I guess we need to talk to Abe Lincoln about that:
Fourscore and seven years ago our
fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil
war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can
long endure. We are met on a great battlefield 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.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men,
living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say
here, 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. 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
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.
And George?:
