tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post8884881449026398700..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Happy Fourth of July!Jonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-88376053047247560272011-07-05T13:35:25.068-05:002011-07-05T13:35:25.068-05:00Today, remember to celebrate politics,
Worth reme...<i>Today, remember to celebrate politics,</i><br /><br />Worth remembering that <i>idiotēs</i> is the Greek word for someone interested only in his own affairs, and the origin of the English word 'idiot'.<br /><br />Self-government is hard work. Not doing it is the easy, lazy way out.Davis X. Machinahttp://davisxmachina.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-75038105553402883272011-07-04T18:16:37.707-05:002011-07-04T18:16:37.707-05:00doc -- the same line brought the same thought to m...doc -- the same line brought the same thought to me. I've been in a classroom where fellow students disdained the poem as excluding Native Americans or even anyone of non-English descent from America. But I read it the other way: as affirming that we all build, and choose, Americanness, and therefore, though there are people who have lived here longer and shorter periods of time, there <i>aren't</i> people who are more American because their ancestors came from certain places at certain times. (No, not Native Americans, either, insofar as we mean America as a political unit.) People always think they've understood Frost after one reading, but they're rarely correct about that.<br /><br />Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go read <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0688162800?ie=UTF8&force-full-site=1" rel="nofollow">Molly's Pilgrim</a></i> ....<br /><br />Oh, also: we deserve to be celebrated just for commenting on blogs? Cool.the classicisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08691196845661570282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-72753859911594696102011-07-04T15:49:44.956-05:002011-07-04T15:49:44.956-05:00Reading this, near the end of Woods' essay:
...Reading this, near the end of Woods' essay:<br /><br />"We Americans were a state before we were a nation, and much of our history has been an effort to define that nationality."<br /><br />I remembered this, written by Robert Frost:<br /><br />"The Gift Outright"<br /><br />The land was ours before we were the land's.<br />She was our land more than a hundred years<br />Before we were her people. She was ours<br />in Massachusetts, in Virginia,<br />But we were England's still, colonial,<br />Possessing what we were unpossessed by,<br />Possessed by what we now no more possessed.<br />Something we were withholding made us weak<br />Until we found out that it was ourselves<br />We were withholding from our land of living,<br />And forthwith found salvation in surrender.<br />Such as we were we gave ourselves outright<br />(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)<br />To the land vaguely realizing westward,<br />But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,<br />Such as it was, such as it would become.<br /><br />---------------<br /><br />Elsewhere, I have read that the "many deeds of war" were, for Frost, the Civil War...Don Coffinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07198988872512792834noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-27723036833565450522011-07-04T13:45:48.652-05:002011-07-04T13:45:48.652-05:00Great post, thank you for sharing that. :)Great post, thank you for sharing that. :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com