your village voice

Let Freedom Ring?

Tim O'Callaghan, a good friend of mine in Athens GA, had the dubious pleasure to attend a jingoistic "Christian" church service on July 3rd. He told me that all of the songs at the service were patriotic July 4th fare (only one being a Christian hymn), little children with US flags ran up front and formed a cross, and amidst the singing, displayed on a large screen images of tanks, soldiers and bombs going off. Needless to say, he felt nauseous.

Just the other day, Tim sent me the following email, playing off the Gettysburg Address that was spoken by the minister at the said service, echoing what Lincoln probably would have said had he made the speech himself:

The Gettysburg regress

2 months and 2 years ago our leaders brought forth on this planet a new war conceived in idiocy and dedicated to the proposition that all Arabs were in league with terrorists. Now we are engaged in a great political war, testing whether a war on terrorism or any war so conceived and so pointless, can long endure.

We are met on a battle-field of ideas. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as ludicrous, as a final resting place of lies, for those that have given their lives, that might feel they have some control of terrorism and oil. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this; the madness must end.

But in a large 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 be never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the advancement of truth, to allow no longer, men and women of any nationality to die due to lies and prejudice. 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 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, will actually operate this way, and not just claim to, or we shall surely perish from this earth.

Amen, brother. Now there's a sermon I truly endorse.

posted by the prisoner @ 10:19:00 AM