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 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.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
On The Road – dmkingto – Noncompliance Issue
Baud
Happy Fourth to all actual patriots.
zhena gogolia
My great-great-uncle died in a hospital a month after a Reb shot him in the knee.
HinTN
@zhena gogolia: It was brutal. Up in Franklin, TN, they have a museum displaying the instruments with which doctors attempted to treat the wounded.
Lincoln was a great gift. We sorely need that leadership, today.
sab
My great grandmother’s oldest brother died at Bull Run.
Thanks for front paging this address. I went to elementary school in the South, so we never had to memorize it like a lot of kids did up North.
Suzanne
My great-great-grandfather, born in Boston to Jewish immigrants from what would become Germany, enlisted in the Union army and apparently found in some battles before being kicked out for being underage. He later changed his name, went to California during the Gold Rush, and then became one of the first settlers of what became Alaska, in whose state library the family records are kept.
It’s stories like this that make me proud to be an American.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, may well perish in America, but it has thankfully taken root elsewhere as well, and will endure. And let us hope that someday it returns to the land from whence it came.
narya
Or the last lines of the Second Inaugural: 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.
Or Frederick Douglass’ 4th of July speech . . .
Ishiyama
Letter to James C. Conkling:
zhena gogolia
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: We haven’t lost it yet.
zhena gogolia
@Ishiyama:
Wow, sounds kind of familiar.
tobie
My mother got out of Europe just before the start of WWII in 1938. My father came as a penniless refugee in 1948. No two people loved the US and appreciated every opportunity it gave them more than my parents. Proud citizens. Proud union members. Proud Americans. We never visited Gettysburg but went to DC and my father wept as he read the Gettysburg address. It was his history. He embraced it as his own. I don’t know what he would say if he were alive today. He’d be shattered.
sab
@HinTN: Tom Levenson’s germ theory book has a very interesting chapter on changes in military medicine in the 19th century.
A different great grandmother came down from Canada to go to nursing school in the Midwest, inspired by Clara Barton.
Ishiyama
@sab: My great-grandmother’s first husband died from wounds that he received at Spottsylvania; then she married his brother, my great-grandfather.
tobie
So many of you with direct family connections to the Civil War! That’s amazing.
Jeffg166
A lot of us learned from history. I still have hope for this country. The republicans don’t want democracy. They never have. They want to rule not govern. They have used legal means to get where they are. They hope to set up a structure where they can’t be fully weeded out. It might last longer than my life but ultimately it will come crashing down.
ryk
I got an email this morning from the Social Security Administration praising the passage of the big, beautiful bill. WTAF?
H.E.Wolf
@sab:
I memorized the Gettysburg Address as a teenager when our choir director put a 4-part choral setting on our summer program. The composer was George Lynn.
Ever since then, when I recite the opening sentences, I hear George Lynn’s version of 1 line: “…that all men are created equal. Equal.”
HinTN
@sab: I have not reached that chapter but the book is on my bedside table.
FDRLincoln
My great great great great uncle enlisted in an Iowa Volunteer unit in 1862, was sent to garrison St Louis and died of dysentery in 1863.
twbrandt
I had forgotten how powerful, how eloquent, the Gettysburg Address is. It’s perfect for this threatening Fourth. Thanks, David, for posting it.
sab
@sab: Big oops! Florence Nightingale, not Clara Barton.
twbrandt
@ryk: so did I. Barf.
MazeDancer
Not sure we even read it in TN.
Going to read the Declaration, out loud, as I always do on the Fourth. The last paragraph just soars.
This year, may have some trouble betting through the whole thing.
Put out my flag. Not going to let racists and nazis have my country until they lock me up.
Wonder how the Marines are going to make it in FL. Feels a bit Vietnamy with the heat and the monsters making you do shit against your morals.
At least the NYT is doing its best to get Mamdani elected.
HeleninEire
@ryk: I got it too. I am 8 months from retirement, so a few years ago I opened a SS account on their site. I guess that’s how they have my email.
Rachel Bakes
@tobie: I knew about connections to the Revolutionary war in my family, then about 10 years ago while reading a family member’s journal I learned about one in the Union Army. He wrote on 4/14/1865 learning that Lincoln had been killed. My parents had no idea we had kin fighting-though not surprising to me.
