GETTYSBURG: 150 YEARS LATER

Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

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 dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field 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 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.

 

This amazing memorial to the casualties and survivors of the most grievous battle in American history is from beginning to end about a collective entity called the American nation, and its  components, American people.

What was created in 1776, Lincoln says, was a new aggregation of free people joining together for the betterment of all. 

Right here, right now, the President says, the collective nation is in mortal peril, shattered over “Liberty for All.” 

Had the Union Army lost Gettysburg, had Lee been able to threaten Philadelphia, Baltimore or Washington, Lincoln might have had to sue for peace, might have had to accept secession, disunion.  But, because its military losses would not be “in vain,” the whole nation, the notional America God saw from on high, could engender “a new birth of freedom,” this time really for all.

And the identifications crucial to democracy, of people with their government and with one another as citizens, would survive.

He should only see us now.

What would Lincoln think of politicians and media entertainers who decry government, any American government, as an imposition, whose careers depend on alienating citizens from their government, and who work to alienate “their” Americans from other Americans?

What’s happened to our collective, one for all, identity? Freedom once chose national collaboration.  Now people want to be free to choose their own path.  Maybe the biggest questions for today’s American government by, of, and for the people are: What people? Where are they?  How do they conceive themselves, and to what greater idea are they dedicated?

I don’t think, “I’m not gonna get screwed by a) welfare queens b) uppity minorities c) gay people d) ‘illegals’ e) activist judges f) Tea party radicals g) the 1% h) all of the above, and I forgot some,” is a national meme Lincoln would endorse.

Rather, I’m sure, he would worry that the soldiers at Gettysburg, and those in Iraq and Afghanistan, might have vainly died for a society or a state or a populace that is no longer a nation at all.        

 

IT’S NOT THE SPYING, IT’S THE LYING

 

Does anyone deny that the inherent vulnerability of all forms of digital communication to archiving and data mining is of significant value to governments seeking to secure themselves against their enemies?

Given that, why shouldn’t governments exploit this vulnerability to identify, track down and defeat those enemies?

Of course, in a democracy, “those enemies” should never include the people.

To the contrary, in American democracy government is meant always to be, as President Abraham Lincoln put it in his Gettysburg Address:  “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

The horror of the Obama Administration’ communications penetrations is that everything about them, how they are used, against whom, upon what predicates, under whose authority, under whose supervision, even -- but for Edward Snowden’s leaks to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian, -- their very existence, has been hidden from the American people.

Snowden’s whistle-blowing (any anyone who disputes that label should ask himself, “Why did he tell The Guardian and not the Russians or the Chinese?”) has ignited a great political war, the most important of our generation.  It is a war about power, power which, under strict rule of law, should reside, not in the White House or the Congress, but with the people.

As usual, the essence of power is knowledge, in democratic terms, the knowledge the people need to grant informed consent to their representatives in the legislature and their administrators in the executive branch.

The Obama Administration is just the latest, although perhaps the greatest White House offender against our Constitutional concept of democratic governance.  It has lied by omission and commission.  It has consistently denied the American people knowledge of the realities of government surveillance.  It has thus pre-empted the consent of the governed, the thing which gives them legal and moral legitimacy.  It has abused the people directly and individually, and it has abused their elected representatives.

In the name of national security, the Obama Administration has treated the American people as its enemy.

It certainly treated the documentary-making journalist Laura Poitras like an enemy, assaulting her with not just digital technology, but in-her-face gumshoe intimidation.  And this went on for months, long before Snowden reached out to her with his explosive information about “our KGB.”

The details of the security apparat’s harassment of Poitras are spelled out in Peter Maass’ terrific NY Times story of the Snowden to Poitras to Greenwald to us revelations of snoops gone wild.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

It’s not just the White House that hides the facts, and not just ordinary people who are misled.

As The Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman pointed out:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/intelligence-committee-nsa-vote-justin-amash

The leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, with the acquiescence of its members, hid from all the other members of the House, the facts of the NSA’s phone data collection in the days before the crucial 2011 vote to approve radically expanded domestic as well as international spying under the so-called Patriot Act.

This is how establishment Democrats and Republicans worked together specifically to disenfranchise the millions of voters who installed the Tea Party caucus in the House.  As Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) told Ackerman, ‘We're trying to get information so we can do our jobs as congressmen. If we're not able to get that information, it's inappropriate."  

Or worse than inappropriate, “this is tantamount to subversion of the democratic process," Bea Edwards, the executive director of the Government Accountability Project told Ackerman.

Now, thanks to Ackerman and Maass, Poitras and Greenwald, and of course thanks to Edward Snowden, the American people know better, and are now knowledge-armed to fight this vital war against anti-democratic abuse of governmental power.

It’s going to be a long war, and hard for the people to win.  For every story in the Guardian or the Times, there are the sorry performances at President Obama’s last news conference, at which he revealed his “trust me, even if I can’t trust the facts to you” formula for surveillance “reform.”  Gregory Ferenstein of TechCrunch told the story of how the White House press corps whiffed almost entirely, and theirby left their customers in the dark.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/09/press-corps-fails-to-ask-any-nsa-questions-at-obamas-nsa-press-conference/

Thanks to Tom Murphy for pointing out Ferenstein’s piece to me.

The spying continues, as it partly should, but so does the journalistic process of revealing lies and discovering secrets, of passing along information, of refining info into knowledge, and hopefully, at some point, knowledge into effective power.  People power, what democracy is supposed to be all about.

As I said at the top, spying is not the problem, it’s the lack of control over the spying, the lack of honesty with the people so they might exercise, or democratically delegate control over the ever-more-effective, ever-more-intrusive revolution in digital surveillance.

It’s the lying, stupid.