Jody and I, along with about 75-80 other Malibuites, spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon at Diesel Bookstore listening to Martin Sheen and Professor Doug Kmiec talk about Kmiec’s new book, “Can a Catholic Support Him?” The conversation was stimulating, gracious, and completely one-sided. But since that one side was “our” side, we both felt like it was two hours well spent. (Plus, how often do you get to meet a movie star?)

The talk of the afternoon was the poem Martin Sheen used as the closing, so here it is for everyone to enjoy:

Let My Country Awake
by Rabindranath Tagore
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Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.