dies. And if nothing else, the haunting specter of a soulless humanity should stir us to patriotism of the greatest sort.”
“If I don’t passionately desire freedom for all of my fellowmen, it’s likely that I haven’t been sufficiently freed from my selfishness so that I might see their captivity.”
“There are those who left the confines of comfort to fight the battles from which they might not return, for to do anything less was to assume that they could do nothing more. And a true patriot will never succumb to the rot of such cowardice.”
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