Happy 6th Anniversary!

First of all, let me congratulate all the Commentarama/CommentaramaPolitics-ians on our 6th Anniversary! What a wonderful and thoughtful ride we have had for the last six years. I especially want to thank Andrew for giving me the opportunity to air my thoughts for all of these years and a very special thanks to Kit and all who contribute their inciteful comments and humor year after year. I continue to learn so much and laugh a lot! Also, I would like to add on this Memorial Day 2015, how much I miss our dear LawHawkSF/LawHawkRFD. He is missed every single day.

So, as we go into the official first weekend of "summer" and our seventh year, short of anything ever written by Shakespeare (or Andrew!), below is one of the most memorable speeches ever given commemmorating those who gave and continue to give their lives for the greatest cause of freedom. It was purported to have been written in haste on a train on the way to the brutal battlefield of Gettysburg on November 19, 1863.

The crowd expected another long, droning speech, but instead Abraham Lincoln delivered a short three minute speech. But in that that three minutes, the speech Lincoln gave has become one of the most memorable speeches ever given about war and the great sacrifice of those who "gave their full measure of devotion". Bless all of those who give their lives for the great cause freedom and may we never forget their sacrifice.

Abraham Lincoln - His Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg
November 19, 1863

Four score 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 dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field 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 can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not 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.

Bless all those who have served and continue to serve, and those who have given their lives for the cause of freedom.

Interesting factoid - "Lincoln was feverish and weak, with a severe headache the day of the speech. A protracted illness followed, which included a vesicular rash and was diagnosed as a mild case of smallpox. It thus seems highly likely that Lincoln was in the prodromal period of smallpox when he delivered the Gettysburg address." [Wikipedia]