Cinquante Ans de Changement et Encore Non Fini

        "You who are on the road
        Must have a code that you can live by
        And so become yourself
        Because the past is just a good bye.

        Teach your children well,
        Their father's hell did slowly go by,
        And feed them on your dreams
        The one they picked, the one you'll know by."
 
                                               --Graham Nash
 
I don't normally do this, but Dr X has a great post discussing Governor George Wallace's inaugural speech in 1963:

It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.

I don't agree at all with his statement at the end.  The reality is that most of the way politics is practiced in the US is about evoking feelings of anger and fear, unfortunately. But it's still amazing to think how much real progress has been made for civil rights and freedom in my country, and in only one generation.  What a blessing.