Old Abe is approaching the podium, looking even more like a badly-dressed and ill-proportioned scarecrow suffering from a depressive disorder than he usually does. I mean, if you're going to be an empty suit, couldn't you at least find a suit that fits?
And as usual, he's not wearing an American flag lapel pin. Too good for it, I suppose. Probably thinks it's tacky, and that "real patriotism" doesn't have to be displayed. Typical intellectual arrogance.
Unfortunately, duty has required me to get a seat up close, so I'm likely to be able to hear his annoyingly high, faint voice.
Of course, it's going to be hard to take anything he says seriously, since he's obviously just angling for votes in Pennsylvania. Notice that he didn't bother to give a speech at Antietam.
Okay, here we go. More "eloquence," no doubt.
Four score and seven years ago
"Fourscore and seven"? Puh-leeze! Couldn't you make it just a little more pompous? Only a moonbat could regard this guy as an orator.
our fathers brought forth on this continent,
Ummm ... didn't we have mothers, too? Well, maybe Lincoln didn't; he looks like he came out of a test tube marked "Failure." But somehow I doubt that the suffragette harpies who swoon over Father Abraham are going to be pleased by the omission.
Anyway, shouldn't someone as smart as Lincoln is supposed to be know that it's mothers who "bring forth"? That thing that fathers do is called "begetting." (I'd always wondered whether Mrs. Lincoln's brats were any kin to Old Ape.)
a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Ahhh...now he slips it to us! "Fourscore and seven," indeed! He's bringing us back to the Marxist rant of 1776, completely ignoring the Constitution of 1787 in rhetoric as he has in practice. I'll believe we're all equal when I'm as tall as Lincoln, or as ugly. And the slaves he's so fond of may be his equals, but I'm damned if they're mine.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
Right. As if Mr. Lincoln's victory over his sectional enemies on behalf of his black friends were the same as the survival of the nation. It all comes back to the cult of personality.
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.
Well, no. It would be more "fitting and proper" to leave the dead in peace rather than to use them as a club with which to beat conservatives. But Lincoln, like all liberals, is completely shameless. Joshua is right: they're basically fascists.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground.
"A larger sense"? I defy anyone to find any sense whatever in this sentence, large or small. And does he think that "consecrate" and "hallow" really add anything to "dedicate"? More moonbat "eloquence," I guess.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
As if Lincoln had any power to add anything to the bravery of our troops. Really, this is too much to take. And it's all about a battle fought on the Fourth of July, which Lincoln's buddy Fred Douglass says he and his fellow Africans shouldn't celebrate. If Lincoln had an ounce of real patriotism in him, he would have disowned a that rabid racist years ago. But of course doing so would have cost him black votes, and he didn't want to risk that. In Lincoln's world, courage is for other people.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,
At last! Lincoln says something true! Stop the presses!
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.
Uh-oh! I see where this is going. Socialism. We should all be "dedicated" to whatever cause our politicians choose to assign us. Whatever happened to individualism? Or is that too American for Mr. Lincoln?
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 is, that we should continue to throw good lives after bad just to make the left-wing radical abolitionists happy.
— 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.
Right. Amalgamation of the races. That would be a "new birth" of freedom. A monstrous birth, of course, but definitely new. And to a "progressive," anything new is good, right?
He's folding up his notes and starting to walk off the stage. Huh? Is that it? Two minutes? Three hundred words? For thousands of dead soldiers?
Seems that way. The crowd, stunned by the sheer triviality of it all, mostly sits on its hands.
What an insult. Talk about mailing it in! Why did he bother to come all the way from Washington if he didn't have anything to say?
And there you have it. Perfect Lincoln. Pretty words, as long as you don't try to find any meaning. No plan. No willingness to work hard. His inexperience continues to show through.
Unlike McClellan, a real fighter with real national-security credentials, this man simply does not pass the Commander-in-Chief threshold. If the Republicans re-nominate this skinny, funny-looking lawyer from Illinois, they're dead meat.