Jim McDermott just gave the best

anti-war speech I've heard in a while. He finished by quoting Yeats. It was inspired.

Things fall apart
The center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood dimmed tide is loosed
Everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction
And the worst are filled with passionate intensity.

(Forgive me if that's not word for word. It's from memory)

The Second Coming -- W. B. Yeats


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.


Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Do you know if it was videotaped?

Perhaps it could be found in today's C-SPAN video of the Congress?

Never the less, thanks for the scoop albeit I'm a little slow on the uptake. :hi: