In time it became as impossible for polyglot and polysectarian America to provide a common religious standard for her public schools as for her Army or her railways.

With its aggressive policy of cultural and historical ‘antiquisation’ of Macedonia, by renaming Skopje’s Airport ‘Alexander the Great’ and building an over 36-metre high monument of Alexander the Great in the centre of Skopje, by initiating proceedings against Greece in November 2008 in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and through various other initiatives that may be deemed unnecessary nationalistic provocations, it seems that the government actually used the dispute mainly for domestic purposes: to boost its ratings among the ‘patriotic’ voters and to use it as an excuse for every and any political failure.

bat one's eyelashes

, Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.195: We may so seize on vertue, that if we embrace it with an over-greedy and violent desire, it may become vicious.