Topic : Politics
A Prayer
O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry;
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide;
Take not Thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen;
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men;
From sale and profanation
Of honor and the sword;
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord!
Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall;
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to Thee.
- G. K. Chesterton
Great Slips of the Tongue in U.S. Politics
1. 'the United States has much to offer the third world war.? (Ronald Reagan in 1975, speaking on Third World countries; he repeated the error nine times).
2. 'thank you, Governor Evidence.? (President Richard M. Nixon, referring to Washington State Gov. Daniel Evans in a speech during the Watergate period).
3. "I hope that Spiro Agnew will be completely exonerated and found guilty of the charges against him.? (John Connally, in a 1973 speech).
Defining Deviancy Down
U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recently published a disturbing essay entitled 'defining Deviancy Down.? In the Nov 22 issue of The New Republic, Commentator Charles Krauthammer writes that "Moynihan's powerful point is that with the moral deregulation of the 1960s, we have had an explosion of deviancy in family life, criminal behavior and public displays of psychosis. And we have dealt with it in the only way possible: by redefining deviancy down so as to explain away and make "normal? what a more civilized, ordered and healthy society long ago would have labeled-and long ago did label'deviant.?
