Carey Gage of Cognocentric defends the idea of reading the Gettysburg Address on the one-year anniversary of 911. I agree. It's very relevant--all except the "four-score" and "civil war" parts. We have now been running for more than two hundred years. Thank God, our current ongoing war is not a civil one. And it is:
...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.
Posted by DeLong at August 15, 2002 01:59 AM | TrackbackCognoCentric: The Gettysburg Address is only nominally about a nation at civil war. It is about the sacrifice made by those who died in a war being waged so that "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." It is about renewing the commitment of the living "to the great task remaining before us[:] ... that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ..."
I agree with the sentiment, however, unlike the Battle of Gettysburg, those who died on 9/11 didn't volunteer/get conscripted nor train for the military; they didn't have the reasonable expectation that they'd die in the service of their country. (Excepting, of course, the noble rebels on Flight 93.) There is also no cemetery on the World Trade Center site. Only the last paragraph (the final two, perhaps) really fits for a 9/11 memorial.
To imagine there once was a day when Republican presidents could write like that.
If you-know-who had given the address, it probably would have gone something like: "My fellow Americans, we've been through some tough times here at Gettysburg, and will do so again. Now watch this drive!"