Patriotism Essays (2410 words) - Nonviolence, Pacifism, Peace

Energy Energy By Charles Eliot Norton Address before the Men's Club of the Prospect Street Congregational Church, Cambridge, Mass., June 7, 1898. There are minutes in each man's life, in the life of each country, when, under the fervor of energy, the straightforward certainties which in like manner times are the establishment whereupon the correct request and lead of life depend are able to be overlooked and dismissed. I will wander this evening to review to you a portion of these ordinary facts, which in nowadays of war need like never before to be remembered. There never was a land that better merited the adoration for her kin than America, for there never was a motherland kinder to her kids. She has given to them all that she could give. Her unlimited assets have lain open to them, to use at their will. What's more, the outcome has been that never throughout the entire existence of man has there been so awesome an exhibition of generally diffused and consistently expanding material government assistance as America has shown during the most recent hundred years. Tons of men have lived here with more solace, with less dread, than any such numbers somewhere else in any age have lived. Endless hoards, whose ancestors from the earliest starting point of human life on earth have spent fatigued lives in unrewarded work, in uneasiness, in defenselessness, in obliviousness, have ascended here, over the span of even a solitary age, without limit and secure happiness regarding the their rewards for so much hard work, to certain expectation, to smar t ownership of their own resources. Isn't the land to be beyond a reasonable doubt cherished in which this has been conceivable, in which this has been accomplished? Yet, there is a more profound wellspring of affection for nation than the material focal points and advantages it might bear. It is in the character of its kin, in their ethical life, in the sort of human progress which they show. The components of human instinct are to be sure so fixed that good or troublesome conditions have little impact upon its basic constitution, however flourishing or the opposite brings various attributes into noticeable quality. The conditions which have won in America have, if comprehensively thought to be, tended consistently and firmly to certain great outcomes in the national character; not, without a doubt, to unmixed great, yet to a prevalence of good. The organizations built up for self-government have been established with purpose to make sure about equity and freedom for all. The social relations among the entire body of the individuals, are sympathetic and basic. The general soul of the individuals is liberal, is merciful, is obliging. The standard s for the acknowledgment of which in private and open direct there is pretty much consistent and steady exertion, are as high and as commendable as any which men have sought after. Each real American holds to the perfect of equity for all men, of autonomy, including free discourse and free activity inside the restrictions of law, of compliance to law, of widespread training, of material prosperity for all the well-carrying on and enterprising, of harmony and cooperative attitude among men. These, anyway far short the country may fall in communicating them in its real life, are, nobody will deny it, the standards of our American majority rules system. What's more, it is on the grounds that America speaks to these goals that the most profound love for his nation shines in the core of the American, and moves him with that enthusiasm which considers no consequences, which regards no penance too incredible to even think about maintaining and to build the impact of these standards which t ypify themselves in the reasonable state of his local land, and have their expressive image in her banner. The soul of his nationalism isn't an irregular motivation; it is a standing rule; it is the most grounded intention of his life; it is his religion. What's more, since it is along these lines, and just in relation to his affection for the goals for which his nation stands, is his scorn of whatever is against them in private direct or open strategy. Against bad form, against untruthfulness, against disorder, against whatever may make for war rather than harmony, the productive member of society is consistently in arms. No insightful American can have watched the course of illicit relationships among us during the most recent thirty years without grave nervousness from the