Our Past Has Gone On Before Us Our Future Grows Closer Every Day

I have recently revisited and reread Lincoln’s address before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on January 27, 1838. The then 28 year old Lincoln clearly saw and understood that this nation can be destroyed only from within. “At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we must live through all time or die by suicide.” Twenty three (23) years later on February 21, 1861 in a speech delivered to the New Jersey Senate while on his way to Washington for his Inauguration Lincoln said: “I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an (sic) humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.”

For more than a year, the progressive left has clearly chosen an all in gambling mentality and is using its accumulated power to attempt to destroy both a sitting President and the people who continue to support him. Simultaneously, those same supporting people have begun to demonstrate that they understand what is at stake and are digging in their heels and contemplating taking not one further step back. As a consequence, the America I am currently viewing seems to be gathering itself at the edge of the cusp between a republic at peace with itself and a cusp leading to war within itself. In the growing shadow of a second American Civil War we must reconsider the “testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure”.

(Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863)

In the face of the ever present bitter rancor from the left, I remain confident that our sitting president will likely win a second term of office because of the support of these people from our nation’s center. I am, however, becoming convinced there is a growing possibility that we will and must face a life changing course choice sometime during his second term. The United States will either find a way to search its past and rediscover a way to go forward and really exist as a shining city on a hill or it will, simply, self destruct. Our potential self destruction could likely be initiated by an economic collapse or by any of the several social upheavals currently confronting us. In either case, a traumatic change seems to be coming and is necessary. The change must come for us and this nation to ultimately move forward toward our greater historical promise. The upheaval will be painful, maybe to an extreme, but it will provide us time to critically contemplate what went wrong and that will lead to our rediscovering who and what we are as a people and a nation. The contemplation and course correction must take place not just for us but also for the world. This nation needs to be the shining city on the hill or it and all other world civilizations will return to chaos.