“
Things aren't what they used to be' is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.
”
”
Joe Abercrombie (Best Served Cold)
“
It's rally bad when dads cry.
”
”
Sarah Ockler (Twenty Boy Summer)
“
All wars are sacred,” he said. “To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and the fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is ’save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’ Sometimes it’s ’down with Popery!’ and sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotton, Slavery and States’ Rights!
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
“
I like Texas and Texans. In Texas, everything is bigger. When Texans win, they win big. And when they lose, it's spectacular.
If you really want to learn the attitude of how to handle risk, losing and failure, go to San Antonio and visit the Alamo. The Alamo is a great story of brave people who chose to fight, knowing there was no hope of success against overwhelming odds. They chose to die instead of surrendering. It's an inspiring story worthy of study; nonetheless, it's still a tragic military defeat. They got their butts kicked. A failure if you will. They lost. So how do Texans handle failure? They still shout, "Remember the Alamo!"
That's why I like Texans so much. They took a great failure and turned it into a tourist destination that makes them millions.
Texans don't bury their failures. They get inspired by them. They take their failures and turn them into rallying cries. Failure inspires Texans to become winners. But that formula is not just the formula for Texans. It is formula for all winners.
”
”
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!)
“
Victor: You guys have some kind of rallying cry? You know, "Avengers assemble?" "It's clobberin' time?" "Hulk smash?"
Nico: "Try not to die.
”
”
Brian K. Vaughan (Runaways: The Complete Collection, Vol. 2)
“
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency... Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
”
”
Douglas MacArthur
“
I went to see the Beatles last month... And I heard 20,000 girls screaming together at the Beatles... and I couldn't hear what they were screaming, either... But you don't have to... They're screaming Me! Me! Me! Me!... I'm Me!... That's the cry of the ego, and that's the cry of this rally!... Me! Me! Me! Me!... And that's why wars get fought... ego... because enough people want to scream Pay attention to Me... Yep, you're playing their game...
”
”
Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test)
“
The old Internet rallying cry: pics or it didn’t happen.
”
”
Mira Grant (Blackout (Newsflesh, #3))
“
To her, not packing our lunches every day or joining the PTA is a feminist rallying cry.
”
”
Christina Lauren (Autoboyography)
“
He saw Hitler’s stature within Germany grow to that of a god. Women cried as he passed near; souvenir hunters dug up parcels of earth from the ground on which he stepped. At the September 1936 party rally in Nuremberg, which Dodd did not attend, Hitler launched his audience into near hysteria. “That you have found me … among so many millions is the miracle of our time!” he cried. “And that I have found you, that is Germany’s fortune!
”
”
Erik Larson (In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin)
“
I saw a banner hanging next to city hall in downtown Philadelphia that read, "Kill them all, and let God sort them out." A bumper sticker read, "God will judge evildoers; we just have to get them to him." I saw a T-shirt on a soldier that said, "US Air Force... we don't die; we just go to hell to regroup." Others were less dramatic- red, white, and blue billboards saying, "God bless our troops." "God Bless America" became a marketing strategy. One store hung an ad in their window that said, "God bless America--$1 burgers." Patriotism was everywhere, including in our altars and church buildings. In the aftermath of September 11th, most Christian bookstores had a section with books on the event, calendars, devotionals, buttons, all decorated in the colors of America, draped in stars and stripes, and sprinkled with golden eagles.
This burst of nationalism reveals the deep longing we all have for community, a natural thirst for intimacy... September 11th shattered the self-sufficient, autonomous individual, and we saw a country of broken fragile people who longed for community- for people to cry with, be angry with, to suffer with. People did not want to be alone in their sorrow, rage, and fear.
But what happened after September 11th broke my heart. Conservative Christians rallies around the drums of war. Liberal Christian took to the streets. The cross was smothered by the flag and trampled under the feet of angry protesters. The church community was lost, so the many hungry seekers found community in the civic religion of American patriotism. People were hurting and crying out for healing, for salvation in the best sense of the word, as in the salve with which you dress a wound. A people longing for a savior placed their faith in the fragile hands of human logic and military strength, which have always let us down. They have always fallen short of the glory of God.
...The tragedy of the church's reaction to September 11th is not that we rallied around the families in New York and D.C. but that our love simply reflected the borders and allegiances of the world. We mourned the deaths of each soldier, as we should, but we did not feel the same anger and pain for each Iraqi death, or for the folks abused in the Abu Ghraib prison incident. We got farther and farther from Jesus' vision, which extends beyond our rational love and the boundaries we have established. There is no doubt that we must mourn those lives on September 11th. We must mourn the lives of the soldiers. But with the same passion and outrage, we must mourn the lives of every Iraqi who is lost. They are just as precious, no more, no less. In our rebirth, every life lost in Iraq is just as tragic as a life lost in New York or D.C. And the lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like six September 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.
”
”
Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)
“
Within him something bade to cry out. He had the impulse to make a rallying speech, to sing a battle hymn, but he could only get his tongue to call into the air: “Why—why—what—what ’s th’ matter?
”
”
Stephen Crane (The Red Badge Of Courage)
“
If indeed it's a race
Then the chicks do the most
It isn't a brag
Or an estrogen boast
It's the women who've led me
With big open hearts
If not for their love
I'd have failed at the start.
And it's not just the mothers
I speak of them ALL
It's a woman there first
When somebody falls.
The multi of tasking
That's easy to tease
I dare a great man
To try it all, PLEASE!
So this is my shout out
My rallying cry
To women all over
I hold you up high
And though there are others
Who'll think this poem strange
It's the women who plant
The root of big change.
”
”
Jamie Lee Curtis
“
Because the American federal government uses mercenaries in warfare and American state governments pay corporations to run prisons, the use of violence in the United States is already highly privatized. What is novel is a president who wishes to maintain, while in office, a personal security force which during his campaign used force against dissenters. As a candidate, the president ordered a private security detail to clear opponents from rallies, but also encouraged the audience itself to remove people who expressed different opinions. A protestor would first be greeted with boos, then with frenetic cries of “USA,” and then be forced to leave the rally. At one campaign rally the candidate said, “There’s a remnant left over. Maybe get the remnant out. Get the remnant out.” The crowd, taking its cue, then tried to root out other people who might be dissenters, all the while crying “USA.” The candidate interjected: “Isn’t this more fun than a regular boring rally? To me, it’s fun.” This kind of mob violence was meant to transform the political atmosphere, and it did.
”
”
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
“
All wars are sacred to those who have to fight them. If the people who started ward didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money.
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
“
Twenty years later, “Day 1,” the name of the Amazon headquarters building, was still a rallying cry. “Day 2 is stasis,” he wrote in 2017. “Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.
