~by David Aiken~
§ Democracy as a philosophy
The philosophy of democracy—the sharing of social and political power by We the People—stands, as always, at a crossroads in the history of ideas. Everywhere, to be sure; but especially right now in the United States of America, which is being sorely tested by advocates of a strongman form of government.
Ever the frail flower among social hierarchies and philosophies, democracy continues still to blossom and bloom, albeit timorously, among all the stronger and healthier weeds of more natural social autocracies and totalitarian tendencies and preferred governance philosophies. So perhaps it is well to revisit some of American democracy’s more recent foundational words, to stir up the life-blood of this beautiful idea.
§ Darkening Words.
I remember as a little fella the family fights — the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners of a blended Welsh-Scottish-Irish-English-American “Heinz 57” family, where the many acts of passing the food around the long holiday table were punctuated by raised and irritated voices. Along with the hint of fear and danger that lingered in their shrill tones, there was a magical elusiveness to all the adjectives and collective nouns that would fly around.
Every kid knows the passwords to ‘otherness’ that spring up like weeds from the essence of neighborhood life… we had our wops and dagos, a single group so much bigger than life that it obviously needed more than one nickname, krauts, jews, pollacks and bohunks (I was fostered by a neighboring one of these!), and of course, the spooks and spicks, who, while absent from our particular white-bread suburban neighborhood, functionally constituted for our elders the mythological boogeymen to keep us young ones from wandering too far out into the “world” beyond the boundaries of our familiar neighborhoods.
What our family gatherings were also to teach me as a 6- and 7-year-old, though, was an entirely new word-category of worldly peril: The Micks and the Orange Men, the Irish, the Catholics and the Kennedys. And although I could not grasp the specific evil particular to this man-group, voices fearfully raised in angry shouting and fighting clearly meant to me that this new class of human represented a danger to the America of my boyhood.
My familiar childhood space in the world of my immediate “neighborhood” was also my earliest initiation into the irrationality of the adult world.
§ Enlightening Words in a World of Possibilities.
The specific historical event that was busy wrapping its contextual web around me, yet all the while remaining veiled to my young eyes and ears and mind, was the divisive yet popular young candidate for President of the United States, Mr. John F. Kennedy, an Irish Catholic from the State of Massachusetts, who was soon to become the first Catholic President of the United States.
At the point of our telling, however, this event was clearly still just a ‘problem’ in Protestant America.
Then, in September 1960, presidential candidate Kennedy gave his now famous address to Protestant ministers on the issue of religion and the American Constitution, and of his own relationship to his religion, Catholicism; because it was a matter of national interest as to whether the American presidency should be placed under the influence or control of a foreign principality – the Vatican City, which is officially listed as an ecclesiastical monarchy. As the source says, “At the time, many Protestants questioned whether Kennedy's Roman Catholic faith would allow him to make important national decisions as president independent of the church. Kennedy addressed those concerns before a skeptical audience of Protestant clergy.”
And this is the America of freedom that Mr. Kennedy painted with his very own type of magical words [Transcript: JFK's Speech on His Religion (audio):]
[B]ecause I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured — perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in — for that should be important only to me — but what kind of America I believe in.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of presidency in which I believe — a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group, nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
Read Mr. Kennedy’s response to the question of religious freedom in America; measure that response against the dog & pony show of religiosity and egregiously sanctimonious one-upmanship that the Republicans are trotting out before the American public in preparation for the 2016 presidential elections—and weep in dismay.
President Kennedy’s more general vision of freedom and responsibility of nations within the world context is available on the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum site.
The 44th President of the United States was the youngest president in U.S. history and the first Irish Catholic to hold that office. He defeated the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, and, assuming office in January 1961, was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
That was the strangest day in my young life, and became in fact the hallmark of existential strangeness for a generation of Americans, who, each of them individually, could tell you precisely where they were and what they were doing when they learned that President Kennedy had been shot. There were only to be two other strange, epoché days like this in my American life—a long “day,” extending from April to June 1968, which was a season of political assassinations in America, and September 11, 2001.
No matter what the theologians say, if there should prove to be a God, then the “glory of God” cannot be intrinsic to the essential logic of that Being; rather, that glory abides in a purely human repository and is made manifest in the words and deeds of real men.
“He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, he is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be his footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave…”
Senator Kennedy was a Democratic candidate in the 1968 presidential elections, which are held in November. But Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated on June 6 of that year. So the choice to sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic at his memorial service, held in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, was to become the enlightenment cornerstone of my mid-adolescence: hearing the words of that hymn in that context, I grasped for the first time, I comprehended, that transformation from religious metaphor to social and political reality was not only possible, but that it was worthy of the highest dreams and aspirations of free men, and that glory was truly meant, first and foremost, to illuminate men’s dreams of enlightened freedom and social peace.
