"The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew. I wouldnâ€™t have been surprised if they had linked arms with a woman in a burka and a Masai warrior, to belt out â€˜Itâ€™s a Small World After All,â€™ flanked by a chorus line of nuns and field-tripping, rainbow-skinned schoolchildren"

-- Sarah Vowell

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