A Day That Is Etched In Our Minds. . .

On January 6, 2021, our nation was under siege by a threatening mob of insurrectionists.  Their mission was to force our congressional officials to overturn our 2020 presidential election. They committed murder, serious injuries, and ransacked our U.S. House and Senate. This was incited by the president and many members of his party who are elected officials in both houses of congress.  This was the modern day version of the attack on Fort Sumpter that began the bloody "war between the states" 1861 - 1865. Confedereate Flags were flying to praise the days of the south, as were Trump flags of the flamboyant and fraudulent four years of the former president.  For that one day in January, America was at war with itself once again.  Tribes and cults of unimaginable designs were actually brutalizing our law enforcement officers as they stormed their way into our Capitol, breaking windows and battering down doors.  It was on television across the country, and it was sickening!

 

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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 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 cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot 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."                                                                                                                

Back in the day, school children were asked to memorize this, the Gettysburg Address, given by President Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1853. It has become his greatest speech. Perhaps it is the greatest speech ever given by an American.

It is important today because this nation is watching another remembrance of a great war between factions of America:  White Supremacists, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon, and others -  challenging our freedoms as Americans that "we are all conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Let's not let this turn into another blood-soaked battlefield!