On the second day of Christmas 2012 I saw the movie "Lincoln". It made think a lot, just like the movie "Marley". It made me regret that I missed the movies: Teacher, Nixon and the movie on Hoover. But I will catch up. One of the things that strikes immediately is the fact that the United States was new, young, and divided in the North and the South. It makes you reflect on the division in our society today. I admire the conviction and perseverance of President Lincoln to stop slavery and unite the nation. The movie makes clear that black and white fought to abolish slavery. I wonder why he was murdered. There is a storyline starting with the Founding Documents, continuing with President Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and President Kennedy and for now ending with President Obama. The story of liberty and unity. I ask myself who or what is going to unite our community. I took another look at the Gettysburg Address by Lincoln and remained quiet for a long while. I never saw such short speech that feel like a very long speech.
"The Gettysburg Address
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 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."
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