The editorial encourages the public to:
“Take a trip down to the Lincoln Memorial, if you’re in the Washington area. At last report it was still open to the public, though with limited government support, thanks to the shutdown. There, inscribed on a wall, is the perfect New Year’s resolution for Americans and people from other countries who still admire this nation despite all its conflicts and contradictions. The words come at the end of the speech Abraham Lincoln delivered during his second inauguration.If you are not a regular reader of “But What If I’m Write?” (in which case I hope you stick around), I’m a former Congressional and Cabinet-level speechwriter, with a little over 30 years as a writer speechwriter, and press secretary for political leaders of both parties.
The sentence is so familiar to us — “With malice toward none,” it begins — as to have become almost meaningless to some. But reading the whole address in the presence of the statue of Lincoln, especially at night or on a gray day, with visitors from home and abroad quietly, respectfully taking it all in, gives it a sort of mystic power.”
Over the course of the thousands of speeches I’ve written, it would be fair to say I’ve drawn substantially on the texts of five key speeches by just three national leaders: Abraham Lincoln (the First and Second Inaugural Addresses), Theodore Roosevelt (The Man in the Arena/Citizenship in a Republic), and Franklin D. Roosevelt (Four Freedoms). I’ve also been inspired by Letter from Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a letter I think is one of the most important writings of any American at any time in our history.
What draws me to write about the Post’s editorial is the power of the right words to help us through the worst of times—whether the Civil War of 1861-1865, the ruthless corporate hoarding of wealth at the turn of the 20th century, the Great Depression and World War II, Vietnam, or the uncivil war between the nation’s political left and right that has been on the rise since the Obama campaign and presidency and, most recently the campaign and inauguration of our current president.
There was a time when Americans took comfort in the words of respected leaders and men and women of faith and letters. There was a time when thinking before speaking (or writing or tweeting), was a thing taught in school, enforced at home, and practiced by Americans of all social and economic stripes. There was a time when Americans could parse the meaning of a speech without having to go through ethical or moral contortions—you knew what was being said, you got the message, you understood the importance of the guidance.
Today, not so much. Today, too many Americans rely on the external and twisted filters of cable news or social media relationships to inform their opinions, taking little, if any, time to compare and contrast what was said vs. what others would have them believe was said. The result is a degree of national polarization I’ve not seen since the Civil Rights era, and even then, while America was burning itself down on crosses of racial hatred or lifting itself up on powerful words of racial partnership, there was not such a deep-seated sense of citizen-to-citizen distrust, disparagement, and shaming that exists in today’s national discourse (such as it is) and political theater.
It seems no individual or group is spared the humiliation of being called out by an almost illiterate president who receives his truth from a tiny cadre of counter-productive soothsayers who whisper into their leader’s ear from sunup until, well, the next sunup.
For more than 550 years (1409-1963), every papal coronation ceremony—the Catholic church’s investiture of God’s prince on earth—included this publicly-spoken reminder to the all-too-human Pope, “Sic transit gloria mundi” (“So passes worldly glory”), which has often been shortened to “All fame is fleeting.” It was a sobering prompt to the incoming pontiff to not let the earthly trappings of celebrity—no matter how faithfully or righteously ordained—distract from the hard truth that we will not take any of it with us when our time on this mortal coil expires.
What draws me to write about the Post’s editorial is the power of the right words to help us through the worst of times—whether the Civil War of 1861-1865, the ruthless corporate hoarding of wealth at the turn of the 20th century, the Great Depression and World War II, Vietnam, or the uncivil war between the nation’s political left and right that has been on the rise since the Obama campaign and presidency and, most recently the campaign and inauguration of our current president.
There was a time when Americans took comfort in the words of respected leaders and men and women of faith and letters. There was a time when thinking before speaking (or writing or tweeting), was a thing taught in school, enforced at home, and practiced by Americans of all social and economic stripes. There was a time when Americans could parse the meaning of a speech without having to go through ethical or moral contortions—you knew what was being said, you got the message, you understood the importance of the guidance.
Today, not so much. Today, too many Americans rely on the external and twisted filters of cable news or social media relationships to inform their opinions, taking little, if any, time to compare and contrast what was said vs. what others would have them believe was said. The result is a degree of national polarization I’ve not seen since the Civil Rights era, and even then, while America was burning itself down on crosses of racial hatred or lifting itself up on powerful words of racial partnership, there was not such a deep-seated sense of citizen-to-citizen distrust, disparagement, and shaming that exists in today’s national discourse (such as it is) and political theater.
It seems no individual or group is spared the humiliation of being called out by an almost illiterate president who receives his truth from a tiny cadre of counter-productive soothsayers who whisper into their leader’s ear from sunup until, well, the next sunup.
For more than 550 years (1409-1963), every papal coronation ceremony—the Catholic church’s investiture of God’s prince on earth—included this publicly-spoken reminder to the all-too-human Pope, “Sic transit gloria mundi” (“So passes worldly glory”), which has often been shortened to “All fame is fleeting.” It was a sobering prompt to the incoming pontiff to not let the earthly trappings of celebrity—no matter how faithfully or righteously ordained—distract from the hard truth that we will not take any of it with us when our time on this mortal coil expires.
Every president in my lifetime—from Truman to Obama (though a case can be made to exclude Nixon)—despite their many moral and ethical frailties and failings (or, perhaps, because of them), understood and embraced the reality of the limits of their office and the fleeting nature of their power. Until now.
And now, to abduct a line from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” There is no doubt in my mind that we are a nation under siege from within our own borders, countless sieges being waged against truth and reason wherever those two noble philosophies reside. I also believe that the engines of these internal sieges are fueled and weaponized by forces outside our borders, forces as easy to identify as Russia and China and Iran, and forces still unknown to us, but nonetheless real and dangerous.
The fight against such siege warfare would normally fall on the shoulders of the nation’s chief executive, but because he has abrogated that responsibility, and, in fact, has become a vocal enabler of the siege against truth and reason, it falls hard on the shoulders of Americans who still believe in the founding principles, who still understand the nobility of our purpose despite the failures of our methods, who are still willing to stand against the winds and tides of cowardly inhumanity and social disrespect.
Most of all, the fight to right our ship against the cannon blasts of a morally corrupt and intellectually vacuous prince of his own gilt-masted frigate, depends on Americans who still understand what Lincoln was saying, praying for, beseeching a torn nation to take as its own new mission:
And now, to abduct a line from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” There is no doubt in my mind that we are a nation under siege from within our own borders, countless sieges being waged against truth and reason wherever those two noble philosophies reside. I also believe that the engines of these internal sieges are fueled and weaponized by forces outside our borders, forces as easy to identify as Russia and China and Iran, and forces still unknown to us, but nonetheless real and dangerous.
The fight against such siege warfare would normally fall on the shoulders of the nation’s chief executive, but because he has abrogated that responsibility, and, in fact, has become a vocal enabler of the siege against truth and reason, it falls hard on the shoulders of Americans who still believe in the founding principles, who still understand the nobility of our purpose despite the failures of our methods, who are still willing to stand against the winds and tides of cowardly inhumanity and social disrespect.
Most of all, the fight to right our ship against the cannon blasts of a morally corrupt and intellectually vacuous prince of his own gilt-masted frigate, depends on Americans who still understand what Lincoln was saying, praying for, beseeching a torn nation to take as its own new mission:
“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 . . . and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”It will, indeed be a happy new year if we can start down that path together.
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