"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
. . . to finish the work we are in . . .
This bit from Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address pushes us to ask, as a nation, "what is the work we are in"? No doubt in Lincoln's case this had to do with the Union and perhaps with a government "of, by, and for the people." FDR's Four Freedom's Speech moved the nation toward responsibility for the freedoms of people beyond the nation's borders by asserting that the freedoms claimed by Americans are not merely American, but also human rights. Lincoln allows for this expansion by admonishing his audience to "cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Questions remain: what constitutes a just peace? Is it available to all nations? Can we regard our enemies without malice? Even if that is difficult, do we long for a world of charity and peace without malice? What price would we pay for that compromise?
And then I"m back to pondering the assertion that Americans are formed by the impulse of pietist perfectionism and wondering if the purity inherent in that impulse prevents us from compromise. Lincoln's vision certainly encompassed a complex, impure world in which good and evil were mixed together. In a view like that the axis of evil passes through each person and each nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment