[Peace-discuss] July 4 parade

[E. Wayne Johnson]

I've always been fond of this Lincoln quote from 1848 when he spoke in 
the House of Representatives:

/“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power,
have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and
  form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,
  a most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate 
the world.”/


On 5/19/2009 12:53 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> [At last Sunday's meeting we mentioned this year's "Champaign County 
> Freedom Celebration" <http://www.july4th.net/>.  AWARE has a tradition 
> of excellent entries in the July 4 parade -- none better than last 
> year's splendid effort. People in AWARE have worked hard over the 
> years to combat the jingoistic assumptions of the parades' themes.  
> This year's theme is (predictably) "The Lasting Legacy of Lincoln."  
> So I suggest we take the bull (and the alliteration) by the horns and 
> produce something like last year's rolling billboards. Here's a first 
> draft; all the quotes are Lincoln's.  --CGE]
>
>
>
>     THE ANTI-WAR ANTI-RACISM EFFORT REMEMBERS
>     LESSONS FROM LINCOLN ON WAR AND WORK
>
>     ************************
>
>     * Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he 
> shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do 
> so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such 
> purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if 
> you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given 
> him so much as you propose.
>
>     * Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what 
> they cannot take by election, neither can they take it by war; 
> teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
>
>     * Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; 
> and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
>
>     * The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
>
>     * No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's 
> consent.
>
>     * It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my 
> ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United 
> States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was 
> it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath 
> in using the power.
>
>     * With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in 
> the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish 
> the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him 
> who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to 
> do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among 
> ourselves and with all nations.
>
>     ************************
>
>     * These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to 
> fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with 
> themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to 
> settle the quarrel.
>
>     * Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only 
> the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not 
> first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the 
> higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of 
> protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and 
> probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital 
> producing mutual benefits.
>
>     * The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, 
> and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all 
> declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the 
> same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as 
> he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with 
> others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with 
> other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not 
> only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — 
> liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective 
> parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and 
> tyranny.
>
>     * We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.
>
>     * We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. 
> We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We 
> have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever 
> grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand 
> which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and 
> strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of 
> our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior 
> wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we 
> have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and 
> preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
>
>     * This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who 
> inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, 
> they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their 
> revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
>
>     * Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate 
> justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?
>
>     ###
>
>
>
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