Suzanne
@ryk: Do you get the sense that the GOP is trying to exacerbate a generational divide? I do.
Tony Jay
@Jeffg166:
The unfaced truth about American politics is that the Democrats base their actions on the lessons of history, while Republicans learnt their history from bad action movies.
Arguably.
MagdaInBlack
My grt grandfather, along with his 4 siblings and widowed mother, came to the Sheridan IL area from Alsace-Lorraine in 1853. He was 10. In 1862 he went off to war and spent his time traveling across the south with Sherman. Came home, acquired a “fine farm” (an old Lasalle county history book called it that) and a wife. Had 5 daughters, only 1 of whom married a farmer. When he died, 4 daughters wanted the money so all but 80 acres was sold. My father was the only male heir so he farmed his mothers 80 acres. Farm all gone now, but it makes for a good story and I do have his discharge papers.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Mr DAW and I should be paying taxes on our social security. It should be counted in our income and taxed accordingly. I don’t see why it merits or needs a special category.
brendancalling
250 years ago we were fighting the King’s red coats with an underfunded army of farmers and irregulars.
Now we fight a wanna-be King’s army of red hats. It hasn’t come to force of arms, yet. I hope that it doesn’t.
Spanky
@Suzanne: Oh yes! You’ve got to give them credit for playing the long game, which not only got us to where we are today, but in this case is part of the plan to discredit SS.
Got my email from BigBalls this morning, too.
My grandmother’s father put on the blue uniform almost as soon as he got off the boat from Ireland. We assume he was paid to go in some banker’s son’s place. Was in a Federal artillary battery in several battles, including Gettysburg. Seems to have escaped without a scratch, except for hearing loss.
tobie
@Rachel Bakes: What a family history! And how great that you’ve taken the time to get to know your forebears by reading their journals. It’s amazing that your family stored them for so long. It makes me wonder if there’s a way that personal ancestry research can lead to a civic revival. This is an all hands on deck moment. Who knows what strategy will work.
Betty
@Ishiyama: Malignant heart and deceitful speech. Wow, how relevant is that sentiment.
Spanky
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
See Suzanne at 26. I think it is purely a poison pill.
BlueGuitarist
The Gettysburg Address is a brilliant speech! It did a lot to emphasize the importance of the Declaration of Independence, much reviled by the secessionists.
Here’s a key part of Lincoln’s 1857 Speech on the Dred Scott Decision:
“I think the authors of that notable instrument [the Declaration of Independence] intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal — equal in “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
This they said, and this meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism.”
Betty
@ryk: It is being called spam because the statements in it are false. Just as Trump made a number of false statements about the bill in Iowa yesterday. Hard not to despair.
PsiFighter37
@ryk: Got it last night. Disgusting
J.
@Suzanne: Wow! What a great story!
Betty
@BlueGuitarist: More brilliance. Our politicians would do well to study and emulate Lincoln’s speeches.
snoey
@Spanky: My earliest paternal ancestor was a recently arrived Dutch burgher who had the money to pay for a substitute during the civil war. On my mother’s side we start with a British soldier who deserted during the revolutionary war. Not exactly heroic but OTOH they did get to be ancestors.
Torrey
I grew up in Virginia. We memorized and recited the Gettysburg address, as well as Patrick Henry’s speech. (I once spotted a fellow Virginian by the fact that he used the word “pusillanimous” casually in a sentence.) I have always been thrown by the two adjacent sentences beginning “it is for us the living, rather,” and “it is rather for us. . .”
I’m going to give a shout-out to my great-grandfather, who was too young for the Army at the time of Gettysburg, but who enlisted a year later, when he came of age. My ancestors were German but changed their name to something more English. If they were trying to pass, it was a silly idea–they were in Pennsylvania, which was chock-a-block with Germans. However, great-grandad ruined the whole thing by enlisting in Pennsylvania’s famously German 74th volunteer regiment, which had been formed under the name “the First German regiment of Pennsylvania.”
Spanky
@snoey: Thanks for the cash!
p.a.
