“Well, Doctor, what have we got —a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Benjamin Franklin —as he left Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, in September 1787, at the close of the Constitutional Convention.
Eleven years earlier, on the 4th of July 1776, thirteen colonies in America had formally adopted a resolution of independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Patriotism isn't about the superiority of one's country or the dangers lurking inside and outside its borders, about braggadocio and exclusion. True patriotism is about the responsibilities of citizenship, about the ideals that hold us together.
—Robert Reich
Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley
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Some music for your 4th: the Third Symphony of Roy Harris, an American Symphony (1939), as conducted by Arturo Toscanini, an Italian conductor, but who was an advocate for American 'classical' music.
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Robert Reich was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. The quotation was taken from his Facebook page, 4 July 2013.
Thanks for the Third by Roy. One of my favorites--next to the Third by Copland, whom I was once lucky enough to interview.
ReplyDeleteI might disagree with you in order of preference, but both are masterful symphonies, let alone, American examples of the form. But you, Tom, interviewed Aaron Copland: what an opportunity!
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