14 Years Ago Today: “The American’s Creed”

Site of the speech, more than
half a century later

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 10, 2006, without an image.]

This morning I came across the text of my eighth-grade graduation speech. Typed single-space on seventeen 3x5 cards, its opening paragraphs say that the graduating class has just recited “The American’s Creed,” written by William Tyler Page. [I later found out that Page wrote it in 1917 for a contest, which he won, in competition with over 3,000 other entrants.] The eighth-grader I was says he’s privileged to speak on the second of the creed’s two paragraphs: “I therefore believe it is my duty to my Country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its Flag; and to defend it against all enemies.”

On fanciful ideas

Reflections over the kitchen sink

By Moristotle

Spellbound at its revelations, my wife and I have been watching Ken Burns’s Vietnam War. Watching it is tearing at my heart, and hers too, I think. The war’s stupidity, our leaders’ pathological need to “save face,” the hundreds of thousands of deaths, square miles of beautiful land burned and bombed, the angst of soldiers, their families, their fellow citizens torn asunder by opposed stances on the war….