Happy Independence Day!

Below is one of the greatest speeches of all times.  Even though it has been over 11 score now and it is about one specific event, the meaning behind it is just as important now as it was back in 1863 when Mr. Lincoln gave this speech.  Please think of those who are fighting for us now, have fought for us in the past, and especially those who have sacrificed all so that we can enjoy the food and beverage of our choice on this day which celebrates our birth as a nation and the freedoms we continue to enjoy.

 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it 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.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. 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 here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.  - Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln, 1863

 

May God bless you, your family, and the United States of America along with our allies worldwide!