 Today I visited the Lincoln memorial and felt a genuine sadness at the fact that our country has totally failed to live up to the ideals that it was founded upon. Consider the last words of Lincoln’s second inaugural address which are carved into the walls of the Lincoln memorial: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Far from creating a lasting peace among nations, the United States has become a world imperialist hegemon, which acts as the number one threat to world peace. Or consider the much simpler quote from George Washington plastered all over the Washington monument’s gift store. “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." Perhaps old George would have been more correct to say, Capital, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth, concentration, and accumulation. Because the U.S. is now a country which prioritizes the profits of capitalists and bankers far above the liberty of its citizens. The words that most affected me though were from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which like the second inaugural address, have been immortalized on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial. “[T]his 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." How far we have strayed from a Government of by and for the people that these American leaders of the past dreamed of, and that hundreds of thousands of union soldiers fought to create. We now live in a so called Democracy where 92% of elections are determined by the candidate who raises the most money, where the Supreme Court has completely legalized political bribery through passing Citizens United, and where bills are literally written by corporate lobbying firms. Right across from the Lincoln Memorial is the Federal Reserve, which is one of many tools that the U.S. Government uses to control currency, and maintain unprecedented dominance over the global economy. Ironic that such a building is placed right across from a memorial dedicated to preserving a Government “of, by, and for the people.” So while my trip to the Lincoln memorial slightly disturbed me, it also inspired me. Visiting the memorial that day were busses of young schoolchildren on a field trip around Washington D.C. It got me thinking about what kind of country we are going to leave the youth? It is fully possible to create an economy and political system that works of, by, and for the people. It is called socialism. The only way to actually live up to the ideals that the country was founded upon is for working people to stand up and fight, to stand up and take this country back from the cretinous Wall Street parasites who have completely captured it. Just like our ancestors in the Union army stood up against slavery and tyranny not so long ago. Author Edward Liger Smith is an American Political Scientist and specialist in anti-imperialist and socialist projects, especially Venezuela and China. He also has research interests in the role southern slavery played in the development of American and European capitalism. He is a wrestling coach at Loras College. Archives April 2024
2 Comments
Jon
4/12/2024 08:15:06 am
"the US working class was so committed to colonialist expansion that Northern white workers’ joining the Union Army en masse in the years immediately preceding the Civil War was much less to do with their opposition to slavery and support for Emancipation, than it was the manifest desire to prevent newly acquired Western territories from falling into slaveocrat hands and thereby denying white workers their own settlement."
Jon
4/12/2024 09:06:06 am
Ever since the U.S. was created it has been working for its people. It's just all been at the expense of other nations. Leave a Reply. |
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