Thursday, November 14, 2013

My letter to my local newspaper The Patriot News RE Retraction for our 1863 editorial calling Gettysburg Address 'silly remarks': Editorial

RE: Retraction for our 1863 editorial calling Gettysburg Address 'silly remarks': Editorial
http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/11/a_patriot-news_editorial_retraction_the_gettysburg_address.html

Dear Editor,

LOVED your Editorial "Retraction for our 1863 editorial calling Gettysburg Address 'silly remarks'"!!!

Hindsight certainly is 20/20!  It really is totally impossible to know beyond an educated guess what speeches and stances will stand the tests of time, as well as what ideas and projects are a worthwhile investment.  However we can try our best to be educated- and compassionate, as well as humble, knowing that, as my brother was fond of saying when we were little: "No one is perfect."

In light of that fact I can not help but wish the Patriot News the best of luck, and hope that you have many many more years ahead of publishing good, bad, and atrocious news & opinions. 

Oh and just because I clicked onto your article via facebook, does not mean we prefer online news: My family, plus many of our friends, have been subscribers for years and we would all much prefer to have a daily newspaper arrive every day, ready to be savored and shared at our unplugged leisure as part of an every day daily routine.  It is more satisfying, more convenient, and it is infinitely more trustworthy, for we know the words won't be changed, and the information won't be disappeared.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab


Lincoln's few appropriate words were to dedicate a national cemetery, the first of its kind in American history. The idea of creating a National Cemetery sprang directly from the horrors of the aftermath of the battle at Gettysburg and also reflects changing notions of the government's responsibility to its citizen soldiers, a result of the clash between the reality of war and prevailing notions of a proper death. 11/13/2013 Sean Simmers | ssimmers@pennlive.com The Patriot News




***
the text of 
Abraham Lincoln's 
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 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.

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