”
”
Christian Davenport (The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos)
“
But then, if it’s the case that we can care about citizens and the police, shouldn’t the rallying cry just be All Lives Matter? No. Because the humanity wasn’t stripped from all lives the way it was stripped from the lives of black citizens. In order for slavery to work, in order for us to buy, sell, beat, and trade people like animals, Americans had to completely dehumanize slaves. And whether we directly participated in that or were
”
”
Brené Brown (Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone)
“
When I find myself drawn away from my priesthood duties by other interests and when my body begs for rest, I give to myself this rallying cry: "Remember Him.
”
”
Henry B. Eyring (Choose Higher Ground)
“
no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money.
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
“
Things aren’t what they used to be” is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.
”
”
Joe Abercrombie (Best Served Cold (First Law World #4))
“
For the next few minutes, Edith led the room in hollering “Fired up! Ready to go!” back and forth, again and again. I was confused at first, but figured it would be impolite of me not to join in. And pretty soon, I started to feel kinda fired up! I started to feel like I was ready to go! I noticed everybody at the meeting suddenly was smiling too, and after the chanting was done we settled down and talked for the next hour about the community and the country and what we could do to make it better. Even after I left Greenwood, for the rest of the day, every so often, I’d point to someone on my staff and ask, “You fired up?” Eventually it became a campaign rallying cry. And that, I suppose, was the part of politics that would always give me the most pleasure: the part that couldn’t be diagrammed, that defied planning or analytics. The way in which, when it works, a campaign—and by extension a democracy—proved to be a chorus rather than a solo act.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
Its rallying cry, love your body, presumes that our greatest challenges are internal, a poisoned kind of thought about our own bodies. It cannot adapt to those of us who love our bodies, but whose bodies are rejected by those around us, used as grounds for ejecting us from employment, healthcare, and other areas of life.
”
”
Aubrey Gordon (What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat)
“
Images are taking over, and writers are a dying breed. The Norman Mailers of today are reduced to writing pun-filled captions for paparazzi photos. Blogs--which were threatening enough to professional writers--are being replaced by video blogs. We writers need to embraced the Second Commandment as our rallying cry for the importance of words. In a literally biblical world, all publications would look like the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Or the way it used to look, anyway.
”
”
A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible)
“
I can’t imagine how you did it,’ she cried.
‘I didn’t have no time to imagine. It’s what folks imagines that gen’rally ruins ‘em. It’s like maggots in the brain. My hands and feet had to keep movin’ so fast that my head didn’t have no chance to contradict ‘em.
”
”
Dorothy Scarborough (The Wind (Barker Texas History Center Series))
“
As the historian and author Randall Balmer writes, “It wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools.”33
”
”
Katherine Stewart (The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism)
“
Things aren’t what they used to be’ is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.
”
”
Joe Abercrombie (Best Served Cold)
“
Their song reminds me of a child’s neighborhood rallying cry—ee-ock-ee—with a heartfelt warble at the end. But it is their call that is especially endearing. The towhee has the brass and grace to call, simply and clearly, "tweet". I know of no other bird that stoops to literal tweeting.
”
”
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
“
There is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: ‘The north wind made the Vikings.’ Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy?
”
”
Dale Carnegie (How to Stop Worrying and Start Living)
“
Democracy’ (demokratia) was rooted politically and linguistically in the Greek world. It was never a rallying cry at Rome, even in its limited ancient sense or even for the most radical of Roman popular politicians. In most of the conservative writing that survives, the word means something close to ‘mob rule’. There is little point in asking how ‘democratic’ the politics of Republican Rome were: Romans fought for, and about, liberty, not democracy.
”
”
Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome)
“
The monster, Hitler, died like Uther, frightened, hiding, haunted by his crimes and his wholly reasonable belief that all decent human beings would turn their backs on him. Who really cares where Hitler’s bones lie, or how he died, as long as he is safely dead? Now, in the twenty-first century, Karl Marx’s grave in a London cemetery is no longer a rallying cry to the poisoned idea that the end justifies the means. We shall never know for certain where Arthur lies, or if he even lived. If he was a myth, then it was necessary for human beings to invent him. Hail, Arthur, King of the Britons! I wish another hero would take your place, now that the west has such a need of you.
”
”
M.K. Hume
“
That was the power of fear when manipulated by the right hands. It made rallying cries of lies. It made murderers. It made wars.
”
”
Tehlor Kay Mejia (We Unleash the Merciless Storm (We Set the Dark on Fire, #2))
“
Those who know something of the juvenile spirit can understand how youth will
always lend a glad ear to such a rallying cry.
”
”
Adolf Hitler (My Struggle)
“
find a rallying cry
”
”
Kate Quinn (Ribbons of Scarlet)
“
Come forth, Paladins!
Fulfill your destiny!
”
”
Andry Chang (Sang Pemburu (Fireheart: Legenda Paladin, #1))
“
Words are powerful things. String together into messages, oaths, rallying cries. Sword can be met with sword, and magic with magic, and words can be wielded with just as much might.
”
”
Victoria Schwab (Shades of Magic Vol. 3: The Rebel Army)
“
WITH COMMUNISM NO LONGER VIABLE, THE DEFAULT RALLYING CRY for an autocratic Russian leader is nationalism. Putin, with his staged military parades and frequent invocation of past heroics, sounds that trumpet repeatedly. He wants citizens to believe that only he can restore his country to its rightful position in world affairs. If that means playing a little rough, so be it
”
”
Madeleine K. Albright (Fascism: A Warning)
“
The rallying cry Black Lives Matter is fundamentally rooted in an absence of love. I thought about how much I love being Black and how much grief, anxiety, and fear being Black sometimes brings.
”
”
Marisa Renee Lee (Grief Is Love: Living with Loss)
“
On one notable occasion there was a group that went semicultish whose rallying cry was “Rationality! Reason! Objective reality!” (More on this later.) Labeling the Great Idea “rationality” won’t protect you any more than putting up a sign over your house that says “Cold!” You still have to run the air conditioner—expend the required energy per unit time to reverse the natural slide into cultishness. Worshipping rationality won’t make you sane any more than worshipping gravity enables you to fly. You can’t talk to thermodynamics and you can’t pray to probability theory. You can use it, but not join it as an in-group.