April 9 should be a national holiday as well. The losers then have been refighting that war ever since, so the winners might as well make it a holiday to remember just what the fuck those losers were really about.
Anyway:🎆🎇🍔🌭🌮🍺🧋 everyone!
Scout211
Re: the SSA political newsletter everyone is talking about here
My husband and I did not receive the political email via the SSA newsletter. We both have our email subscriptions set for important information about our accounts only and we are unsubscribed from the fluffy newsletter.
I might suggest that others do that during this period of time since the fluffy email has now turned blatantly political.
Dave's Dad
Dave has a 3 times great maternal grandfather that was in the Union Army during the Civil War…he got injured, mustered out and received a pension….12 infantry division company I from Rhode Island…I am not sure if he knows that..
sab
@Suzanne: They were doing it when I was in my twenties. They still are when I am in my seventies.
I keep telling my stepkids that they told us back then that there wouldn’t be Social Security for us because reasons. I didn’t believe them then and I sure need it now.
The stepkids are well aware that they won’t be able to save enough on their own for old age. The one who does save just saw a chunk of his 401k evaporate with the tariff games.
H.E.Wolf
Electoral-Vote blog has (in my opinion) a really good post today – I recommend it. The post will be on the home page today: https://electoral-vote.com/ After that, it gets a little more difficult to find.
Today’s post was written by Z, a US History professor, and he really went to town on this one – not least, the section on 2+ centuries of historical protests in the USA.
Z usually writes the blog on Tues., Wed, and Fri. The other two bloggers are V (Mon. and Thurs., more pessimistic than Z), and L, a lawyer, who posts occasionally on law-related topics. Saturdays are Q&A, and Sundays are letters from readers.
Suzanne
@J.: Awww thank you. My ancestors are very mixed and have a lot of great stories. Many of them are lost, I’m sure. This one was from my maternal grandfather’s side. My dad’s grandparents had different stories….. three of his four grandparents were immigrants and came to the U.S. through Ellis Island.
But the overall theme for me, from all of these stories, is that where one is born, or who one’s parents are, has nothing to do with American-ness. I spit in the face of blood-and-soil nationalist bullshit. JD Vance can fuck all the way off with his “seven generations of my family buried in the same cemetery” nonsense. The modern version of it manifests as “I’m a sixth-generation resident of [wherever]” or “protecting our neighborhood character!” and I reject that, too.
RevRick
@Suzanne: My ancestors were the late arrivals of the late 19th and first decade of the 20th century. They were the reason the xenophobes slammed the doors shut in 1924. I’m 1/4 Azhkenazi Jew, 1/4 a smattering of various Germanic groups, and 1/2 Slavic.
Garry Wills, in his book on the Gettysburg Address, noted that Lincoln performed two revolutionary acts in his speech. The one was rhetorical. In a world where speeches were elaborate and florid, his was brief and concise. The other was political. He melded the rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution and moved the nation from thinking itself as a union of states to the United States.
Spanky
@Suzanne: In a nation famed for its restless migration and expansion, that 7 generations shit should be seen as a red flag.
Steve LaBonne
My great great grandfather Maxim LaBonne, an immigrant from Québec who settled in Redford, NY (near Plattsburgh), enlisted as an artificer in a New York engineer regiment in the fall of 1864 and was mustered out at Richmond after Lee’s surrender. I am not sure the country he served still exists.
Omnes Omnibus
One of my great great grandfathers served with Sherman all through the war. Another one served until he got sick and was mustered out- about six months.
Nukular Biskits
Mornin, y’all.
I asked this question months ago and I’m not articulating it well, but when does armed rebellion become necessary?
I mean, the GOP-controlled Congress just passed legislation that will have profound negative consequences for arguably a majority of Americans for generations to come, particularly those who aren’t white and connected, and did so despite majority opposition to that legislation.
We have a federal gov’t that, yes, “we” elected, that isn’t representing the interests of the majority (and we can definitely quibble on what that means) and, by all indications, couldn’t really give a fuck either.
So, yes, protest. Support candidates and causes. Most importantly, vote.
But at what point do we as a nation decide none of that is working? And what then?
