12577: Citizenship (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "Pierre,F  (pgt)" <F.Pierre@lse.ac.uk>

Dear All,

First congratulations "senou" for pledging your loyalty to 'this great country.'  You are right, you just join the ranks of thousands, if not millions of others whom have 'switched' side.  For whatever your reasons are, I am sure it will provide you great benefits.  Again, my congratulations!

Second, on the subject of citizenship, I am amazed at such ease those who claim they know what is best for Haiti point at its numerous faults and weaknesses.  As citizens of any perspective country, most of the time it is easier to point fingers or provide lip service.  What will we change?  Sure, it can show our academic prowness and then what?

In this breath, I wish to quote from Theodore Roosevelt "Man in the Arena."
"In the battle of life, It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Frantz Pierre