272 Words

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation invited all Americans to submit 272 words in honor of the sixteenth president's famous Gettysburg Address.

To commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Address, on the 19th day of the 11th month of this, our 2013th year, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Museum and Foundation challenge you to participate in an historic project: “272 Words,” wherein people from all walks of life write 272 words in the spirit of the 16th U.S. President. You can write about Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address or a cause which stirs your passions, but remember, in the spirit of Mr. Lincoln, write only 272 words.

 This year I decided to submit 272 words of my own. Keeping in mind we're emulating a speech I wrote my 272 words in a manner characteristic of what I'd like to say to a throng of people. Short, succinct and hopefully pushing the right buttons to make people think. Two hundred and seventy-two words isn't a lot of room to express an idea with enough conviction to have an impact upon the listeners, or in the case, the readers. Hopefully mine carries some of the same resolution our former president's carried all those decades ago:

How do we talk about the United States today? The land of the free? Of opportunity? As a shining example of rule of secular law?

There was a dream once -- a promise made to each and every person born to this nation: you are exempt from the tyranny sweeping through other nations. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is yours for no other reason than you were born to, or came to these shores yearning to be free. That promise was penned in ink and confirmed by thirty-nine men. The freedom to speak your mind without retaliation; to hold on to your religion against another’s will; to report on the government and others -- all are inalienable rights. There are more, the right to privacy, to petition the government and to be secure in your belongings. And there are more.

Yet these rights -- this covenant -- has gradually been eroded over time. We’ve seen speech by individuals restricted, while speech by corporate interests expanded; the majority religion imposed on the minority; the press harassed and hounded for not toeing the acceptable line.

Abraham Lincoln once declared all men are created equal. We believe this to be true at the polls demonstrated by ‘one man, one vote,’ but this has not been the truth in society where well funded interests are trying to take away equal rights from the gay population, from the disenfranchised, from those who don’t participate in the majority religion.

Two months and two-hundred and thirty years ago thirty-nine men signed a piece of paper creating a vision come to life. We have repeatedly failed them.