Remember Lincoln

Today, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address up in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was a short speech dedicating a cemetery to those who “died that this nation might live.” In it, he reminded his generation that they must take “increased devotion” to the proposition that “all men are created equal”.

Today that proposition, this faith statement of the American idea, seems almost a cliché, for it is an idea that everyone seemingly openly embraces.

I’ve never met anyone who openly thought otherwise.

In Lincoln’s day, the danger to our Republic came from those who divided us on notions of race and skin color, preaching a strange gnostic* idea about the superiority of one race over another. It was and will always remain a grotesque theory based on neither empirical data nor philosophical or moral coherence.

When we fought the American Revolution in the 18th Century, this nation of thirteen little states fought against the colossal power of an empire dedicated to the same idea that some men are born by the privilege of aristocracy to rule over the rest of us—an idea anchored on neither empirical data nor philosophical or moral coherence. That is what made it a “self-evident truth”.

In the 1940’s this nation fought against Nazism, the same old idea, packaged and reworked and tailored by a new generation of evil, claiming that some races are born to rule over others— an idea based on neither empirical data nor philosophical or moral coherence.

During the Cold War we fought in a hundred places around the world, against an idea that some men by means of superior historical and political insight had the right to kill and imprison hundreds of millions of human beings, because they understood the direction of history better than the rest of us— an idea based on neither empirical data nor philosophical or moral coherence.

During the Civil Right Era, the same old tired grotesque beast reared its head again. Apparently men are not equal, based on some knowledge that the rest of us cannot articulate based on reason or fact.

Today, the age old enemy emerges anew. The regressive political Left embraces the same tyrannical principle, for they claim the right to tell the rest of us how to live without regard to the democratic processes that make this a republic “of, for and by the people”. The Left, like all class systems, is the enemy of human equality and the idea that all men are created equal.
They are just plain better than us deplorables.

Progressivism gives license to the Left, gives gnostic power to the better-educated elite: the Democratic Party, to “living constitution” jurists, to abortionists, to Antifa, to beat, terrorize, slander, and destroy those who are less than them. “Choice” gives them right to kill babies. “Wisdom” gives them the right to disarm those below them, less than them, despite the clear protection of the Bill of Rights. Education gives them right to rewrite history. Their gnostic understanding of the good gives them authority to transfer wealth by coercion to others according to their lights. It is the prerogative of those who are better to give to those who are not as good.

It is the same tyrannical principle.

For those paying attention, Lincoln speaks to us today.

We must remind ourselves, that the enemies of our republic take new forms and manifest themselves in each new generation by cleverly reworking the same tired, ugly, evil, bromide that all men are NOT created equal. Aristotle taught the lie, as did Augustus Caesar, and Louis XIV and George III, Jefferson Davis, Hitler, George Wallace and Hillary Clinton. The Deep State is the same tyrannical principle— the some old lie, that some are born to rule and the rest of us are born to shut up and do what we are told.

Remember, Lincoln, “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.”

The war continues.

The words are still relevant.

*Gnosticism is the idea that some people have knowledge that is beyond the rest of us to understand. It is a special spiritual authority and gift to discern that which others cannot.