By Stephen Witt
As we move into Memorial Day Weekend, Los Angeles County Politics (LACP) would be remiss to not express our sincere gratitude to those who gave their all for this country, whether or not history judges the war to be just or unjust.
We similarly express our gratitude to the loved ones still living of those who gave their all in the advancement of this country. No words I could write, however, can equal the magnanimity of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which clocks in at 272 words, according to several surviving drafts that Lincoln wrote.
In honor of Memorial Day, LACP will take off for the holiday weekend, during which we are quite sure the publisher will imbibe some liquid refreshment and most likely eat too much. We will return as usual with posts and in your morning email box on Tuesday.
The Gettysburg Address
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.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
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. 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. 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—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.
— Abraham Lincoln
