“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines in conflict with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence, if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated in our charter of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the revolution". ~Abraham Lincoln
These are the words Lincoln used in 1858.
They are well chosen and should be heeded.
But there is more wisdom, he went on to say; speaking of the founders of the nation:
“Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths,that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began — so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.”
Well that moment is here.
Lincoln challenges all of us to uphold the principles which guided the founding of this nation.
These principles are now under full assault, not only by a malevolent autocrat, but by a thoroughly corrupt and slavish political party that sustains him.
On this 4th of July, in which we find our democracy under constant, unrelenting assault by an Administration that shows no interest in our country’s most cherished beliefs, it is an ideal time for the majority of Americans who do care about the country’s future to listen to this warning from a President whom historians often cite along with Washington, and F.D.R., as the most important;
a president who through his words and deeds truly earned the respect of all.
Even if you voted for Trump, for whatever reason, it couldn't be more obvious now from the corruption and rot currently stinking up the Oval Office, the inhuman removal of children from their families, the embracing of murderers & dictators, the disdain for our closest allies, (those not only economically or militarily allied with us but also our ideological kin), must have one salutary effect... to force many Americans to actually think about their civic responsibility towards the nation and indeed the world.
Like Lincoln, I implore my fellow countrymen to do just that.
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