”
”
Eliezer Yudkowsky (Rationality: From AI to Zombies)
“
We use the terms “demonstration” and “protest” interchangeably, at our own peril, like we interchangeably use the terms “mobilizing” and “organizing.” A protest is organizing people for a prolonged campaign that forces racist power to change a policy. A demonstration is mobilizing people momentarily to publicize a problem. Speakers and placards and posts at marches, rallies, petitions, and viral hashtags demonstrate the problem. Demonstrations are, not surprisingly, a favorite of suasionists. Demonstrations annoy power in the way children crying about something they will never get annoy parents. Unless power cannot economically or politically or professionally afford bad press—as power could not during the Cold War, as power cannot during election season, as power cannot close to bankruptcy—power typically ignores demonstrations.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist)
“
The modern incarnation of Silicon Valley has strayed significantly from this tradition of collaboration with the U.S. government, focusing instead on the consumer market, including the online advertising and social media platforms that have come to dominate—and limit—our sense of the potential of technology. A generation of founders cloaked themselves in the rhetoric of lofty and ambitious purpose—indeed their rallying cry to change the world has grown lifeless from overuse—but often raised enormous amounts of capital and hired legions of talented engineers merely to build photo-sharing apps and chat interfaces for the modern consumer.
”
”
Alexander C. Karp (The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West)
“
Make the ridiculous ideal of ‘equality’ their rallying cry. Let them get so caught up in their supposed moral superiority that they’d rather see all men grovel in poverty than rise in differing levels of prosperity.
”
”
Richard Paul Evans (Storm of Lightning (Michael Vey, #5))
“
The Goldwater precedent would prove especially important when it came to civil rights. In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of southern whites. All of the Republican presidential nominees in the future would harvest racist votes, whether consciously or not, because from then on the GOP would be the party of white privilege, and the Democrats, of minority rights. “States’ rights”—a euphemism for segregation—became the new Republican rallying cry.
”
”
Max Boot (The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right)
“
Colonel George A. Taylor rallied survivors with the cry, “Two kinds of people are staying on this beach, the dead and those who are going to die. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”1 Forty-three thousand troops were ferried across the English
”
”
Robert M. Edsel (The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, And The Greatest Treasure Hunt In History)
“
A quick Google search reveals there to be seven, ten, five, four or eight ‘years to save the planet’, depending on your headline writer and expert of choice (‘Eleven years to save the planet’ seems at the moment a rallying cry still up for grabs).
”
”
Bill Bryson (Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society)
“
despite the efforts of some to use the word ‘Socialism’ as some kind of rallying cry, it’s important for every reasonable person to acknowledge that anything other than a solitary existence as a cave-dwelling hermit entails some degree of Socialism.
”
”
Joseph Befumo (The Republicrat Junta: How Two Corrupt Parties, in Collusion with Corporate Criminals, have Subverted Democracy, Deceived the People, and Hijacked Our Constitutional Government)
“
Texans don’t bury their failures. They get inspired by them. They take their failures and turn them into rallying cries. Failure inspires Texans to become winners. But that formula is not just the formula for Texans. It is the formula for all winners.
”
”
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!)
“
Who cares about sustainability, being fair, or ethics? 'Screw you, I got mine.' That has been the rallying cry of humanity since the first grunter found a cave that was bigger or more dry than the other guy's, or went out and killed himself a lion and brought it back only to be surrounded by moochers. Go kill your own! You try to paint me as this unspeakable villain, but all I'm doing is what a billion other schlubs have done since the dawn of time, and that's look out for me and mine. Competition is what makes us better as a species.
”
”
Dan Marshall (The Lightcap)
“
When you are babiest in a family with eleven older points of view, eleven disparate rallying cries, eleven demanding and pay-attention-to-me voices—all variations of the communal story—developing your own becomes a matter of survival. There can be, in this scenario, no neutral ground.
”
”
Sarah M. Broom (The Yellow House)
“
Electrical fluid is attracted by points. We do not know whether this property is in lightning. But since they agree in all particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in this?” To which he added a momentous rallying cry: “Let the experiment be made.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life)
“
This failure was new. It existed despite my best effort -- despite rallying like a motherfucker to prove how smart and capable I was. This failure was one I should've felt proud of since I'd given it my all, but it felt like a failure of self. I felt like a failure. I cried the whole way home.
”
”
Anne T. Donahue (Nobody Cares)
“
All wars are sacred,” he said. “To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is ‘Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’ Sometimes it’s ‘Down with Popery!’ and sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotton, Slavery and States’ Rights!
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
“
All wars are sacred,” he said. “To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and the fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is ‘Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’ Sometimes it’s ‘Down with Popery!’ and sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotton, Slavery and States’ Rights!
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone With The Wind)
“
As a candidate, the president ordered a private security detail to clear opponents from rallies, but also encouraged the audience itself to remove people who expressed different opinions. A protestor would first be greeted with boos, then with frenetic cries of “USA,” and then be forced to leave the rally. At one campaign rally the candidate said, “There’s a remnant left over. Maybe get the remnant out. Get the remnant out.” The crowd, taking its cue, then tried to root out other people who might be dissenters, all the while crying “USA.” The candidate interjected: “Isn’t this more fun than a regular boring rally? To me, it’s fun.” This kind of mob violence was meant to transform the political atmosphere, and it did.
”
”
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
“
camps, the use of violence in the United States is already highly privatized. What was novel in 2016 was a candidate who ordered a private security detail to clear opponents from rallies and encouraged the audience itself to remove people who expressed different opinions. A protestor would first be greeted with boos, then with frenetic cries of “USA,” and then be forced to leave the rally. At one campaign rally the candidate said, “There’s a remnant left over. Maybe get the remnant out. Get the remnant out.” The crowd, taking its cue, then tried to root out other people who might be dissenters, all the while crying “USA.” The candidate interjected: “Isn’t this more fun than a regular boring rally? To me, it’s fun.” This
”
”
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
“
What was novel in 2016 was a candidate who ordered a private security detail to clear opponents from rallies and encouraged the audience itself to remove people who expressed different opinions. A protestor would first be greeted with boos, then with frenetic cries of “USA,” and then be forced to leave the rally. At one campaign rally the candidate said, “There’s a remnant left over. Maybe get the remnant out. Get the remnant out.” The crowd, taking its cue, then tried to root out other people who might be dissenters, all the while crying “USA.” The candidate interjected: “Isn’t this more fun than a regular boring rally? To me, it’s fun.” This kind of mob violence was meant to transform the political atmosphere, and it did.
”
”
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
“
Rhett looked lazy and his voice had a silky, almost bored, note. “All wars are sacred,” he said. “To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is ‘Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’ Sometimes it’s ‘Down with Popery!’ and sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotton, Slavery and States’ Rights!
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
“
At that, the crowd joined in--this was one of the Free Americans' rallying cries--We are the future--a cheerful way of saying the shame of the U.S. past wasn't genocide or terror but the fact that it hadn't completely worked out yet. It was nothing I hadn't heard before, but it was rattling. It was the ubiquity or it was the persistence. It was the way the Free Americans and their claims on being the only way Americans transcended facts and time and progress, the way they always seemed to be around the corner, the way, however lacking in general insight they might be, they could somehow hear the ticking clock of the question, the Do they know I'm human yet? the way they took delight in saying no, the way they took for granted that it would always be their question to answer.