And, lest my personal FBI agent misinterpret this, no, I’m not advocating anything beyond the processes laid out (at least for now) in the Constitution.
Splitting Image
@Ishiyama:
I’ll tell ya something. That Lincoln guy could write.
Suzanne
@RevRick: I’ve got Italian, Irish, English, Scottish, German (both Jewish and Catholic), French-Canadian, and Dutch ancestry. But there’s an interesting commonality in that almost everybody moved a lot to chase opportunity. No generational wealth or fortunes, no family farms or estates, no family businesses. No one considered themselves tied to land.
That’s an American story, too.
WTFGhost
In 2020, just to stick their fingers in our weepy lib’rul eyes, Trumplovers chose policies that would kill people, remembering that “you can’t criminalize policy!” – that is, Trumploving governors would refuse to allow localities to have different public health rules than those chosen by state officials.
Each such Republican official would have offended a vengeful almighty so much, that each would be marked for a heck of a lot of suffering, while others walked by, not noticing, or caring, were “hell” to exist.
Let me repeat that: Republicans already have chosen, as a whole, that it’s better to kill the poor, the needy, the helpless, rather than give in to the truth, if the truth is inconvenient, and keeps poor twumpie beawr from having his wallies! WAAAAAAH!
Starting that moment, there was no such thing as a “good” or “reasonable” Republican any longer. Some of them competed to out-Covid the others – getting more cases, assuming through gross negligence that we could still be helped by “herd immunity” or that it would be good to rush to the “endemic” stage, when absolutely no science could defend that.
Now, before, Republicans blamed stupid shit on Democrats. “Obama caused ISIS!” they say, “because it showed up DURING HIS TERM!” Yeah, it showed up, after George W, effed the dog (no, he screwed the pooch initially, then doubled down, doubled down, and doubled down, and he no longer “screwed” the “pooch” any more, okay? Let’s not make EUPHEMIZE this! He RAPED a CANINE, metaphorically speaking, in Iraq, and the US couldn’t get the WELCOME mat it had, during the invasion. Go figure!
Republicans refuse to admit dumb-W was wrong to invade, much less that he created ISIS thereby. Even Trump doesn’t hammer *that* point home, showing even he realizes there are some place one just doesn’t want to go.
Republicans refuse to admit Trump is a complete moron, who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and is in way over his head, because Fox News is still blowing so much smoke up every Republican ass, I’m surprised we haven’t had methane explosions. People are hearing he’s a brilliant tactician and analyst and so forth, because they assume good things come for the rich during Republican administrations.
So, in return for tax cuts, we now have the secret police. They will sweep people off the streets, without any authorization. That’s kidnapping and false imprisonment; grabbing them, by dismissing their cases, is entrapment. Deportation without due process is inherently unlawful and unconstitutional. Depriving people of liberty, without due process is inherently unlawful and unconstitutional. Throwing people into a foreign gulag, without ever letting them see, or speak, to anyone… I keep remembering an old, bad, sci-fi scene “on earth, we don’t feed a man to giant scorpions without the benefit of counsel!” and the captors all laugh derisively that we care about people who have died offscreen.
But no one dies offscreen here. They’re all real people, not bit players who take their scene shot pay, and walk off the set. They suffer, grieve, and die, just like you and I.
There’s two types of people in a nation like this, corrupt, and free. I believe in freedom, not just for *me*, but for all, and I look at corruption, and I know it stinks. A former AG once mentioned “you know, originally, corruption was something bad happened to something good,” like body decomposition was called “corruption” and, yes, it stinks mightily. I’m free, I have a nose, and I by god have a heart, that learned a bunch of stupid lessons about “freedom AND JUSTICE for all,” while in grade school, and I’m ready to take our list of grievances, 330- million-thick, fold it until it’s all sharp corners, and ensure Trump that this will help him dispose of damaging paperwork, while we shove it where it belongs.
These people are evil. There is no real love in their hearts, because they can be cruel, without realizing actual people are suffering. These people are corrupt – they’ve taken good governance and befouled it utterly. These people are lawless, and hate every precept that we pretended to care about, in America, because those precepts say “you can’t be a lawless, evil, uncaring asshole without suffering consequences!” and they want no truck with unpleasant consequences in exchange for evil.
