This is a personal view, based on a long life. I make no attempt to write a comprehensive history, nor to link to a lot of different events. My real point is to express what I see, as I see it — and keep it reasonably short and to the point.
Of this nation, Lincoln said, in November, 1863:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Three score and a dozen years ago, I was brought forth, conceived in the darkest stretch of WWII, when the outcome of the war was entirely in doubt, and dedicated to the idea that, while all men may have been created equal, some were just too old to be drafted (despite repeated attempts to sign up), and thus would likely be around to help take care of the new family, for however long we three might last.
So, yes, I’ve lived a long time, and seen much come and then, alas, go. That’s one thing this post is about.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
Nowadays, we are still engaged in a civil struggle. While the nation as a nation has endured, what we fought over in the Civil War — that pesky “all men are created equal” business — had not disappeared. A lot of it changed its clothes, got called something else, and flourished that way.
Nor had all the things disappeared that we hadn’t directly fought over in those battles, and which came to our national consciousness over time.
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.
Over time, some important battles were won; for one, the long struggle for votes for women. Heroes and heroines rose, and they made a difference: unionization, with the 8-hour day and the weekend. Trustbusting. Muckraking. National Parks. Then the Depression and FDR’s New Deal, with Social Security and many, many other programs. But a lot of struggles weren’t won: somehow, “created equal” as a reality, from moment to moment, day in and day out, as a part of everyday life, still seems beyond us as a nation.
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.
Threescore and a dozen years qualifies me for senior rates at the movies and a few other places. And I have been watching carefully what is around me, as many readers of this site have. I was born under FDR, but I personally remember living under Presidents from Truman onward.
Yes, I remember the gains over the years — Voting Rights Act, Title IX, and much else. Much remained to do. But a long memory means I also remember the cascading losses later in the century. A few at first, then more recently an avalanche of rollbacks of those hard-won gains.
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 --
Nowadays, we face climate change, income inequality, corporate personhood, rampant greed leading to economic collapse, population poisoning and prevention of needed services in order to redirect money into private hands, religious intrusions into secular life, voting rights encroachments, reduction of services for women, and much else — and the greatest of these is climate change with a very short deadline for any corrective or preventive action whatever.
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.
And, not least, a chance to save a government of the people, by the people, for the people — the only way to make any peaceful change of the situation —
one which is rapidly disappearing under the advance of corporate and high-income influence.
We have met the enemy, as Pogo put it, and he is us.
No Democratic President, alone, can change this situation for the better. (No Republican President, as I see the field of candidates now, will do it at all.) We need ‘more and better’ Democrats not only at the Federal level, but as state and local elected officials as well. Back your state and local candidates, as well as those at the Federal lever. We need them to take good actions and to feed the channels of eligibility for future Democratic positions, and carry on the fight.
It’s become a truism on this site, but it’s also a truth: When more people vote, Democrats win. And it’s up to us to register the unregistered, and get those registered voters to the polls, to find and back the candidates we need, as Democrats, to vote in. We’re the only ones who can do this.
It starts with grassroots efforts such as 90 for 90, GOTV for your local candidates, helping get them registered, talking about your candidates with others. More and better Democrats are needed at every level, in every state.
