Eleven Score and Seventeen Years

I lived and worked in Washington DC for many years and one of my favorite places was the Lincoln Memorial.  When I got the opportunity, and certainly when I had visitors, I would take them to the Lincoln Memorial and read out loud the Gettysburg Address on the south wall on the inside of the building.  a very inspiring speech

In many ways it reflects the situation we find ourselves now with political partisan civil war in Congress that can best be classified as a “non”- shooting war.  Our partisan conflict is really a test to see if our nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” can endure. 

It was President Lincoln’s commitment to do right, to liberty, to his dedication that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.   This is not what I hear from the extreme right wing.  They want a government by a few select people, those with money or by corporations; they want to privatized liberty where only those that can pay have it, and they don’t agree with the proposition that all men are created equal.  Worst yet, they are behaving like “rebels without a cause” with no intent or willingness to govern.  We are now eleven score and seventeen years from when this nation was conceived and it is facing the greatest challenge to its continuation.  Will we be brave enough to defend it? 

Below is the full text of Mr. Lincoln's speech.

Gettysburg Address

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 battle-field 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 that 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.

Abraham Lincoln

Nov. 19, 1863