Word: blood
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...notion of an ordinary, frustrated young person who discovers special powers in strange surroundings is as old as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and, before that, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - not to mention every fable about a commoner revealed as having royal blood and reserves of derring-do. It's the essential wish-fulfillment template: start in drab, constricting reality; hyper-drive into heroism...
...many people, the meaning of patriotism is simple: love of country. But love of a country that is dedicated to a proposition, not a king or a religion--a nation that is based on ideas, not blood--has always created a different kind of citizen. American patriotism expresses itself most truly in actions, not words. Our patriotism shapes our responsibilities as citizens, how we navigate in the world and, ultimately, what it means to be an American...
...practically a national religion, conservative patriotism can seem anachronistic. To be Spanish or Russian or Japanese is to imagine that you share a common ancestry and common traditions that trace back into the mists of time. But in America, where most people hail from somewhere else, that kind of blood-and-soil patriotism makes no sense. There is something vaguely farcical about conservative panic over Mexican flags in Los Angeles when Irish flags have long festooned Boston's streets on St. Patrick's Day. Linking patriotism too closely to a reverence for inherited tradition contradicts one of America's most...
...surprise that the old lions of the Christian Right are suddenly sputtering. "This is raising my blood pressure," admitted the normally calm, Mr. Rogers-sounding Dobson at the end of his radio show on Tuesday. Just a few weeks earlier, the conservative columnist and former Moral Majority vice president Cal Thomas wrote an essay calling Obama a "false prophet." Placing Obama's "Christianity" in quotes, Thomas charged that the candidate's statements about religion - including his belief that non-Christians can get to heaven - prove that he does not understand what it means to be a Christian...
...heirs and caretakers of freedom - a blessing preserved with the blood of heroes down through the ages. One cannot go to Arlington Cemetery and see name upon name, grave upon grave, row upon row, without being deeply moved by the sacrifice made by those young men and women...