Obama gave a good speech tonight at the memorial service in Newtown, CT. It was the type of appropriate speech we expect from any president in time of national tragedy.
But, as usual, some people need to make every Obama speech historic, in this case likening it to the Gettysburg Address given by Lincoln on the dedication of the cemetary for the tens of thousands who died or were wounded in that battle:
People will long remember what Barack Obama said in Newtown…his Gettysburg address…
— david maraniss (@davidmaraniss) December 17, 2012
History. RT @davidmaraniss: People will long remember what Barack Obama said in Newtown…his Gettysburg address…
— Ruby Cramer (@rubycramer) December 17, 2012
Some people in my feed complaining that Obama didn’t use the word “guns.” Lincoln never used the word “slavery” in the Gettysburg Address.
— Brian Fung (@b_fung) December 17, 2012
I just re-read the Gettysburg Address. And I felt a lot if that tonight from BO. Memorial, healing, anger, a call to action.
— Matt Wurst(@mwurst) December 17, 2012
There has been pushback on this, but the best response was as follows:
Sorry, this Gettysburg Address nonsense is annoying. Must every moment in our history be compared to some other moment in our history?
— Justin Charity (@BrotherNumpsa) December 17, 2012
Here’s a link to the Gettysburg Address, which I’m getting the impression that no one’s ever actually read: d.umn.edu/~rmaclin/getty…
— Justin Charity (@BrotherNumpsa) December 17, 2012
Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863Four 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 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.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
