Today is the 150th Anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. President Lincoln predicted that “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” By marking this anniversary, hopefully we will prove Lincoln wrong.
I’m attending the Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD) annual conference being held in Washington D.C. Here are the photos I took this morning on my visit to the Lincoln Memorial to mark the 150th Anniversary.
The Gettysburg Address, South Wall of Lincoln Memorial
For purposes of this blog, the Address reminds us that we are
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
As I wrote in a previous post, prenatal testing for Down syndrome and other genetic conditions can challenge whether we really mean that.
On my taxi ride back to the hotel, my cab driver, a native-born American, asked what I was doing up so early at the memorial. I told him about the 150th Anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, to which he asked:
Oh yeah? Where was that given?
So, perhaps Lincoln’s prediction may prove correct, if we choose to forget.
“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. 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…”
i.e We who are alive now should dedicate ourselves with increased devotion to this same cause that all men are created equal and “that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”