Twelve score and ten years ago, our forebears brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all humans are created equal.
Eight score and three years ago, one of our most capable presidents, Abraham Lincoln, called us to reaffirm our commitment to the values of that founding document: The Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration said, not only are all humans created equal, but they are also “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and that among those are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Lincoln could have been thought of as a sea captain, trying to guide his ship through a treacherous storm he knew was strong enough to sink the vessel with all aboard. He went on to say,
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any other nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
While the United States did survive that test, Lincoln did not. He was unable to guide its reconstruction and help prepare his nation for further tests. In declaring the great civil war to be a test, Lincoln did not suggest that it would be the only one. Passing that awful test did not guarantee we would not, in future years, be harshly tested again.
We may be in such a time of further testing. Flawed as our forebears were, when they wrote the founding documents, their words have proven themselves strong and inspiring. They said, “all men are created equal,” and we now contend that all humans are created equal. They knew slavery threw a bright light of hypocrisy upon them that would eventually call forth a reckoning. Yet, they did nothing to address it. And even Lincoln said, “our fathers brought forth…” when we now know that plenty of mothers played a vital role. We also now face the fact that humans previously living on this continent were not beneficiaries, and their treatment would become shameful American history.
Lincoln implied that America could fail the test, that our nation might not endure, but that the founding documents might be strong enough to inspire another nation (“so conceived and so dedicated”) but better able to live up to its founding inspiration.
Does the survival of our nation depend on granting all humans equal access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Can we pass this current test if we accept, at least, that all Americans deserve equal access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that anyone else, being human, deserves it too, but not necessarily at the expense of the United States?
If we can rededicate ourselves to these founding ideals, we will not accept the mistaken idea that harming other countries helps ours. Helping all humans have life, liberty, and the ability to pursue happiness, whether under democratic governments or not, benefits America.
A Christian American citizen would love their neighbors as themselves. A fitting definition of love would be to treat all humans as equals and help them enjoy life, liberty, and possibilities of happiness.
Americans know that slavery was a glaring hypocrisy at our founding. Christian Americans should know that treating all humans with anything less than love is also hypocrisy. We must remember that Jesus also had the gall to command us to put others before ourselves. Such guidance from someone you claim to be your Lord should drop you to your knees.
Love this. Totally agree with you.
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Another interesting irony is that in Lincoln’s time, there was a political party called the “Know Nothings.” Lincoln had apparently been accused of siding with them, so he responded:
“I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty–to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”