So it’s becoming our job to shove this turds back into the asses that created them until their intestinal tracts explode, or they agree to the rule of law, and basic human rights, coupled with the most teensy bit of concern for compassion, and justice.
RevRick
@Torrey: The church MrsRev and I attend was formed by a faction led by returning German Civil War veterans. They were horrified by the communication mishaps between English speaking officers and the German speaking enlisted/draftees, which led to awful battlefield casualties. So, in 1866, they “divorced” the German speaking mother church in Allentown (which had hidden the Liberty Bell) to establish an English language church.
Meanwhile, our son owns a unit in a row home that was built after the Civil War expressly for returning veterans.
WTFGhost
@WTFGhost: Also, Republicans, you’re ugly. And, your mother dresses you funny.
Harrison Wesley
Three of my grandparents were immigrants and the fourth was a West Virginia hillbilly, so I don’t have a lot of US history in family records. Have a great weekend!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
My ancestors have been here since dirt (husband/wife and 7 year old daughter arrived in MD in 1650 and I’ve probably got 2 other lines earlier but can’t pin them down).
My gr-gr-gr-gr grandfather was a drummer, enlisted at 13 along with his father (who had come over from a German principality as an indentured servant), in the Continental army in April 1777 and stayed in for the duration of the war; his war record is incredible whereas his father went home in 1779 to the wife and 3 other kids he’d left behind when enlisting. That must have been a fun family discussion.
His son the little drummer boy had 4 kids. One of the sons, my gr-gr-gr grandfather, was the head of the VA militia unit that was called out by Robert E. Lee, to surround Harper’s Ferry during John Brown’s “revolt”. His two sons enlisted in the 2nd VA regiment at the start of the War of Southern Rebellion…which happened to be Stonewall Jackson’s original unit that he headed. So there’s that. I don’t know what happened to them as I’m descended thru one of his daughters.
The drummer’s other son moved to OH where the bounty land for his father’s Rev War service was. Two of his sons enlisted in OH regiments.
I don’t think the cousins “met in battle”.
Ohio Mom
Whenever I hear someone say that Orban’s Hungary is the model for where the U.S. is heading, I think about my four grandparents who fled Hungary and other various parts of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in the very early 1900s for the promise of safety and prosperity this country offered.
Now it looks like for their grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, they might as not crossed the ocean. Well, we did miss the Holocaust, so props to them for avoiding that.
I’ll be wearing my No Kings tee shirt today, seems appropriate and it deserves more than one wearing.
Jeffro
I am taking today to celebrate our nation’s founding and its long, meandering march of progress towards the ideals listed in the Declaration of Independence and in Lincoln’s Gettysburg address.
(I’m also taking the rest of the weekend for fun stuff like a day trip, a hike, a birthday celebration, and dinners out)
BUT
on Monday, I crank it up to 11 and start making noise about getting rid of our trump-bootlicking MAGAt Rep here in VA-05. Hopefully we can recruit one of our very capable state senators or delegates to take him on…we’ve had way too many one-and-done newbies trying to win here, and it’s time for someone with name recognition and fundraising skills to give VA-05 the representation it deserves.
I hope everyone else does whatever they need to take good care of themselves this weekend…and then next week? Let’s get fired up and speak out and take action, like those who came before us.
RevRick
@Nukular Biskits: Horrendous legislation enacted by a democratically elected government does not constitute the sort of tyranny that would justify armed rebellion. As long as the redress of elections offers the opportunity for some future redress, then armed rebellion is not an acceptable option. But if elections are suppressed and citizens are jailed, then that government has become tyrannical and no longer deserves our loyalty. Rebellion then becomes a moral duty.
Another Scott
That Lincoln guy had a way with words. Thanks.
Part of my mother’s family has burial plots at the Grove (Union) Cemetery in Kenton OH. One of the famous folks buried there is Jacob Parrott who was part of the raid that stole The General locomotive and as a consequence received the first Congressional Medal of Honor.
(He looked kinda like one of my uncles.)
History like that is everywhere.
