re: #379 Targetpractice

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But now, now suddenly we’re too damned poor to do anything but sit around and reminisce about past glories. Guess what, folks, this is what it looks like when an empire collapses. Sitting in the dust and drinking ourselves into a stupor about how we used to be hot shit while the rich sell what isn’t nailed down and haul out the crowbars when we’re not looking, that’s Russia today and us tomorrow.

If we allow it. We can also take back the night.

In the darkest days of the Civil War, President Lincoln delivered his two-minute speech at one of the most horrible battles ever seen in the country, right after an oration by Edward Everett that went on for two whole hours.

No one remembers Everett’s speech today. They remember the two minute one, the one that began “Four score and seven years ago …” and ended with “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.”

President Lincoln’s words echo down through the decades, and they are just as true today as they were then. Lincoln encapsulated the entirety of the meaning of the Declaration of Independence in just a few words; the honour and sacrifice standing up for the principles of the United States of America.

It is Lincoln’s words that I would follow today, against the modern-day would-be destroyers of our nation.

I affirmed I would uphold and defend the Constitution, not an elected official, not a general, not a minister, not a would-be despot. Lincoln’s speech demands it; my honour demands it.