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A Nation of Dead Souls
The death of patriotism will be the death of America
The United States of America is dying. We have become a nation of what Sir Walter Scott would call “dead souls” — men and women who no longer look upon their own land with fondness and whose hearts no longer burn with love for their nation.
Scott was a Scottish poet, playwright, novelist, and historian. He understood that the heart of Scotland beat with the heart of its people. He put this sentiment to words in his famous poem “Breathes There a Man”:
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