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
“As he died to make men holy…” Robert Kennedy was laid to rest in his coffin… so the first phrase of the hymn sings to us of our loss; but because the possibility and the will to freedom lives on from life to life, from the will of one free man to the next, so the second phrase— “let us die to make men free…,” lifts us up again to remind us that enlightenment dreams for social justice have long lives—if men will make it so, if I will make it so.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet!
His truth is marching on.
Leaving behind the intonation of the hymn, let us
consider the resonance of exhortation and the strength to move men’s minds that
were embodied by Bobby’s reasoned words in his “Day
of Affirmation” speech: “This world demands the qualities of
youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality
of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite
for adventure over the love of ease.”
There have been and will
yet be others who speak out such words of freedom. But Bobby Kennedy was a
shining glory come to speak out freedom and to make straight the ways of men,
peacefully and with respect (Teddy
Kennedy’s eulogy).
Mine eyes have seen the glory and heard the words, and the younger version of me knew that if we, if I, do not exhaust all my strength and will and energy in the struggle of free men for self-affirmation, then in the vast halls of human darkness and slavery we will all be trampled out in the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored—for this is the vintage of destiny that we prepare to pour out upon the world if we fail to create ourselves as free men.
In one of his speeches, occasioned by an event of great national sadness, on the evening of April 4th, 1968 RFK was called by fate to announce to a crowd in Indiana the assassination of the Revered Martin Luther King, some 4 and ½ years after King’s immensely important March on Washington and his “I Have A Dream Speech.” Quoting from the Greek poet, Aeschylus, Kennedy discourages that crowd, and us, some 45 years on, from hatred and bitterness, and encourages us all to 'Tame the savageness of man and [to] make gentle the life of this world.'
§ In the beauty of the lilies, a dream was born across the seas: bathe in the words….
Robert F. Kennedy
University of Cape Town, South Africa
N.U.S.A.S. "Day of Affirmation" Speech June 6th, 1966
I came here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled
by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British,
and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first
subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which
defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural
resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which
once imported slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that
former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.
But I am glad to come here to
South Africa. I am already enjoying my visit. I am making an effort to meet and
exchange views with people from all walks of life, and all segments of South
African opinion, including those who represent the views of the government.
Today I am glad to meet with the National Union of South African Students. For
a decade, NUSAS has stood and worked for the principles of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights-principles which embody the collective hopes of men
of good will all around the world.
Your work, at home and in
international student affairs, has brought great credit to yourselves and to
your country. I know the National Student Association in the United States
feels a particularly close relationship to NUSAS. And I wish to thank
especially Mr. Ian Robertson, who first extended this invitation on behalf of
NUSAS, for his kindness to me. It's too bad he can't be with us today.
This is a Day of Affirmation, a
celebration of liberty. We stand here in the name of freedom. At the heart of
that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the
child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state,
exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual
human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any Western
society.
The first element of this
individual liberty is the freedom of speech: the right to express and
communicate ideas, to set oneself apart from the dumb beasts of field and
forest; to recall governments to their duties and obligations; above all, the
right to affirm one's membership and allegiance to the body politic-to
society-to the men with whom we share our land, our heritage, and our
children's future.
Hand in hand with freedom of
speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government
which shape men's lives. Everything that makes man's life worthwhile-family,
work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head
-all this depends on decisions of government; all can be swept away by a
government which does not heed the demands of its people. Therefore, the
essential humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government
must answer-not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular
religion, or a particular race, but to all its people.
And even government
by the consent of the governed, as in our own Constitution, must be limited in
its power to act against its people; so that there may be no interference with
the right to worship, or with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition
of pains or penalties by officials high or low; no restrictions on the freedom
of men to seek education or work or opportunity of any kind, so that each man
may become all he is capable of becoming.
These are the sacred rights of
Western society. These were the essential differences between us and Nazi
Germany, as they were between Athens and Persia.
They are the essence of our
differences with communism today. I am unalterably opposed to communism because
it exalts the state over the individual and the family, and because of the lack
of freedom of speech, of protest, of religion, and of the press, which is the
characteristic of totalitarian states. The way of opposition to communism is
not to imitate its dictatorship, but to enlarge individual freedom, in our own
countries and all over the globe. There are those in every land who would label
as Communist every threat to their privilege. But as I have seen on my travels
in all sections of the world, reform is not communism. And the denial of
freedom, in whatever name, only strengthens the very communism it claims to
oppose.
Many nations have set forth
their own definitions and declarations of these principles. And there have
often been wide and tragic gaps between promise and performance, ideal and
reality. Yet the great ideals have constantly recalled us to our duties.
And-with painful slowness-we have extended and enlarged the meaning and the
practice of freedom for all our people.
