Jose Rizal Quotes
There now exists a factor which was formerly lacking - the spirit of the nation has been aroused, and a common misfortune, a common debasement, has united all the inhabitants of the Islands.
Rizal, José. The Philippines A Century Hence. Translated by Austin Craig, Philippine Education Company, 1912, p. 55.
The phrase “Loyalty to the government is our national creed” was advocated by almost all politicians after the Civil War. There were a few communists of the left and libertarians on the right who would disagree but every president tool this position until the administration of Ronald Reagan who then many politicians claimed that the government was a problem and even an enemy of the people. Loyalty was in their view, not to be given to the Government, but to the ideas and ideals of America (as they saw them.) Since then many politicians would talk of “loyalty to America” but not use the McKinley phrase “loyalty to the government.”
At the time, there was very little national news in most newspapers and almost none about local areas and peoples other than the newspaper’s town. With the exception of New York and a few other cities, there was no news on the radio and TV had not yet been deployed. Most of the nation was very insular. It would not be until the Eisenhower administration that the national highway system was built. Most American spent their entire lives within 90 miles of their home and knew little about anywhere else other than NY, Chicago, Hollywood, Washington, and San Francisco.
What is particularly interesting about this quotation is that at the time, this was a common concern by political and social thinkers of the West. Here however, we learn that there was apparently the same concern and problem ongoing in the Muslim Middle East.
Commenting on the divisiveness of the McCarthy era.
José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda was a Filipino nationalist and polymath during the tail end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is tagged as the national hero (pambansang bayani) of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.
