Leadership

I made much of my living from technical writing. I am proud of my level of literacy and I have always loved, above all other writing, the Gettysburg Address. Not a word is wasted; every word is perfect and  at the Getty Museum in LA once, I saw many of Mr. Lincoln's hand written speeches that predated Gettysburg laid out chronologically in a case. In these speeches are lines that became part of the Gettysburg Address so you can see the speech evolve. The words move me like no others.

So with all the talk — ALL the talk — about Rob Ford, Mr. Lincoln is back in my mind and might do well in your mind too! These words demonstrate more beautifully that once politicians were eloquent thinkers, writers and orators.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on 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 on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, 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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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 it can never forget what they did here. 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 for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this 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.