Dr. Frank Crane will resume his normal Monday place next week. But tomorrow is an election day, perhaps the most consequential election day since 1860.
These are fearful times in which we have a choice of thinking the worst of a system that has sustained our free country, or believing that we are capable of being better tomorrow than we are today.
Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, in 1861, with a nation crumbling before his eyes into what he knew would become a terrible struggle to determine whether any nation could live half-slave and half-free, hoped for a nation that would not turn upon itself:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, published in 1960:
One thing I believe profoundly: We make our own history. The course of history is directed by the choices we make and our choices grow out of the idea, the beliefs, the values, the dreams of the people. It is not so much the powerful leaders that determine our destiny as the much more powerful influence of the combined voice of the people themselves…Surely in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
And in the fearful years of Joseph McCarthy’s rantings about Communists in government (he never provided the names he claimed to have on his famous list and changed the number from time to time), journalist Edward R. Murrow closed one of his “See it Now” broadcasts:
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular…. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his responsibility.
For the past several Fridays we have drawn upon Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America, in which he argues this nation has several times been driven by fear to teeter on the edge of losing its democratic republic system of government. Each time, he says, the people have shown this nation to be one of hope, not fear. Let us go forth responsibly tomorrow, not in fear, but in hope, in this time when fear, bitterness, and degradation of others has been sewn repeatedly, and seek the better angels within ourselves and those we select.
Normally in this space on Mondays we have shared with you some thoughts of Dr. Frank Crane. But tomorrow is an election day, perhaps the nation’s most consequential election day since 1860.
These are fearful times in which we have a choice of thinking the worst of a system that has sustained our free country, or believing that we are capable of being better tomorrow than we are today.
Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, in 1861, with a nation crumbling before his eyes into what he knew would become a terrible struggle to determine whether any nation could live half-slave and half-free, hoped for a nation that would not turn upon itself:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, published in 1960:
One thing I believe profoundly: We make our own history. The course of history is directed by the choices we make and our choices grow out of the idea, the beliefs, the values, the dreams of the people. It is not so much the powerful leaders that determine our destiny as the much more powerful influence of the combined voice of the people themselves…Surely in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
And in the fearful years of Joseph McCarthy’s rantings about Communists in government (he never provided the names he claimed to have on his famous list and changed the number from time to time), journalist Edward R. Murrow closed one of his “See it Now” broadcasts:
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular…. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his responsibility.
For the past several Fridays we have drawn upon Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America, in which he argues this nation has several times been driven by fear to teeter on the edge of losing its democratic republic system of government. Each time, he says, the people have shown this nation to be one of hope, not fear. Let us go forth responsibly tomorrow, not in fear, but in hope, in this time when fear, bitterness, and degradation of others has been sewn repeatedly, and seek the better angels within ourselves and those we select.