To me, patriotism means dedication to the principles on which the country was founded and a willingness to stand firm and fight for these principles regardless of what the government says or does
I was brought up in the War. I was an adolescent in the Second World War. And I did witness in London a great deal of the Blitz.
The generation which lived through the Second World War is disappearing. Post-war generations see Europe's great achievements - liberty, peace and prosperity - as a given.
If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
During the Cold War, the non-aligned movement tried to become a 'third force' in world politics, but failed because it was too large and unwieldy.
In our modern world of interdependent nations, hardly any state can wage war successfully without raising loans and buying war materials of every kind in the markets of other nations.
We had four years of world war which the peoples endured only because they were told that their sufferings would free humanity forever from the scourge of war.
The new century has brought on its own terrible dangers, which although not reaching the apocalyptic potential of the Cold War, still have the capacity to shake our world.
Germany is an economic giant but a political midget, and with the end of the Cold War she has started to muscle her presence throughout Europe and the world.
After a Polish Pope, whose country was first to be invaded by the Germans in World War Two, we now have someone from the generation drafted at the close of the war.
This is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.
After the end of the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for us to declare that we renounced war forever in a central article of the new Constitution.
There isn't a more important issue in the world than global warming. Even the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs crisis were a notional threat.
I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn't understand.
After all we'd been through, we still couldn't take our heads from out of our asses or our hands from around each other's throats.
Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.
Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.
What we did, what every president since Washington has done, was provide a measured, appropriate response, in direct relation to a realistic threat assessment.
It was in that bubble after Vatican II when it seemed like the best time ever to grow up Catholic. It was a time when the church was so connected to the world.
The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
What is most important for Europe is economic growth and jobs, security at home and safety in the world.
