"All Your Lives Are Belong To Us"

A post by Andrew Stuttaford the other day brought this John Edwards quote to my attention:

One of the things we ought to be thinking about is some level of mandatory service to our country, so that everybody in America _ not just the poor kids who get sent to war _ are serving this country...

So this John Edwards, a lawyer, believes "everybody in America are serving this country" to be acceptable grammar. Hmm. Ceely's Modern Usage does not agree.


Furthermore, we find such statism particularly offensive on this observation of Memorial Day, and hereby declare our anti-endorsement of John Edwards.


Finally, a Ceely's Modern Usage Fearless Political Prediction: John Edwards will never be the President of the United States of America. Everybody here are quite sure of that.