Too many of our ancestors gave too much for me to just roll over as a relative handful of monsters tries to burn it all down. I believe that the vast majority of Americans feel the same way.
Forward!!
Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WTFGhost
@zhena gogolia: Well, chattel slavery can’t exist unless you feel utter contempt for the slaves. You can’t keep a population terrorized if you feel any mercy. So the southern population probably really despised Black people and also were terrified of what they’d do if left to their own devices. You know what those Black people did that horrified people more than anything else? They didn’t start murdering white southerners; they started demanding the right to participate in civil society as equals.
All they wanted was plain, simple, justice – let us live our lives, just like you live your lives. Ah, but that was too much for the Southerners. The South is a bunch of sore losers, who swear they’ll fight us on the battlefield, “may the better man win,” but completely forgot that they were the most horrible villain anyone can think of today, “slavers,” so, when the better men did win, they couldn’t stand it and went crazy with hate and jealousy to see Black people being treated like they were full human beings.
And from there, you have today’s Garrolous Old Peckerhead, G, O, P, Party of the United States. They couldn’t become Republicans for a long time – remember, *sore* losers!. Oh, there was a “civil rights” era where a lot of people died, but, they’re doing their best to stomp the eff out of that. It took a lot of effort to appoint partisan Republicans who cared so little about the law, they’d ignore what it said, or misread what it did say, just to give the Rs a W in the court room, so, please, people, a little respect for their efforts to find lawbreakers and oathbreakers to reside over our administration of something that can no longer share a J with Justice, it needs a full INJ, instead.
Steve LaBonne
@Ohio Mom: Orbán’s Hungary is now the poorest country in the EU. Quite an accomplishment.
brendancalling
@H.E.Wolf: Great piece. I have only one quibble: “(3) the day will come, probably sooner rather than later, when the Democrats will put the [renewable energy] programs back in place.”
As long as those programs don’t go to red states, I am fine with that. Not due to hatred of red states—although fuck those people except for the Dems unlucky enough to live in those places—but because they have shown they don’t want them. Just like our unreliability as a country will cost the US in trade deals and alliances moving forward, so should red state unreliability (not to mention ingratitude) cost them domestic economic development programs. Why spend billions building solar infrastructure in Alabama if it’s just going to be halted by the idiots who run that state?
schrodingers_cat
Happy 4th Juicers, and Happy Citizenship day to me. I became a citizen 8 years ago. It was a bright and sunny day on the greens of the Old Sturbridge Village in MA.
NeenerNeener
So that Social Security tax break email is for real, and it will bankrupt Social Security that much sooner according to Politifact:
https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jul/03/social-security-tax-break-impact-solvency/
David Anderson
@Dave’s Dad: civil war tom
Jackie
@Scout211:
I haven’t received for apparently the same reason! Smart us! ;-D
100% concur. I don’t click on my newsfeed links from “fromanydept.gov” recognizing they’re full on BS and lies.
Miki
@zhena gogolia: My 3x great uncle was also shot in the leg in the Civil War (Battle of Nashville, December 1864). Unlike most with that kind of injury, he survived amputation of his leg at the hip. He went on to father an additional 8 kids (!) and establish a successful machine shop.
His brother, my 2x great grandfather, served with him but returned home in one piece.
Click on “Read More” at the link to, well, read more.
oldgold
A man raised in the backwoods in impoverished circumstance with meager educational opportunities writes the Gettysburg Address. Only a year or so later to pen an even better speech, although not as celebrated, his second Inaugural Address. A great clarion call for unity -“with malice toward none, with charity for all.”
A man born to privilege with every material advantage and educational opportunity has never written anything except angry grievance filled drivel. Noted for malice toward everyone, with charity for no one.
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: I remember that day well. Congrats to you!
Makes me think BJ might be one of the enduring anchors of my life. In the years I’m been here, friends have moved, died, gone into memory care — but this place has been a constant.
twbrandt
My mother’s mother’s side of the family arrived here from England before the Revolutionary War. However, they backed the wrong horse in that conflict and had to beat a hasty exit to Canada. My grandmother moved to Detroit from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in the 1920s.
My mother’s father’s side of the family arrived here from Ulster also before the Revolutionary War, and settled in Pennsylvania, where they mined coal. No idea about any Civil War participation.
My dad’s family arrived here from Prussia in 1895, settling near Flint, MI. My grandmother on that side told how awkward it was to be of German descent during WWI and WWII. Saurkraut became “Victory Cabbage”, which I guess is like “freedom fries”.
Ohio Mom
@Steve LaBonne: When I’m not thinking about metaphorically ending up back in Hungary, I think maybe the rest of my life will be in a version of Argentina, another once prosperous country. But then I remind myself that I don’t have a deep knowledge of either country and its trajectory.
I wish Adam, who does have that knowledge base would address this but I think he’s afraid of scaring us.
These aren’t very celebratory thoughts. Time for breakfast and rejiggering my blind sugar.
WTFGhost
@Nukular Biskits: Well, one might want to consider “armed insurrection” before “armed rebellion.”
Insurrection counts as: A rising against civil or political authority, or the established government; open and active opposition to the execution of law in a city or state
So: hypothetically, if some “2nd Amendment Absolutists” staked out immigration hearings, escorting people to safe offsite locations, forming a ring of bodies around people, with someone filming any attempt to harm any person who isn’t a migrant, and vanishing the victims of such unlawful assault, so the victims aren’t charged with putting their face in the way of a night stick… if that all happened, well, that would be “armed insurrection”. That’s the sort of thing that should come before “armed rebellion,” *IF* one were considering arming one’s self in the first place, which, please note, you say, and I agree, shouldn’t be happening yet.
Something to keep in mind: if you want to interfere with the police, you need to watch Ghandi again, remember, when the Indian folks marched up, in rows, to get beaten down with nightsticks, over and over? That’s what interfering with the police looks like. That’s what happens first, so people start to hate the evil buggers doing this.
Only then could people with arms safely try to escort migrants – first, you have to turn ICE from “cops” to “the pigs,” because people understand “you have to resist the pigs,” but worry about interfering with actual decent, law abiding, cops.
Matt McIrvin
@brendancalling: Pollution doesn’t respect state lines.
kalakal
Happy 4th to you all from someone celebrating their first as a citizen
Torrey
@RevRick: Interesting about the church. Is it still in the same building? Or are you referring to the congregation specifically?
The XI Corps was under Oliver Otis Howard at Gettysburg. Howard was a good commander, but not (as I understand from historians) for a largely German corps. Bit of a New England Puritan. Cut off the beer rations for the troops. Failure of sociological imagination.
Matt McIrvin
@RevRick: The problem is when you have the appearance of free and fair elections–which may even BE free and fair in the sense of actual vote mechanics–but the electorate has been shaped and suppressed in subtle or unsubtle ways such that the vote is not actually a fair representation of the population. The old Jim Crow form of “democracy”, and its more cleverly disguised successors.
Something as simple as forbidding voting by convicted felons can be manipulated to do this, but the trouble is, most citizens actually regard that as legitimate.
Dillweed
RE the SSA email- Sent a simple reply. Stop kissing Trump’s ass.
Steve LaBonne
@Matt McIrvin: The only really sustainable way out of this mess is for a significant number of white people to finally put down the white supremacy crack pipe. Not holding my breath.
RevRick
@Torrey: The church is in the same location, but a fire in 1961 led to construction of a new sanctuary with some quite modern stained glass windows. It has long had a reputation as the most liberal congregation in the Penn Northeast Conference of the United Church of Christ.
MagdaInBlack
@kalakal: And Happy 4th to you as well!
Sheldon
I was born on November 19, 1963, one hundred years to the day after Lincoln gave that address.
Matt McIrvin
@oldgold: I think Lincoln was one of the smartest people ever to hold the office. Just the content of his speeches shows this immense perception and clarity of thought.
I was going to say that it was fortunate he was there at such a critical time, but of course his election *triggered* the crisis–the slave system found his presence intolerable, even though he came in with no ambition of actually abolishing slavery.
prostratedragon
@WTFGhost:
What a branch of my Black ancestors did after freedom: Promised Land, SC. We are Moragnes, spelled in the transcript as it’s usually pronounced, “Maraney.” The anecdote is told of a man whose beating by the Klan was handled very effectively by Promised Landers. Per family story, that man might have been a gr-grand-uncle of mine, who had gone to vote. He and others in the family continued to vote as eligible after that one misunderstanding.
