Gettysburg Address offers special significance for Memorial
Day
In this fateful election year, Abraham Lincoln’s words of courage and compassion can transcend political divisions
May 26, 2024
On Memorial
Day, we remember our fallen soldiers.
For
several years I have visited California’s oldest secular cemetery, the Oak Hill
Memorial Park in San Jose, every Memorial Day to silently express my gratitude
to those who sacrificed their lives so we can bask in the sunshine of freedom
and democracy.
Veterans
and politicians make moving speeches and observe a minute of silence on this
hallowed day as the U.S. flag flutters in the breeze, rustling the surrounding
sycamore trees. Doves are released as symbols of unity and peace. Small flags
line rows and rows of headstones of 14,000 veterans with names that connect the
living to the dead: Joseph Milligan of Tennessee (World War I), Charles Harding
of Colorado (World War II), Andrew Montello of California (Korea), and on and
on.
This
year, I will do something different. I will carry a copy of the address
President Abraham Lincoln delivered at Gettysburg, Penn., on Nov. 19, 1863, and
read it as I walk alongside the graves at Oak Hill. More than 160 years later,
Lincoln’s timeless words speak to us with an urgency we must heed.
In
particular, two topics demand our attention in this fateful election year.
First, as much as we would like our democracy to be strong, it is, in reality,
a fragile entity, as the Jan. 6 insurrection showed. Unless we are vigilant
about safeguarding it, democracy can succumb to autocracy. Second, the most
powerful tool to ensure the flourishing of democracy is to exercise our sacred
right to vote. Ignoring or neglecting this right can open the gate to tyranny.
Complacency is the enemy of democracy and good governance.
As
Lincoln saw it, the Civil War tested the very survival of the nation “conceived
in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Slavery, the antithesis of equality, was the evil of his time, and until it was
eliminated, even at the horrific cost of a North-South war, Lincoln knew
America would not endure.
We
may not have slavery today, but the challenges are as daunting. Despite making
modest progress in race relations since Lincoln’s time, the undercurrent of
racism in many facets of our lives continues to undermine America. And
political division over issues such as reproductive freedom, affordable health
care, an unfair tax code, gun violence, volatile borders and climate change
also threaten the integrity of the Constitution and the survival of our nation.
I
request my fellow Americans on this Memorial Day to conscientiously read
the Gettysburg Address. It comprises just 272 words and took Lincoln
only two minutes to deliver to the gathering of 15,000, yet it has the power to
evoke the noble and the transcendent in each of us, a nation of almost
335 million.
The
courage, compassion and vision inherent in the Gettysburg Address should
persuade us not to think North or South, Blue or Red, coastal or inland, or
working class or elite when we vote in the November election but instead, to
think America.
As in
Lincoln’s time, “the great task remaining before us” today is keeping our
nation whole. We can do it by resolving that those who “gave the last full
measure of devotion … shall not have died in vain.”
So while we enjoy the biryani and the barbecue on this Memorial Day, let us set aside some time to reflect on the Gettysburg Address so we can dedicate ourselves to the “unfinished work” that our fallen soldiers and veterans “have thus far so nobly advanced.”
Lincoln concluded his address with the hope that democracy “shall not perish from the earth.” While that remains our goal too, we must first ensure with our votes in November that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish” from these United States.
Hasan
Zillur Rahim is a mathematics professor at San Jose City College.
