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Thoughts on the Audacity of Hope
Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” If we lived in President Bush’s world, those fateful words would be used to justify the Iraq war in the name of freedom. But Jefferson was really talking about ensuring that rulers feared their citizens. Jefferson wrote in that same breath, “what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?” Our nation has always fundamentally been based upon speaking truth to power. We are a nation whose been torn by injustices which threaten the nature of our ideals. Despite this struggle, the greatness of those ideals sustain a hope that we can live up to the values which inform our politics.
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Thanks!
February 3, 2008 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
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