Flowers For Socrates

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.
As nations become corrupt and vicious, they
have more need of masters.”
   – Benjamin Franklin

“In questions of power, then, let no more be said
of confidence in man, but bind him down from
mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
   – Thomas Jefferson

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
in a state of civilization, it expects what never
was and never will be.”
   – Thomas Jefferson

“Character is much easier kept than recovered.”
 – Thomas Paine in The American Crisis

Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American
Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy
throughout the world.”
   – Daniel Webster, 1851

As I looked at the mob, armed with guns and axe handles, smashing the glass on the doors inside the Capitol, trying to reach the duly elected members of Congress, disrupting the business of the nation, and forcing those same public servants, including the ones they voted for, into hiding for hours, I thought: 

So these are the people who are trying to steal MY American Dream — the dream where we really are all in this together, and we help our neighbors, follow the science and cooperate when there’s a pandemic so we’re all safer and have a better chance of living through it, the dream where everybody has a chance to earn a decent living and nobody has to be homeless, and we’re mindful that natural resources other than sun and wind are not limitless and cause as many problems as they solve.

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