We live in critical times. So has every other generation of American citizens. We cannot realize the promise of our American Revolution by restoring the past. We cannot become the "summer soldier and sunshine patriot" of Thomas Paine's The American Crisis.

WASHINGTON — One of five known manuscripts of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is going on display at the Library of Congress. Beginning Fr...

Anniversaries show us the eventual futility and limits of human remembrance -- especially when it comes to tragic political events like wars and battles. 2013 marks a striking confluence of martial anniversaries.

Obama did, however, ground his inclusive conception of our national identity and, yes, his progressive political philosophy securely in our American traditions and history going back two centuries. Mr. Hazelwood takes umbrage? Fine.

I do think Obama was responding to Reagan's vision, but not to tell Reagan that he was wrong, but to tell some of his Republican disciples of today who use Reagan's words and legacy that this version of America has become outdated.

To my friends who are cynical, who say it is just a speech, just words, I would argue that if you look at America's history, words matter.

What we have now is not what they envisioned, nor the "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" that President Lincoln called for in the Gettysburg Address. With the stakes as high as they are, you would think that some common sense would prevail in Washington.

And as Lincoln did at Gettysburg, President Obama can remind those that lost on the (electoral) battlefield, that they too are participants in the great and ongoing battle of democracy.

Next year, on November 19, 2013, we get to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the speech that set the moral compass for "a new birth of freedom."

There is no shortage of political divides in this era of angry politics. But one of the most fundamental of all is between those who favor the Enlightenment and those who oppose it.

In President Abraham Lincoln's famous "Gettysburg Address" in November of 1863, he wound up his short speech by exclaiming that the living be dedicate...