Gettysburg Revisited

Seven score and ten years ago, our forefather stood before a divided nation to consecrate a battle ground, blood-soaked from an endeavor to re-unite a people, and to re-establish the proposition of our founders, necessary for a more perfect union, that all people are created equal, and that none are more equal than others.

             Today we are engaged in a great social fracturing, testing whether our nation can hold together that which it spent more than two centuries building, that which it once split apart, and that which it has been mending since war had once torn it asunder. 

            The world has long noted and never forgotten those words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg on Nov. 19, 1863. Americans, for whom his speech was meant to heed and endure, have neither noted nor remembered in the spirit for which it was made.

            We often consecrate, dedicate and hallow grounds rather than find courage to sacrifice for the greater good that tolerates all, no matter race, creed, nationality, thought or sexual orientation. This nation cannot long endure in a house that ceaselessly divides for the cause of self-interest.

            A nation that produces greatness cannot continue to self-inflict wounds and think it will become stronger. Its boldness is not in the military venture. It can not hope to last without adapting to change, economic and political.

            We cannot become great without acknowledging our nation is a work in progress, that our work is always unfinished, that we must always devote the last full measure. A government by, for, and of the people must not perish from the earth.