Paraphrasing Mr. Lincoln in 2024

 

                     

                                  On July 2, 1776, a group of Americans meeting in Philadelphia adopted a document which they subsequently signed two days later.   Benjamin Franklin summarized the danger of their actions: "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately".  Wikipedia succinctly tells why the actions were dangerous: "The Declaration [of Independence] justified the independence  . . . by listing 27 colonial grievance against King George III and by asserting certain natural and legal rights. What they did from the King's perspective was treason and  punishable by death."

   Fast-forward eighty-seven years and the country was deep into a civil war whose outcome remained questionable.  On July 1-3, 1863, the bloodiest battle of that conflict at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, brought a Union victory. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln's speech dedicating the battlefield cemetery emphasized  in 271 words what was at stake --- then and whenever Democracy is threatened.  

    In light of recent events and claims, I envisioned a paraphrasing of Mr. Lincoln's words for 2024. 

   "Two centuries and forty-eight  years ago, our Fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the Propositions that all people are created equal, that no one is above the Law and that Americans would not tolerate a despotic King and government.

   Now we are engaged in a chaotic legal struggle, testing whethe that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. . . . The brave people who struggled  to build and secure this nation have hallowed this land, far beyond our poor power to add or detract. The world must never forget what they did here.

    It is for us, the living, to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . . that we hereby resolve that those forebearers shall not have lived and died in vain.  That the Nation called the United States of America shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the People, by the People, and for the  People shall nor perish from the earth."

              VOTE !

                             Satchel