csua.org/u/l2n -> www.samefacts.com/archives/literature_/2008/03/if_ann_coulter_had_liveblogged_the_gettysburg_address.php
Mark Kleiman Old Abe is approaching the podium, looking even more like a badly-dressed and ill-proportioned scarecrow suffering from a depressive disorder than he usually does. I mean, if you're going to be an empty suit, couldn't you at least find a suit that fits? And as usual, he's not wearing an American flag lapel pin. Probably thinks it's tacky, and that "real patriotism" doesn't have to be displayed. Unfortunately, duty has required me to get a seat up close, so I'm likely to be able to hear his annoyingly high, faint voice. Of course, it's going to be hard to take anything he says seriously, since he's obviously just angling for votes in Pennsylvania. Notice that he didn't bother to give a speech at Antietam. he looks like he came out of a test tube marked "Failure." But somehow I doubt that the suffragette harpies who swoon over Father Abraham are going to be pleased by the omission. Anyway, shouldn't someone as smart as Lincoln is supposed to be know that it's mothers who "bring forth"? He's bringing us back to the Marxist rant of 1776, completely ignoring the Constitution of 1787 in rhetoric as he has in practice. I'll believe we're all equal when I'm as tall as Lincoln, or as ugly. And the slaves he's so fond of may be his equals, but I'm damned if they're mine. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. As if Mr Lincoln's victory over his sectional enemies on behalf of his black friends were the same as the survival of the nation. 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. It would be more "fitting and proper" to leave the dead in peace rather than to use them as a club with which to beat conservatives. But Lincoln, like all liberals, is completely shameless. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. I defy anyone to find any sense whatever in this sentence, large or small. And does he think that "consecrate" and "hallow" really add anything to "dedicate"? The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. As if Lincoln had any power to add anything to the bravery of our troops. And it's about a battle fought on the Fourth of July, which Lincoln's buddy Fred Douglass says he and his fellow Africans shouldn't celebrate. If Lincoln had an ounce of real patriotism in him, he would have disowned a that rabid racist years ago. But of course doing so would have cost him black votes, and he didn't want to risk that. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, At last! 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. We should all be "dedicated" to whatever cause our politicians choose to assign us. 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 is, that we should continue to throw good lives after bad just to make the left-wing radical abolitionists happy. He's folding up his notes and starting to walk off the stage. The crowd, stunned by the sheer triviality of it all, mostly sits on its hands. Why did he bother to come all the way from Washington if he didn't have anything to say? Pretty words, as long as you don't try to find any meaning. Unlike McClellan, a real fighter with real national-security credentials, this man simply does not pass the Commander-in-Chief threshold. If the Republicans re-nominate this skinny, funny-looking lawyer from Illinois, they're dead meat. Thanks to DailyKos commenter Mother Mags for reminding me about the lapel pin.
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