Sunday, August 29, 2004
Because I love my country....
Tonight I was watching the tail end of "Inside The Actor's Studio" as Martin Sheen was being interviewed. As many are well aware, Sheen is a vocal liberal political activist.
He was questioned tonight by a man in the audience who was fomerly in the military, a graduate of West Point. The man told Sheen that their politics were completely divergent...but he could tell from listening to Sheen that he truely and deeply loved his country.
Sheen seem very moved by the man's words. He said (paraphrase) that he loves his country so much that he's willing to risk it's wrath to show it when it's doing something wrong.
To me, that is what it means to be a patriot.
Sheen also quoted a poem from the great Nobel Laureate poet,Rabindranath Tagore:
Where the Mind is Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection:
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
It occurs to me that in the last decade, what it means to be a patriot has been muddled. Blind obedience and lack of dissent have become a hallmark for some of patriotism.
I'm grateful that men like Sheen love their country that much....
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He was questioned tonight by a man in the audience who was fomerly in the military, a graduate of West Point. The man told Sheen that their politics were completely divergent...but he could tell from listening to Sheen that he truely and deeply loved his country.
Sheen seem very moved by the man's words. He said (paraphrase) that he loves his country so much that he's willing to risk it's wrath to show it when it's doing something wrong.
To me, that is what it means to be a patriot.
Sheen also quoted a poem from the great Nobel Laureate poet,Rabindranath Tagore:
Where the Mind is Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection:
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
It occurs to me that in the last decade, what it means to be a patriot has been muddled. Blind obedience and lack of dissent have become a hallmark for some of patriotism.
I'm grateful that men like Sheen love their country that much....
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