A New Gettysburg Address?

The United States pretends that it is a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, a sentiment so ably put by Abraham Lincoln.  Indeed, in the days when the Gettysburg Address was made that was indeed the proposition under which the United States prospered and grew. As a nation it grew to be one of the few “Superpowers” on the Earth.  This was a tribute to the drive and willpower of the people, the collective whole of the entire nation.  It was the accomplishments of the people of the United States that gave it the wealth and prosperity that it currently experiences.


Recently, however, that willpower has been subverted and turned for other purposes.  Special Interest Groups have taken the future out of the hands of the people and have placed it in the hands of a select few individuals whose mission is to advance the interests of that group as opposed to the interests of the country.  The recent world wide protests against ACTA are a demonstration that the interests of the country are secondary to those of the special interest groups.  If the interests of the country were paramount then this agreement, as written, would never have come into being as the vast majority of citizens in every country oppose the treaty.  The same thing with SOPA and the TPP.  All of these agreements are one sided agreements that help special interest groups but do not help the actual citizens of the countries involved.


Abraham Lincoln would be saddened by what he sees in the United States right now.  Extremism now reigns supreme both within political circles and in mainstream culture.  It is not that extremism is dominant in either, but the amount of press coverage given to the extreme positions has made them, by mere presence, more influential than they should be in a society for the people.


The battleground for much of the fight is the Internet.  Born with the ideals of the United States in mind – freedom and equality – it is trying to be absorbed by special interest groups for their own purpose.  Unable to control it through other purposes, these special interest groups are trying to make the government, “for the sake of the people” take control and tell people what to think and what to do.


If Lincoln looked out on society today what would his new Gettysburg Address sound like?  If Abraham Lincoln were standing on the steps of the Supreme Court or Congress, what would he say?  To be honest, I think it might almost be identical to what he said 150 years ago.

Two score and six years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new technology, 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 technology, or any technology, 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 technology 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.