Staff Writer, DL Mullan
Education / News
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"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
November 19, 1863
Dear Sir,
We, the American People, thank you for your humble words and service to this great nation.
Unfortunately, 150 years later we are again embroiled in a civil war. A war of thought, speech, action, and consequence. Our government no longer serves the interests of its people. It serves elites, corporations, banks, and the unilluminated.
The honored dead we sanctify now are liberty, our Constitution and Bill of Rights everything the Civil War fought to uphold. Our own government invades sovereign nations, taxes hard earned wages, spies on our every word, written or uttered, treats everyone as guilty before proven innocent, protects the wealthy from judgment, passes laws that imprison without due process, allows torture and secret charges, and causes Americans to despise the very institutions that are supposed to protect them from such imperialism.
Mr. Lincoln, our Civil War is about the corruption of ideas and words. Anyone who disagrees with the establishment is hounded and arrested. Anyone who is independent of thought is either called names or told to "just die." Anyone who protests is sprayed with poisons and beaten. Anyone who informs the public of government illegalities is exiled into hostile foreign territory or imprisoned.
If you weren't already passed into the next realm, I would be embarrassed to write such provocative and truthful invocations.
This Nation was built on ideas. Ideas that have lasted well into the 21st Century, but with great effort. We have technocratic elitists who believe the human race is unworthy of the Earth, yet these madmen have created the pollution and destruction and disillusionment blamed on the common person.
Still your words, even these many years later, have resolve. As long as the American people believe and dedicate themselves to that belief, we can heal the wounds of strife.
I only hope that we re-conceive the notion of liberty to integrate all once again under a banner of red, white, and blue. So every man, woman, and child are born knowing that they have the inherent rights bestowed onto them by a greater force than any government.
For in this knowledge, no matter the law or prison, we are still free. Freedom is why so many have perished for and against one another across the globe. Freedom is our only savior, our only dedicated belief, our only battle cry that no one can take away.
Yours Truly,
A Free American
Source: Abraham Lincoln Online