”
”
Danielle Evans (The Office of Historical Corrections)
“
The worst part is that I want to turn this into a parable. I want to echo a rallying cry of inspiration that sings, Women, we are not alone; Women, these men do not defeat us; Women, these men do not define us; Women, I feel what you feel; Women, we, together, are strong, and for all the loud voices that said no or that didn’t have the freedom to but who still said 'please stop' or 'not right now' or 'I don’t know' or 'I don’t like that' which are all the same goddamn thing, to all the women who said no, you are not to blame for his hard, hungry hands, whether they came at you like raging fists or whether they gripped your face softly, at first, smiling at it and inviting you into the night, only later for you to meet the fingernails and full-weighted back of his hand to keep you there and press you down; to all the women who said no, you are not to blame; to all the women who feel ashamed, you are still the goddess and his hungry hands could not defile you more than mortals could defile a god; to all the women who feel sorry, you did not sin; to all the women who feel angry, I share your rage; to all the women who are too tired to feel rage, to all the women who feel empty, who feel blank, who feel Nothing, who feel small, I feel that most of all, too.
”
”
Alice Minium
“
The worst part is that I want to turn this into a parable.
I want to echo a rallying cry of inspiration that sings,
Women, we are not alone; Women, these men do not defeat us; Women, these men do not define us; Women, I feel what you feel; Women, we, together, are strong,
and for all the loud voices that said no or that didn’t have the freedom to but who still said 'please stop' or 'not right now' or 'I don’t know' or 'I don’t like that' which are all the same goddamn thing,
to all the women who said no,
you are not to blame for his hard, hungry hands,
whether they came at you like raging fists or whether they gripped your face softly, at first,
smiling at it and inviting you into the night,
only later for you to meet the fingernails and full-weighted back of his hand to keep you there and press you down;
to all the women who said no, you are not to blame;
to all the women who feel ashamed, you are still the goddess and his hungry hands could not defile you more than mortals could defile a god;
to all the women who feel sorry, you did not sin;
to all the women who feel angry, I share your rage;
to all the women who are too tired to feel rage, to all the women who feel empty, who feel blank, who feel Nothing, who feel small, I feel that most of all, too.
”
”
Alice Minium
“
The Romantic state could pride itself on being the emanation of one Volk and its primordial
consciousness; the liberal state has to get by with a good deal less magic. The Romantic state
could boldly identify itself with a people’s Will; liberal states must content themselves with a
general willingness. The romantic state rallies its citizens with a stirring cry: “One people!”
The liberal state’s true anthem is: “We can work it out.
”
”
Kwame Anthony Appiah
“
On 26 April 1937, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, Nazi planes, under the orders of General Franco, attacked the Basque capital of Guernica on its market-day, killing 1654 of its 7000 inhabitants. A few months later, Pablo Picasso exhibited Guernica at the International Exhibition in Paris. This modern, secular crucifixion shocked his contemporaries, and yet, like The Waste Land, it was a prophetic statement, and also a rallying cry against the inhumanity of our brave new world.
”
”
Karen Armstrong (A Short History of Myth)
“
The Republican rallying cry of the last seven years has been that they want to take the country back. Yes, back to a time when men worked and women stayed home and watched the kids. A time when there were no drugs but everyone drank. There were no abortions except in back alleys. No gays, except in the closet. Minorities knew their place. And strikers got their heads busted. And if we didn’t like another country, we bombed the shit out of it; their whitewashed, utopian dream, and every else’s dystopian nightmare.
”
”
Ian Gurvitz (WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America)
“
Along the way, I learned the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, which means 'the healing of the world' and is accomplished through presence in the midst of pain. It can be summarized in the phrase "I'm here with you and I love you" and is accomplished through simple acts of presence. It became a rallying cry for me in my work as a funeral director. Rachel Naomi Remen, in an interview with Krista Tippett, describes it as 'a collective task. It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born. We are all healers of the world...It's not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It's about the world that touches you.' Presence and proximity before performance. As I took that to heart, I started to see small, everyday examples of tikkun olam everywhere. When a mother comforts a child, she's healing the world. Every time someone listens to another - deeply listens - she's healing the world. A nurse who bathes the weakened body of an elderly patient is healing the world. The teacher who invests herself in her students is healing the world. The plumber who makes the inner workings of a house run smoothly is healing the world. A funeral director who finds that he can heal the world even at his family's business. When we practice presence and proximity, we may not change anyone, we may not shift culture or move mountains, but it's a healing act, if for none other than ourselves. When we do our work with kindness - no matter what kind of work - if we're doing it with presence, we're practicing tikkun olam.
”
”
Caleb Wilde (Confessions of a Funeral Director: How the Business of Death Saved My Life)
“
Whether readers loved or loathed a book, whether reading for pleasure or for criticism, there has been a repeated tendency to take the strongest character voice in a Heinlein novel as an authorial voice, as in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), or in Time Enough for Love (1973); or to read a political system as either flawless and to be taken as a political rallying cry for libertarianism, as in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966), or as a rallying cry for white supremacy, as in Farnham’s Freehold (1964). Neither extreme is true.
”
”
Farah Mendlesohn (The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein)
“
My life has not been in the service of some kind of resistance or in accordance with any great ideology. I don’t wish to be twisted into a lesson for some young girl one day, either as an example to emulate or one to avoid at all costs. I don’t need to write yet another rallying cry against the oppressiveness of convention, or a bitter treatise on how I should have chosen a more orthodox existence. I don’t wish to be idealized or scorned. Sometimes I just want to shed a tear in peace, without it being a statement about anything at all.
”
”
Jenny Zhang (March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women)
“
The Fence or The Ambulance
‘Twas a dangerous cliff, as they freely confessed,
Though to walk near its crest was so pleasant:
But over its terrible edge there had slipped
A duke and many a peasant;
So the people said something would have to be done.
But their projects did not at all tally:
Some said, "Put a fence around the edge of the cliff"
Some, "An ambulance down in the valley."
But the cry for the ambulance carried the day.
For it spread to the neighboring city:
A fence may be useful or not, it is true,
But each heart became brimful of pity
For those who had slipped o’er that dangerous cliff,
And the dwellers in highway and alley
Gave pounds or gave pence, not to put up a fence,
But an ambulance down in the valley.
"For the cliff is alright if your careful," they said,
"and if folks even slip or are dropping,
it isn't the slipping that hurts them so much
as the shock down below-when they're stopping,"
So day after day when these mishaps occurred,
Quick forth would the rescuers sally
To pick up the victims who fell off the cliff,
With their ambulance down in the valley.
Then an old man remarked, "it's a marvel to me
that people give far more attention
to repairing results than to stopping the cause,
when they'd much better aim at prevention.
Let us stop at its source all this mischief, cried he.