For two centuries, my own
country has struggled to overcome the self-imposed handicap of prejudice and
discrimination based on nationality, social class, or race-discrimination
profoundly repugnant to the theory and command of our Constitution. Even as my
father grew up in Boston, signs told him that No Irish Need Apply. Two
generations later President Kennedy became the first Catholic to head the
nation; but how many men of ability had, before 1961, been denied the
opportunity to contribute to the nation's progress because they were Catholic,
or of Irish extraction? How many sons of Italian or Jewish or Polish parents
slumbered in slums-untaught, unlearned, their potential lost forever to the
nation and human race? Even today, what price will we pay before we have assured
full opportunity to millions of Negro Americans?
In the last five years we have
done more to assure equality to our Negro citizens, and to help the deprived
both white and black, than in the hundred years before. But much more remains
to be done.
For there are millions of
Negroes untrained for the simplest of jobs, and thousands every day denied
their full equal rights under the law; and the violence of the disinherited,
the insulted and injured, looms over the streets of Harlem and Watts and South
Side Chicago.
But a Negro American trains as
an astronaut, one of mankind's first explorers into outer space; another is the
chief barrister of the United States government, and dozens sit on the benches
of court; and another, Dr. Martin Luther King, is the second man of African
descent to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent efforts for social
justice between races.
We have passed laws prohibiting
discrimination in education, in employment, in housing, but these laws alone
cannot overcome the heritage of centuries-of broken families and stunted
children, and poverty and degradation and pain.
So the road toward equality of
freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside us. We are
committed to peaceful and nonviolent change, and that is important for all to
understand though all change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of
protest and struggle is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and
achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others.
And most important of
all, all the panoply of government power has been committed to the goal of
equality before the law, as we are now committing ourselves to the achievement
of equal opportunity in fact.
We must recognize the full
human equality of all of our people before God, before the law, and in the
councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically
advantageous, although it is; not because of the laws of God command it,
although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it
for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.
We recognize that there are
problems and obstacles before the fulfillment of these ideals in the United
States, as we recognize that other nations, in Latin America and Asia and
Africa, have their own political, economic, and social problems, their unique
barriers to the elimination of injustices.
In some, there is concern that
change will submerge the rights of a minority, particularly where the minority
is of a different race from the majority. We in the United States believe in
the protection of minorities; we recognize the contributions they can make and
the leadership they can provide; and we do not believe that any people -whether
minority, majority, or individual human beings-are "expendable" in
the cause of theory or policy. We recognize also that justice between men and
nations is imperfect, and that humanity sometimes progresses slowly.
All do not develop in the same
manner, or at the same pace. Nations, like men, often march to the beat of
different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither
be dictated nor transplanted to others. What is important is that all nations
must march toward increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a society
strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all its own people, and a
world of immense and dizzying change.
In a few hours, the plane that
brought me to this country crossed over oceans and countries which have been a
crucible of human history. In minutes we traced the migration of men over
thousands of years; seconds, the briefest glimpse, and we passed battlefields
on which millions of men once struggled and died. We could see no national
boundaries, no vast gulfs or high walls dividing people from people; only
nature and the works of man-homes and factories and farms-everywhere reflecting
man's common effort to enrich his life. Everywhere new technology and communications
bring men and nations closer together, the concerns of one inevitably becoming
the concerns of all. And our new closeness is stripping away the false masks,
the illusion of difference which is at the root of injustice and hate and war.
Only earthbound man still clings to the dark and poisoning superstition that
his world is bounded by the nearest hill, his universe ended at river shore,
his common humanity enclosed in the tight circle of those who share his town
and views and the color of his skin. It is your job, the task of the young
people of this world, to strip the last remnants of that ancient, cruel belief
from the civilization of man.
Each nation has different
obstacles and different goals, shaped by the vagaries of history and of experience.
Yet as I talk to young people around the world I am impressed not by the
diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their desires and their concerns
and their hope for the future. There is discrimination in New York, the racial
inequality of apartheid in South Africa, and serfdom in the mountains of Peru.
People starve in the streets of India, a former Prime Minister is summarily
executed in the Congo, intellectuals go to jail in Russia, and thousands are
slaughtered in Indonesia; wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere in the
world. These are differing evils; but they are the common works of man. They
reflect the imperfections of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion,
the defectiveness of our sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellows; they
mark the limit of our ability to use knowledge for the well-being of our fellow
human beings throughout the world. And therefore they call upon common
qualities of conscience and indignation, a shared determination to wipe away
the unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the
world.
It is these qualities which
make of youth today the only true international community. More than this I
think that we could agree on what kind of a world we would all want to build.
It would be a world of independent nations, moving toward international
community, each of which protected and respected the basic human freedoms. It
would be a world which demanded of each government that it accept its
responsibility to insure social justice. It would be a world of constantly
accelerating economic progress-not material welfare as an end in itself, but as
a means to liberate the capacity of every human being to pursue his talents and
to pursue his hopes. It would, in short, be a world that we would be proud to
have built.
