[Peace-discuss] July 4 parade

[C. G. Estabrook]

Judicious editing would be required.


LAURIE SOLOMON wrote:
> Obviously some of these are far too long for a slogan on a float that would 
> be of readable size and be able to be read in a very short time period while 
> the float passes by - let alone be short enough so that people can read 
> several different quotes on the float.
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net 
> [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C. G. 
> Estabrook Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 12:53 AM To: Peace-discuss Subject:
> [Peace-discuss] July 4 parade
> 
> [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?
> 
> ###