Word: birthright
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...survive the dawn; but some would stand up at high noon, e.g., his tribute to Walt Whitman: "One may not need him at home. It is in the air, this tonic of his. But if one is abroad; if one is ever likely to forget one's birthright, to lose faith, being surrounded by disparagers, one can find, in Whitman, the reassurance. Whitman goes bail for the nation...
...Webster's famous speller and the Me Guff ey readers. Ever since the indefatigable Horace Mann had stormed through Massachusetts preaching the cause of better schools ("In a Republic, Ignorance is a Crime!"), successive generations of young Americans had been learning the three Rs as Dart of their birthright...
...Dictatorship can compete with dictatorships, and a free virile democracy can outpace any such in the long pull. But a people bent on a soft security, surrendering their birthright of individual self-reliance for favors, voting themselves into Eden from a supposedly inexhaustible public purse, supporting everyone by soaking a fast disappearing rich, scrambling for subsidy, learning the arts of political logrolling and forgetting the rugged virtues of the pioneer, will not measure up to competition with a tough dictatorship...
...Legend. Muñoz came to politics almost by birthright. His father, Luis Muñoz Rivera, often called Puerto Rico's George Washington, headed the colonial government in the latter days of the Spanish rule, and in 1897 obtained from the Madrid government a charter which provided some autonomies (e.g., the right to make trade treaties with foreign nations) which Puerto Rico does not have now. After the cession of Puerto Rico to the U.S., Muñoz Rivera was invited to take a cabinet post in Madrid. He declined. He chose to stay in Puerto Rico, later...
Soon after the Labor victory in 1945, "Nye" Bevan stood amid the tall black blocks of Bolton's cotton mills in Lancashire and told the assembled workers: "Homes, health, education and social security-these are your birthright." That was quite a different list from the one John Locke had drawn up 260 years ago when he summarized man's inalienable rights as life, liberty and property. For better or worse, most Britons today are more wedded to Bevan's list than to Locke's. "Why is it," exclaimed a tall, exasperated Conservative M.P. over a substantial...