By John Ruane - Sunday 25 Sep 2011

America has become a mean place. Among many things, hearing an audience laughing and applauding at the suggestion that the uninsured should be left to die is as fascist a mentality that one can have. I weep at the loss of the old America.

Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury America, not to praise it.
The evil that nations do lives after them;
The good is oft forgotten to history.
So let it be with America. The noble Boehner
Has told you America should be selfish:
If it is so, it is a grievous fault,
And grievously has America answerd it.

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Now, because of Boehner and the rest -
For Boehner is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men -
Come I to speak at America’s funeral.
It was my country, faithful and just to me:
But Boehner says it should be selfish;
And Boehner is an honorable man.
America gave many immigrants a home
Whose culture’s did the melting pot fill:
Did this in America seem selfish?
When the poor have cried, America has wept:
Selfishness should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Boehner says it should be selfish;



And Boehner is an honorable man.
You all did see that in the ‘40s
America conquered parts of Europe and Japan,
And refused to keep it: was this selfish?
Yet Boehner says it should be selfish;
And, sure, he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Boehner spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love this America once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for it?
O citizens! You have become selfish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with America,
And I must pause till it come back to me.