Americans today are self-indulgent and don’t make the sacrifices that their parents and grandparents did, and the nation’s leaders don’t ask people to act for the higher good, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Monday at a Virginia college in a rare public speech.
“Our country and our principles are more important than our individual wants,” Thomas told close to 400 people who greeted him with a standing ovation at Washington and Lee University, a Shenandoah Valley liberal arts school.
He quoted President Kennedy‘s famous, “Ask not what your country can do for you” speech, but said Americans today are more likely to say, “Ask not what you can do for yourselves or your country but what your country can do for you.”
