| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Monadnock Guide |
Posted - July 04 2016 : 08:28:01 AM
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/07/04/fourth-july-2016-what-founders-ask-us.html?intcmp=hpbt4
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It is remarkable that Abraham Lincoln never delivered a Fourth of July speech.
The closest he came was on July 10, 1858, in Chicago during one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, when Lincoln spoke of the Founders as “iron men.” He remarked how, every July 4, Americans celebrate those “iron men” and their extraordinary achievement, because we are “historically connected” with it.
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And so we are. None of us fought at Bunker Hill or Lexington or Concord. None of us endured famine, cold, or the impact of a musket ball. None of us signed our names to a document that made us traitors, fit to be hung.
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We are told that we must “speak to” a certain group of Americans in a certain way or else lose their vote. We are told that skin color or sex determines whether a group is more or less deserving of government perks. If one disagrees, one is shouted down as a racist, bigot, or chauvinist.
Yet Lincoln would disagree. The Founders would disagree as well. And so must all whose connection with that great and glorious generation of “iron men” consists of embracing an ideal that was meant to be taken literally; namely, that all men are created equal.
But it is not enough to believe this. We must do more than reread those words this Fourth of July in between the barbeques and fireworks. We must do what the Founders did, and what Lincoln did in his own time, and fight against the insidious notion that those words mean other than what they say.
Lincoln believed the Founders asked this of him and his generation. It is what the Founders ask of us still. |
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