At first that bit of symbolism struck me as kind of sweetly naive. This country, spiritually awakened, could do an awful lot for the world without carrying its cross very far compared to, say, the widow giving her mite.

But since the site offers no suggestion as to what national policies might constitute “taking up the cross”, I’m left wondering whether the site’s designers may have confused the Gospel’s “take up the cross” with Kipling’s “take up the white man’s burden.”