On the Gettysburg Address and the Real Meaning of Being an American
by Robert Emmett Murphy, Jr.
Nothing will happen on the 19th of this month that will change the course of American history. It is important to remember that, because if you are listening to the wrong people, the next civil war will erupt.
There has been a call for the overthrow of the American Government on November 19. Earlier this month, a “citizens’ court” in Florida “convicted” President Obama of lying to election officials about his eligibility to be president and “sentenced” him to 10 years in prison.
This is based on the fact that Barack Obama Sr. was not an American citizen so Barack Jr. is not a “natural-born citizen.” (note: neither were the parents of any of the Founding Father’s, because the country didn’t exist yet, and Jefferson’s mother wasn’t even born on this soil). Unless Obama “surrenders” himself to the custody of “the citizens of the United States and Florida,” they will (allegedly) march on the White House to bring an end to Obama’s “Muslim, socialist, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-white, pro-illegal immigrant, pro-radical gay and lesbian agenda.”
The only persons of nominal prominence attached to this absurdity are Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and former leader of Freedom Watch, Rick Joyner, leader of the New Apostolic Reformation, and (maybe) Congressman Trent Franks (Klayman says yes, Franks’ office says no).
This is stupid, a fact I am very aware of. So why am I posting this?
Because November 19th is also the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. I’m just trying to make sure no one is distracted by the stupid stuff.
Here is the full text of the Gettysburg Address:
“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 battlefield 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.”
More Americans died during the Civil War than all our other conflicts combined. What was won in that terrible conflict?
The simple realty that were are one nation. We have more power in our unity, and that unity is to a large degree contingent that the rights of all are consistent throughout this continent-sized Republic.
North Carolina cannot declare to have “official religions’ in defiance of the US Constitution and Mississippi cannot choose to nullify whatever Federal law they don’t like (both were attempted in this last year). One’s access to Health Care should not be different in New York than in Florida. A woman’s reproductive rights should not be different in California than in Texas. A spouse’s rights regarding leases, insurance, and pensions, should not be any different in Vermont than in Mississippi. The standard of evidence applied to a person who shoots your unarmed loved ones dead and then alleges self-defense should not vary dramatically between between New Jersey and Florida.
One nation, got it? Anything else is un-American.
Anyone wanna debate that?
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Robert – Let’s just hope that people take the words of Lincoln to heart on this 150th anniversary. Based on the events since January 21, 2009, however, I doubt that the knuckle-draggers will stop their efforts to tear this nation apart and change the result of the Civil War.