Archive for November 19th, 2013

150 years ago on this day President Abraham Lincoln gave one of the most well known speeches. While most of us cannot quote the entire speech, Lincoln’s “Four score and seven years ago” resonate as much as other famous speeches such as Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”, JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”, and Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream”. Abe’s speech was truly a verbal piece of art. I implore you to re-read it below and let the words sink in knowing the huge impact these words had on the course of our American history.

It really is too bad that most in our government today ignore many of the virtues, beliefs, and foundations set forth by such great men as Lincoln and our forefathers.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

That last line is chilling because I believe it does not exist any more.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net