Another clip I came across during my current research, Hal Holbrooke in Mark Twain Tonight! Not too difficult to imagine what Twain would have made of the McCain campaign’s theme Country First:

Man is the only animal that deals in the atrocity of war. He is the only one that for sordid wages goes forth in cold blood to exterminate his own kind. He has a motto for this: “Our country: Right or Wrong.” Any man who fails to shout it is a traitor.

[...]Only when the republic’s life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it’s wrong. Otherwise the nation has sold its honor for a phrase. And if that phrase needs help he gets another one: “Even though the war be wrong, we are in it. We must fight it out. We cannot retire without dishonor.”

Why not even the burglar could have said that better.