We need Lincoln's words today. . .


If President Lincoln were alive on Jan. 7, 2021 and found it necessary to give an "Insurrection Address" at the Capitol Building, it might go something like his Gettysburg Address of Nov. 19, 1863. America's democracy is once again in great peril, and we are once again a seriously divided nation. We find ourselves primarily a land of two tribal mentalities. One side is frantically trying to overthrow our present form of government and install an authoritarian rule, while the other is desperately holding on to  what we have had for 245 years.

Perhaps Lincoln would speak words such as these. . . 



Twelve score and five 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 the beginning of another great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so dedicated, can still endure. We are met on a great battlefield of two opposing kinds of government. One, to continue our great experiment of democracy, and the other, to begin an evil authoritarian rule.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who might give their lives in pursuit of democracy, that the hopes of 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 fighting men who will struggle here, will have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will greatly note, and long remember what we do here, and it must never forget the democracy that may be lost here. It is for us the patriotic, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who will fight here have thus far so nobly tried to advance. It is rather for us, the saviors of democracy, to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us. And that from the  honored dead we will take increased devotion to that cause for which they will give the last full measure of devotion to our nation - that we here highly resolve that those who fought to hold on to our constitution shall not have died in vain, and  that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government shall remain of the people, by the people, and  for the people; and that it shall not perish from the earth.

                                                                                     


It is imperative that in today's America, we understand the gravity of the situation when President Lincoln gave his speech and how close, today, this nation is to facing another great war with itself.

This tribalism in our nation must stop!

Are we not all Americans?

Do we not all bleed the same color of blood?

Can we not all enjoy the same fruits of our democracy?




 


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