"Come neighbors and freinds, let us rally :
If the cliff we will fence, we might almost dispense
with the ambulance down in the valley."
"Oh, he's a fanatic." the others rejoined:
"dispense with the ambulance Never!
He'd dispense with all charities, too, if he could:
no, no! We'll support them forever.
Aren't we picking up folks just as fast as they fall?
And shall this man dictate to us? Shall he?
Why would people of sense stop to put up a fence?
While their ambulance works in the valley?"
But a sensible few who are practical too,
Will not bear with such nonsense much longer
They believe that prevention is better than cure
And their party will soon be the stronger
Encourage them, then with your purse, voice and pen
And (while other philanthropists dally)
They will scorn all pretense, and put up a stout fence
On the cliff that hangs over the valley.
”
”
Joseph Malines
“
My mum always taught that the truth will set you free.”
“Did she now?”
“Mm hmm,” Lachlan brushed the pad of his pointer finger over her cheek’s silken skin. “But she kept one truth hidden from me until very recently.”
“What was that?”
He gulped. “You know the truth thing on the medallion?
“Aye.”
“Well, if that’s my rallying cry, then it will mean the world to me if you trust that I’m not lying.”
She let the disk drop back to his chest. “Ye can tell me anything, I’d reckon.”
He needed to tell her the truth. “My father is – was William Wallace.
”
”
Amy Jarecki (The Time Traveler's Christmas (Guardian of Scotland, #3))
“
For the remainder of the gubernatorial campaign, Hamilton issued open letters to the electorate, and at Clinton campaign rallies his essays were hurled under the table as marks of contempt. In shaping his final appeal to voters, Hamilton said that Clinton’s most effective tactic was to single out the rich for abuse, and he warned that republicans scapegoated the rich to their detriment: “There is no stronger sign of combinations unfriendly to the general good than when the partisans of those in power raise an indiscriminate cry against men of property.
”
”
Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton)
“
Japanese American internment during World War II, Vincent Chin’s 1982 murder, and the Department of Justice’s long-running “China Initiative,” among many others. If you’re new to this subject and want to learn more, I hope you’ll look at The Making of Asian America, by Erika Lee; Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear, edited by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats; Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II, by Richard Reeves; and From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement, by Paula Yoo, as a few starting points.
”
”
Celeste Ng (Our Missing Hearts)
“
The modern incarnation of Silicon Valley30 has strayed significantly from this tradition of collaboration with the U.S. government, focusing instead on the consumer market, including the online advertising and social media platforms that have come to dominate—and limit—our sense of the potential of technology. A generation of founders cloaked themselves in the rhetoric of lofty and ambitious purpose—indeed their rallying cry to change the world has grown lifeless from overuse—but often raised enormous amounts of capital and hired legions of talented engineers merely to build photo-sharing apps and chat interfaces for the modern consumer.
”
”
Alexander C. Karp (The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West)
“
And here is the point in battle where one needs the rallying cry. Here where the banner must be unfurled or the song sung or the name of the cause flung at the enemy like a challenge. Here is mounted the charge, the thing as old as warfare itself, that either overwhelms the defense and wins the battle, or is broken and brings on defeat. How much less forbidding might have been that avenue of death that I was about to cross had there been some wholly irrational shout — like “Vive l’Empereur,” or “The Marine Corps Forever!” — rather than that educated voice which said in a sang-froid that was all at odds with the event, “Well, it’s our turn, now.
”
”
Robert Leckie (Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific)
“
By 1986 the CIA was spending 70 per cent of its entire operations budget funding a Muslim jihad to kill Russians. The whole campaign was managed by a bunch of Islamists who were giving the lion’s share of the US money and weapons to people who wanted to kill Americans. The US was happy to use Islam as a rallying cry. The CIA funded the printing of Korans to be distributed throughout the region, and the University of Nebraska produced primary-school textbooks, known as ‘the ABC of Jihad’, which taught children the alphabet and to count with Kalashnikovs and swords instead of apples and oranges, and were filled with images of Islamic warriors. Alphabet
”
”
Christina Lamb (Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World)
“
But because of her nature, Parks was the perfect plaintiff. Not only because she was a devout Christian, not only because she was an upstanding citizen, but also because she was gentle. “They’ve messed with the wrong one now!” the boycotters would declare as they traipsed miles to work and school. The phrase became a rallying cry. Its power lay in how paradoxical it was. Usually such a phrase implies that you’ve messed with a local heavy, with some bullying giant. But it was Parks’s quiet strength that made her unassailable. “The slogan served as a reminder that the woman who had inspired the boycott was the sort of soft-spoken martyr God would not abandon,” writes Brinkley.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
Latour’s entreaty to “love your monsters” has become a rallying cry in certain green circles, particularly among those most determined to find climate solutions that adhere to market logic. And the idea that our task is to become more responsible Dr. Frankensteins, ones who don’t flee our creations like deadbeat dads, is unquestionably appealing. But it’s a terribly poor metaphor for geoengineering. First, “the monster” we are being asked to love is not some mutant creature of the laboratory but the earth itself. We did not create it; it created—and sustains—us. The earth is not our prisoner, our patient, our machine, or, indeed, our monster. It is our entire world. And the solution to global warming is not to fix the world, it is to fix ourselves.
”
”
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate)
“
For too long we have been the playthings of massive corporations, whose sole aim is to convert our world into a gargantuan shopping 'mall'. Pleasantry and civility are being discarded as the worthless ephemera of a bygone age; an age where men doffed their hats at ladies, and children could be counted on to mind your Jack Russell while you took a mild and bitter in the pub. The twinkly-eyed tobacconist, the ruddy-cheeked landlord and the bewhiskered teashop lady are being trampled under the mighty blandness of 'drive-thru' hamburger chains. Customers are herded in and out of such places with an alarming similarity to the way the cattle used to produce the burgers are herded to the slaughterhouse.
The principal victim of this blandification is Youth, whose natural propensity to shun work, peacock around the town and aggravate the constabulary has been drummed out of them. Youth is left with a sad deficiency of joie de vivre, imagination and elegance. Instead, their lives are ruled by territorial one-upmanship based on brands of plimsoll, and Youth has become little more than a walking, barely talking advertising hoarding for global conglomerates.
... But now, a spectre is beginning to haunt the reigning vulgarioisie: the spectre of Chappism. A new breed of insurgent has begun to appear on the streets, in the taverns and in the offices of Britain: The Anarcho-Dandyist. Recognisable by his immaculate clothes, the rakish angle of his hat and his subtle rallying cry of "Good day to you sir/ madam!
