[Peace-discuss] July 4 parade
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Tue May 19 09:58:17 CDT 2009
Maybe even better (if longer) than the same sentiment expressed in his first
inaugural address (= the penultimate quotation below).
E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> 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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>>
>
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