Friday, November 19, 2010

November 19, 1863

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 --

2 comments:

Epaminondas said...

52,000 casualties in 3 days.
7,000 killed

Total US fatalities in Afghanistan:
1398

US population 1860
31,400,000
US population 2010
~310,000,000

Proportionately, Gettysburg today would be 70,000 dead and half a million American casualties.

THAT is what it takes to end slavery.

What does it take to preserve freedom against a malignant totalitarian theocratic fascism?

revereridesagain said...

Sometimes it's that, sometimes it's the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Left is opting for the first alternative even as they scream and rant against it. They will leave us with no choice.

Weasel Zippers and JAWA are reporting that a TSA worker at Boston's Logan Airport has been arrested for the statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl. When people would rather let their children be groped and fondled by men who turn out to be rapists than stand up and demand that the legitimate suspects be profiled, we are another step further down the road to that first alternative.