”
”
Gustav Temple and Vic Darkwood (The Chap Manifesto: Revolutionary Etiquette for the Modern Gentleman)
“
I can only smile. When Daniela drinks, three things happen: her native accent begins to bleed through, she becomes belligerently kind, and she tends toward hyperbole. “Your father said to me one night—never forget it—that pure research is life-consuming. He said…” For a moment, and to my surprise, emotion overtakes her. Her eyes mist, and she shakes her head like she always does when she’s about to cry. At the last second, she rallies, pushes through. “He said, ‘Daniela, on my deathbed I would rather have memories of you than of a cold, sterile lab.’ ” I look at Charlie, catch him rolling his eyes as he sketches. Probably embarrassed by our display of parental melodrama. I stare into the cabinet and wait for the ache in my throat to go away. When it does, I grab the pasta and close the door.
”
”
Blake Crouch (Dark Matter)
“
He said, “In the wild, wolves call to each other. It can be meant as a warning for others encroaching on a territory. It can be a rallying cry, to bring the pack together. It’s used in a hunt. To show location. And sometimes, they howl together. To show happiness. To make them seem like a bigger group than they are. It’s called group howls, and it’s a beautiful thing to hear.” “And that’s why you do it?” He closed his eyes and smiled. He was amused by me. I was enraptured by him. “I think we do it just because we like to hear the sounds of our own songs. Narcissistic creatures, we are.” The smile faded slightly. “Though sometimes, the songs are meant to sing a pack member home. It’s easy to get lost, Ox, because the world is a wide and scary place. And every now and then, you just have to be reminded of the way home.” We didn’t speak for a long time after that.
”
”
T.J. Klune (Wolfsong (Green Creek, #1))
“
Criticism of Davis was neither new nor unusual, for his Confederacy was by no means a monolithic state. Secession had been imposed upon many loyal Unionists in the South, devoted patriots who, though subdued, remained hostile to the Rebel government; Union conventions had been held in the Confederacy during the war, and thousands of Southerners served in Union armies out of conviction that slavery and secession were twin evils. Many more thousands deserted the Confederate army to spend most of the war at home or in hiding. The more numerous poor whites and small farmers, who owned no slaves and worked their own lands, usually despised the few wealthy planters who controlled the slave system and the political apparatus as well. North Carolina’s Governor Zebulon Vance, in his forthright fashion, had put this issue to Jefferson Davis himself in terms that had become a rallying cry: “It’s a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.
”
”
Burke Davis (Burke Davis on the Civil War: The Long Surrender, Sherman's March, To Appomattox, and They Called Him Stonewall)
“
Less extreme leftists have been no less enthusiastic for war’s potential to transform the home front, Nisbet added. Leftist intellectuals were practically unanimous in favoring U.S. entry into World War I since they understood the opportunity it presented for institutional change at home. Wartime economic planning, they were convinced, would help to erode Americans’ conservative beliefs in the limits of government and the inviolability of private property. The experience of wartime planning never entirely faded from the national consciousness, and certainly not from that of the Left. When the Depression came, the Left jumped at the chance to revive the spirit of government planning it had so assiduously cultivated during the Great War. The rallying cry was “We planned in war”; now, therefore, we shall plan in peace. War symbolism was ubiquitous in the imagery adopted by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. “In terms of frequency of use of such symbols by the national government,” wrote Nisbet, “not even Hitler’s Germany outdid our propagandists.
”
”
Thomas E. Woods Jr. (Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion)
“
I'm sorry.'
It was those two words that shattered me. Shattered me in a way I didn't know I could still be broken, a rending of every tether and leash.
Stay with the High Lord. The Suriel's last warning. Stay... and live to see everything righted.
A lie. A lie, as Rhys had lied to me. Stay with the High Lord.
Stay.
For there... the torn scraps of the mating bond. Floating on a phantom wind inside me. I grasped at them- tugged at them, as if he'd answer.
Stay. Stay, stay, stay.
I clung to those scraps and remnants, clawing at the voice that lurked beyond.
Stay.
I looked up at Tarquin, lip curling back from my teeth. Looked at Helion. And Thesan. And Beon and Kallias, Viviane weeping at his side. And I snarkled, 'Bring him back.'
Blank faces.
I screamed at them, 'BRING HIM BACK.'
Nothing.
'You did it for me,' I said, breathing hard. 'Now do it for him.'
'You were human,' Helion said carefully. 'It is not the same-'
'I don't care. Do it.' When they didn't move, I rallied the dregs of my power, readying to rip into their minds and force them, not caring what rules or laws it broke. I wouldn't care, only if-
Tarquin stepped forward. He slowly extended his hand toward me.
'For what he gave,' Tarquin said quietly. 'Today and for many years before.'
And as the seed of light appeared in his palm... I began crying again. Watched it drop onto Rhys's bare throat and vanish onto the skin beneath, an echo of light flaring once.
Helion stepped forward. That kernel of light in his hand flickered as it fell onto Rhys's skin.
Then Kallias. And Thesan.
Until only Beron stood there.
Mor drew her sword and laid it on his throat. He jerked, having not seen her move. 'I do not mind making one more kill today,' she said.
Beron gave her a withering glare, but shoved off the sword and strode forward. He practically chucked that fleck of light onto Rhys. I didn't care about that, either.
I didn't know the spell, the power it came from. But I was High Lady.
I held out my palm. Willing the spark of life to appear. Nothing happened.
I took a steadying breath, remembering how it had looked. 'Tell me how,' I growled to no one.
Thesan coughed and stepped forward. Explaining the core of power and on and on and I didn't care, but I listened, until-
There. Small as a sunflower seed, it appeared in my palm. A bit of me- my life.
I laid it gently on Rhys's blood-crusted throat.
And I realised, just as he appeared, what was missing.
Tamlin stood there, summoned by either the death of a fellow High Lord or one of the others around me. He was splattered in mud and gore, his new bandolier of knives mostly empty.
He studied Rhys, lifeless before me. Studied all of us- the palms still out.
There was no kindness on his face. No mercy.
'Please,' was all I said to him.
Then Tamlin glanced between us- me and my mate. His face did not change.
'Please,' I wept. 'I will- I will give you anything-'
Something shifted in his eyes at that. But not kindness. No emotion at all.
I laid my head on Rhysand's chest, listening for any kind of heartbeat through that armour.
'Anything,' I breathed to no one in particular. 'Anything.'
Steps scuffed on the rocky ground. I braced myself for another set of hands trying to pull me away, and dug my fingers in harder.
The steps remained behind me for long enough that I looked.
Tamlin stood there. Staring down at me. Those green eyes swimming with some emotion I couldn't place.
'Be happy, Feyre,' he said quietly.
