One hundred and fifty seven years ago, I spoke to you about a great American nation in prospect. It was to be purchased with the blood of those embroiled in the great civil conflagration playing out at that time. It was perhaps naïve to expect a fair society to emerge from such bitterness.
Looking at you now, it seems the shared ideal of freedom and equality has been interpreted as selfish greed and a bristling independence that does not see, let alone care about, the poverty and suffering of others.
While steadfastly believing your nation to be great (and it may be for some), you have ignored your own cultural pathology and insularity. Too many of your own have died at your hands in a continuing parasitic death spiral. The promise of a land of the free has not been realized, thus diminishing the value of the sacrifice of those I honored at Gettysburg. I then implored the living “to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” It is with overwhelming regret and despair that I note that this great task remains unfinished.
African Americans were then freed from the oppression of slavery to enjoin the great democratic cause with their erstwhile captors as citizens. Why, despite the recent advent of a black president, is it still necessary to cry out that Black Lives Matter?
They died in vain after all, their nation’s promise unfulfilled. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” has not perished from the earth. It just doesn’t abide in the United States.
Awesomely Astute 