In case you missed it there was a debate about America as a symbol to the world between former president of the United States Abraham Lincoln and current Secretary of State John Kerry.
Mr. Kerry: ” I will make my argument succinct – “Americans have the right to be stupid! …….”
Judges: “Oookay! Mr. Lincoln, your response?”
Mr. Lincoln: “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 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 not 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 and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Judges: “Mr. Kerry, You have certainly exemplified your ‘right’ by your comments and throughout your, uh, political career. However it is the opinion of the judges that Mr. Lincoln has more appropriately articulated the subject of the debate by identifying America’s role in guaranteeing freedoms for us today and for future generations. Mr. Lincoln, congratulations on winning the 2013 American Statesman Trophy. May all of us resolve that our dead have not died in vain.