And dropped that final kernel of light onto Rhysand.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3))
“
Then, however, he launched into a rallying cry that would echo down the centuries, speaking of “an urgent task which belongs to both you and God.” He continued: You must hasten to carry aid to your brethren dwelling in the East, who need your help for which they have often entreated. For the Turks, a Persian people, have attacked them . . . and have advanced as far into Roman territory as that part of the Mediterranean which is called the Arm of St. George [i.e., Constantinople]. They have seized more and more lands of the Christians, have already defeated them in seven times as many battles, killed or captured many people, have destroyed churches, and have devastated the kingdom of God. Wherefore with earnest prayer . . . God exhorts you as heralds of Christ to repeatedly urge men of all ranks whatsoever, knights as well as footsoldiers, rich and poor, to hasten to exterminate this vile race from our lands and to aid the Christian inhabitants in time . . . For all those going thither there will be remission of sins if they come to the end of this fettered life while either marching by land or crossing by sea, or in fighting the pagans. This I grant to all who go, through the power vested in me by God.
”
”
Dan Jones (Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands)
“
Americans were deluded, Arendt insisted, if they thought their political institutions were meant to establish a democracy. That was never the intent of the Founding Fathers, who had read the ancient Greeks attentively and worried as much about tyrannical majorities as did German-Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler’s popular and populist regime. They were kindred spirits. “What men” they were, Arendt exclaimed in breathless admiration of the Founders, and how little understood in modern times, with its ethos of democratic egalitarianism. The recent arrival felt obliged to lecture her native-born countrymen by reminding them about their true history. “It’s a great mistake if you believe that what we have here is democracy, a mistake in which many Americans share. What we have here is republican rule, and the Founding Fathers were most concerned about preserving the rights of minorities.” Such words had an oddly familiar ring at the time, though emanating from a political corner far removed from Arendt and her friends. “A republic, not a democracy” was the rallying cry of the extreme, often loony, reactionaries gathered around the John Birch Society during the 1950s and after. But though Arendt, with her stress on individual freedom, shared language and even long-term worries with the far right, she could never be mistaken for one of them—not with her contempt for bourgeois, money-obsessed self-interest, her support for trade unions, her identification with the weak and vulnerable, her anti-anti-Communism, her determined pluralism, and her praise of immigration as the means by which the United States continually revitalized itself. The “magnificence” of the country, she said, “consists in the fact that from the beginning this new order did not shut itself off from the outside world.” (She also said that the attempt to equate freedom with free enterprise was a “monstrous falsehood.”) In
”
”
Barry Gewen (The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World)
“
I’m going to say this once here, and then—because it is obvious—I will not repeat it in the course of this book: not all boys engage in such behavior, not by a long shot, and many young men are girls’ staunchest allies. However, every girl I spoke with, every single girl—regardless of her class, ethnicity, or sexual orientation; regardless of what she wore, regardless of her appearance—had been harassed in middle school, high school, college, or, often, all three. Who, then, is truly at risk of being “distracted” at school?
At best, blaming girls’ clothing for the thoughts and actions of boys is counterproductive. At worst, it’s a short step from there to “she was asking for it.” Yet, I also can’t help but feel that girls such as Camila, who favors what she called “more so-called provocative” clothing, are missing something. Taking up the right to bare arms (and legs and cleavage and midriffs) as a feminist rallying cry strikes me as suspiciously Orwellian. I recall the simple litmus test for sexism proposed by British feminist Caitlin Moran, one that Camila unconsciously referenced: Are the guys doing it, too? “If they aren’t,” Moran wrote, “chances are you’re dealing with what we strident feminists refer to as ‘some total fucking bullshit.’”
So while only girls get catcalled, it’s also true that only girls’ fashions urge body consciousness at the very youngest ages. Target offers bikinis for infants. The Gap hawks “skinny jeans” for toddlers. Preschoolers worship Disney princesses, characters whose eyes are larger than their waists. No one is trying to convince eleven-year-old boys to wear itty-bitty booty shorts or bare their bellies in the middle of winter. As concerned as I am about the policing of girls’ sexuality through clothing, I also worry about the incessant drumbeat of self-objectification: the pressure on young women to reduce their worth to their bodies and to see those bodies as a collection of parts that exist for others’ pleasure; to continuously monitor their appearance; to perform rather than to feel sensuality. I recall a conversation I had with Deborah Tolman, a professor at Hunter College and perhaps the foremost expert on teenage girls’ sexual desire. In her work, she said, girls had begun responding “to questions about how their bodies feel—questions about sexuality or arousal—by describing how they think they look. I have to remind them that looking good is not a feeling.
”
”
Peggy Orenstein
“
Hayek’s arguments against social planning resonated with the recent critics of the government bailout. The ideas, although arguably misunderstood, became a rallying cry for the right wing. Friedrich Hayek was making a comeback. His theories also came with a direct warning: if left unchecked, governmental policies would eventually impinge on individual freedoms, leading citizens to become overly dependent on the government; effectively becoming serfs, or slaves.
”
”
Brady Raanes (In Light of Yesterday: The Backstory of the Global Economy)
“
The phenomenologists’ leading thinker, Edmund Husserl, provided a rallying cry, ‘To the things themselves!’ It meant: don’t waste time on the interpretations that accrue upon things, and especially don’t waste time wondering whether the things are real. Just look at this that’s presenting itself to you, whatever this may be, and describe it as precisely as possible. Another phenomenologist, Martin Heidegger, added a different spin. Philosophers all through history have wasted their time on secondary questions, he said, while forgetting to ask the one that matters most, the question of Being. What is it for a thing to be? What does it mean to say that you yourself are? Until you ask this, he maintained, you will never get anywhere. Again, he recommended the phenomenological method: disregard intellectual clutter, pay attention to things and let them reveal themselves to you.
”
”
Sarah Bakewell (At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others)
“
On the train, he took out The Crack of the Bat and started looking over it. The book included one of Doyle’s most famous columns, about how growing up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan had been “training for liberalism”: It is the liberal’s nature not to be disappointed by human failures but to remain hopeful. Not for us the tragic view of life. “We’ll get ’em next year” is the liberal’s natural rallying cry.
”
”
Christopher R. Beha (The Index of Self-Destructive Acts)
“
I am convinced that the language that has the most force, requires the most acumen, talent, grace, genius, and, yes, beauty, can never be, will never again be found in paeans to the glory of war, or erotic rallying cries to battle. The power of this alternate language does not arise from the tiresome, wasteful art of war, but rather from the demanding, brilliant art of peace.
”
”
Toni Morrison
“
After the first group of families arrived in Lewiston by word of mouth, then-Mayor Laurier Raymond Jr. wrote an open letter saying that the town was full, even though much of downtown lay vacant. “This large number of new arrivals cannot continue without negative results for all,” Raymond wrote. The letter became a rallying cry for white supremacists, who descended on the town for a march soon after. An early Republican in the Trump mold, Governor Paul LePage won his elections campaigning against welfare, suggesting that immigrants were stealing resources from the local taxpayers. Said shook his head.
”
”
Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (One World Essentials))
“
It is the liberal’s nature not to be disappointed by human failures but to remain hopeful. Not for us the tragic view of life. “We’ll get ’em next year” is the liberal’s natural rallying cry.
”
”
Christopher R. Beha (The Index of Self-Destructive Acts)
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The sins of the father are visited upon future generations…”
EXODUS 34:7 Oh, how I used to hate this verse. I once had a client tell me that she hated it, too. It made her think of an-impossible-to-please, vengeful god. A god she wanted no part of. I completely understood, because for a big part of my life, I agreed with her. But then one day, a different perspective on this controversial verse presented itself to me. One that I shared with my client. It’s one I would like to share with you, too. What if this verse is not some warning of wrath from a vengeful, punitive deity? What if this verse is not talking about something God does to us, but rather something we do to ourselves—and to each other? What if this verse is actually a compassionate, albeit cryptic, warning? Perhaps it is a rallying cry to get us to show up and own our crap; to heal and to grow, and to set future generations up to do the same. What if this verse is a plea from on High to recognize our choices can set off ripple effects that are far beyond our understanding and that our choices influence the future beyond what we are able to recognize in the tangible, relational realms. And what if this ominous, poetic warning is really pointing us toward something much more scientific and even holistic? What if it’s a proof-text that we are incapable of living compartmentalized lives—that every part of us is inextricably connected to the other, not only within our own lives, but in all the lives that lead up to our existence? What if the ripples set in motion by those who have gone before us cast destructive waves upon the present and have potential to reach into future generations, unless there is some intervention?
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Gina Birkemeier (Generations Deep: Unmasking Inherited Dysfunction and Trauma to Rewrite Our Stories Through Faith and Therapy)
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Few could dispute Esther Ross’s claim that the Arizona was a cutting-edge weapon of its day. The behemoth was built to project American power and counter any aggressor on the high seas. Battleships made completely of steel were themselves relatively new. America’s earliest were the Texas and the Maine, commissioned within a month of each other in 1895. Barely over three hundred feet in length and displacing only sixty-seven hundred tons, they in retrospect have been termed coastal defense battleships or, in the case of the Maine, a mere armored cruiser. The Maine blew up under mysterious circumstances in Havana Harbor, Cuba, in February 1898, and its sinking became a rallying cry during the subsequent Spanish-American War. Short-lived though the war was, it underscored the importance of a battleship Navy. In one storied episode, the two-year-old battleship Oregon raced from the Pacific coast of California all the way around Cape Horn and into the Atlantic to take part in the Battle of Santiago off Cuba. It was a bold display of sea power, but the roundabout nature of the voyage set thirty-nine-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt to thinking about the need for a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. By 1900, the United States Navy floated five battleships and had seven more under construction. Beginning with the Indiana (BB-1), commissioned at the end of 1895, they were each given the designation “BB” for battleship and a number, usually in chronological order from the date when their keels were laid down. Save for the anomaly of the Kearsarge (BB-5), all bore the names of states.
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Walter R. Borneman (Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona)
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That was the power of fear when manipulated by the right hands. It made rallying cries of lies. It made murderers. It made wars.
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Jodi Meadows (As She Ascends (Fallen Isles, #2))
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Yet before the summer was out the King was dead, and the Charter survived the denunciation of the Pope and the arbitrament of war. In the next hundred years it was reissued thirty-eight times, at first with a few substantial alterations, but retaining its original characteristics. Little more was heard of it until the seventeenth century. After more than two hundred years a Parliamentary Opposition struggling to check the encroachments of the Stuarts upon the liberty of the subject rediscovered it and made of it a rallying cry against oppression. Thus was created the glorious legend of the “Charter of an Englishman’s liberties”.
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Winston S. Churchill (The Birth of Britain (A History of the English Speaking Peoples #1))
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It becomes a chant, a rallying cry. One small spot is fixable. One small spot is a year of your life. No one dies from one small spot.
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Nina Riggs (The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying)
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Meanwhile, Mother Jones and strike leaders decided to raise a hue and cry in the state capital by marching through Charleston with three thousand strikers and their supporters. At a rally, a stenographer hired by the operators transcribed a speech by Mother Jones, who told the assembly to expect no help from that “goddamned dirty coward” Governor Glasscock, whom, she added wickedly, “we shall call ‘Crystal Peter.
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James R. Green (The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom)
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We are Punjabis,” he stated, as though she weren’t already aware of the fact. “We say it like it is. We’re loud, shiny, and love our drink, but we wouldn’t change a thing. Pun-jaa-bii!” He rally-cried the last word with a raised fist, peering around as if expecting a cheer, maybe a spontaneous bhangra dance.
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Trisha Das (Never Meant to Stay)
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Another Munich-based journalist, Fritz Gerlich, made the ultimate sacrifice in his pursuit of Hitler. Editor of the newspaper Der gerade Weg (The Straight Path), Gerlich was one of Hitler’s fiercest critics. He was arrested after Hitler came to power and murdered in the Dachau concentration camp outside Munich. “We Will Not Be Intimidated,” the Munich Post said in a front-page headline a few days before storm troopers ransacked and shut down its offices in March 1933. Whatever the Munich Post’s faults, that headline should be the rallying cry of journalists around the globe whose work is threatened by those who place accumulating and wielding authoritarian power above the defense of citizens’ rights.
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Terrence Petty (Enemy of the People: The Untold Story of the Journalists Who Opposed Hitler)
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turned Priestbane away. As we carved an arc toward the other end of the line, a cry went up: “Vespertine!” And again, louder, triumphant. More soldiers joined in. “Vespertine!” It was a rallying cry, a roar of desperate hope.
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Margaret Rogerson (Vespertine)
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I like to fuck a lot and drop acid becomes one of our rallying cries, better than any Ohh-rah or Semper fi.
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Anthony Swofford (Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles)
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main division between Americans today is that Trump and Deplorables believe America is the best country in the world – the most charitable and free. We believe the world would be less safe had we not intervened at critical moments in history. Sure, we’ve made mistakes. But, we learned from them and became better people for it. We see the glass as half-full. We are also painfully aware that our country has reached an extremely dangerous tipping point in which our freedoms could be lost forever. The left, on the other hand, don’t see things that way at all. They see America as an insult to the world - an evil colonizer that has caused nothing but grief. They believe if they could just reduce our country to the level of the third world, we would be humbled and forgiven. They are globalists. Reparations for America’s past victims is their rally cry, without regard to cost. Their true motivation is to further economically implode our country. They see the glass as half-empty and scheme daily to destroy the foundations on which America was built. Chaos is their means, at any cost. It
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Cathi Chamberlain (Rules for Deplorables: A Primer for Fighting Radical Socialism)