"The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls -- the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning." ~ Henry David Thoreau
Proposals for the Washington Monument included pyramids, equestrian statues and even something modeled after an Asian pagoda. "Now it seems so bizarre," says Martin Moeller, senior curator at the National Building Museum. "But if you think about it, how much more bizarre is it than using an ancient Egyptian obelisk as a symbol for the nation's first president?"
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