Just to the north of here are
lands of challenge and opportunity-rich in natural resources, land and minerals
and people. Yet they are also lands confronted by the greatest
odds-overwhelming ignorance, internal tensions and strife, and great obstacles
of climate and geography. Many of these nations, as colonies, were oppressed
and exploited. Yet they have not estranged themselves from the broad traditions
of the West; they are hoping and gambling their progress and stability on the
chance that we will meet our responsibilities to help them overcome their
poverty.
In the world we would
like to build, South Africa could play an outstanding role in that effort. This
is without question a preeminent repository of the wealth and knowledge and
skill of the continent. Here are the greater part of Africa's research
scientists and steel production, most of its reservoirs of coal and electric
power. Many South Africans have made major contributions to African technical
development and world science; the names of some are known wherever men seek to
eliminate the ravages of tropical diseases and pestilence. In your faculties
and councils, here in this very audience, are hundreds and thousands of men who
could transform the lives of millions for all time to come.
But the help and the leadership
of South Africa or the United States cannot be accepted if we-within our own
countries or in our relations with others-deny individual integrity, human
dignity, and the common humanity of man. If we would lead outside our borders,
if we would help those who need our assistance, if we would meet our
responsibilities to mankind, we must first, all of us, demolish the borders
which history has erected between men within our own nations-barriers of race
and religion, social class and ignorance.
Our answer is the world's hope;
it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing
planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be
moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the
illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the
most peaceful progress.
This world demands the
qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the
will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of
the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. It is a revolutionary world
we live in, and thus, as I have said in Latin America and Asia, in Europe and
in the United States, it is young people who must take the lead. Thus you, and
your young compatriots everywhere, have had thrust upon you a greater burden of
responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.
"There is," said an
Italian philosopher, "nothing more difficult to take in hand, more
perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in
the introduction of a new order of things." Yet this is the measure of the
task of your generation, and the road is strewn with many dangers.
First, is the danger of
futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the
enormous array of the world's ills-against misery and ignorance, injustice and
violence. Yet many of the world's greatest movements, of thought and action,
have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant
Reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders
of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a
young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the
thirty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created
equal.
"Give me a place to
stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men
moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history
itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the
total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in isolated
villages and city slums in dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and
women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all
added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from
numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others,
or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing
each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples
build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and
resistance.
"If Athens shall appear
great to you," said Pericles, "consider then that her glories were
purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty." That is the
source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key to progress in our
time.
The second danger is that of
expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate
necessities. Of course, if we would act effectively we must deal with the world
as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing President Kennedy
stood for that touched the most profound feelings of young people around the
world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions
are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs-that
there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no
separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational
application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or
hard-headed to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims
and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgment,
it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of
passion and of belief-forces ultimately more powerful than all of the
calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to
standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great
courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to
fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.
It is this new idealism which
is also, I believe, the common heritage of a generation which has learned that
while efficiency can lead to the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of
Budapest, only the ideals of humanity and love can climb the hills of the
Acropolis.
A third danger is timidity. Few
men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their
colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than
bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital
quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to
change. Aristotle tells us that "At the Olympic games it is not the finest
and the strongest men who are crowned, but they who enter the lists...
So too in the life of the
honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I
believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral
conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.
For the fortunate among
us, the fourth danger is comfort, the temptation to follow the easy and
familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread
before those who have the privilege of education. But that is not the road
history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says "May he
live in interesting times." Like it or not we live in interesting times.
They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to the
creative energy of men than any other time in history. And everyone here will
ultimately be judged-will ultimately judge himself-on the effort he has
contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals
and goals have shaped that effort.
So we part, I to my country and
you to remain. We are-if a man of forty can claim that privilege-fellow members
of the world's largest younger generation. Each of us have our own work to do.
I know at times you must feel very alone with your problems and difficulties.
But I want to say how impressed I am with what you stand for and the effort you
are making; and I say this not just for myself, but for men and women
everywhere. And I hope you will often take heart from the knowledge that you
are joined with fellow young people in every land, they struggling with their
problems and you with yours, but all joined in a common purpose; that, like the
young people of my own country and of every country I have visited, you are all
in many ways more closely united to the brothers of your time than to the older
generations of any of these nations; and that you are determined to build a
better future. President Kennedy was speaking to the young people of America,
but beyond them to young people everywhere, when he said that "the energy,
the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country
and all who serve it-and the glow from that fire can truly light the
world."
And he added, "With a good
conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let
us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but
knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.
This was for you, Ant (March 7, 1953 - June 4, 2015).
(Reprised and reworked from an original essay published on Phrontisterion in June 2015)
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