The Lincoln Memorial gives me the chills.
Torrey
To kalakal, schrodinger’s cat, and all our naturalized citizens, Happy Fourth of July! I’m so grateful you’re here (in the country and on the blog).
I’m going to engage in a bit of generational stolen valor by quoting my immigrant grandfather (from the other side of the family), who settled a political argument a couple of us grandkids were having about whether something was or was not “unAmerican” by giving his opinion and adding, “I’m a better American than you are! I chose this country. You were just born here!” And it’s really hard to argue with that. So we didn’t.
prostratedragon
@Ohio Mom: I love tango music, but that’s mot the main reason I link it.
Jackie
@kalakal:
Congratulations AGAIN! And may this stage of America be short lived!
Kirk
@brendancalling: Why build alternative energy in Red States? Because despite the elected fools it’s desirable in those states.
So-called tornado alley is not calm when the twisters aren’t spinning. There’s an almost constant wind across the flatlands. Heck, one of the things that still causes me to stop and LOOK is when the wind stops.
glory b
@brendancalling: I am reminded of the Republican Mississippi governor, with the approval of the majority Republican legislature, recently returning (desperately needed) housing funds to DC, saying they didn’t want them.
The voters (at least those allowed to vote) returned them to office in the next election.
I will refer AGAIN to the book “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland,” by Jonathan Metzl.
I feel like after reading the title, you know everything that’s in the book, but it’s worth a read.
Nukular Biskits
@RevRick @WTFGhost:
I appreciate your answers. I would like to revisit this for more discussion … I fired that off right before I headed out to go pick up coffee and now I’m about to cut grass. Again.
Later?
glory b
@Matt McIrvin: Fun fact, in Florida, a ballot measure allowing former felons to vote passed by a pretty substantial majority, but the state legislature refused to implement it.
The elected the same people back into office of course.
See my post at number 93.
glory b
@schrodingers_cat: Happy Citizenship Day!
Glad you’re here!
artem1s
My grandfather’s grandfather John L. Shoemaker Private with Company B, 173rd Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He enlisted late in the war and saw no battle. Mostly spent his time occupying Nashville.
My great grandmother, Rachel Irvin Shoemaker’s half brother, Nathaniel Edward Clendennin, 80th Ohio Volunterr Infantry. Wounded twice, in face with buckshot and in the head with shrapnel. He was present for the surrender of Vickburg on July 4, 1863. This event which is often overlooked because of Gettysburg, was perhaps a more important win for the Union. Vicksburg was the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River; therefore, capturing it completed the second part of the Northern strategy, the Anaconda Plan.
The surrender of Vicksburg allowed Sherman to launch his March to Sea.
Eolirin
@brendancalling: Because co2 emissions don’t obey the geographic limits of state borders.
This is beyond stupid to suggest. Hey, to spite red states let’s kill the whole human race! FFS.
WTFGhost
@kalakal: Well, if you’re a drinker, have a good, stiff one to celebrate, and remember: on our first Independence Day
Pause: did you know they have a Fourth of July in the UK? Yeah, one day before the Fifth.
Where was I? Right: on our first Independence Day, we’d stuck our fingers in the eye of the biggest, baddest military we could conceive of, and I’m sure they had a few stiff drinks between signing their name in oversized letters, one so large, people say “put your John Henry right there,” all the time.
So… if’n you’re like me, you know this is going to be a long, dirty, “war,” and we’re going to have to reinvent “warfare” to win it, like, shooting from behind trees, rather than marching up in neat columns, with bright red suits. A warm drink in the belly (coffee, tea, hot cocoa, Jack Daniels…), a lusty cheer “FOR FREEDOM!” and buckle down for a lot of work, if we want to make our home something we can all be proud of, even the Republicans, once they become *sane* again
ETA: “We stuck our fingers in the eyes…” – dear lord, I forgot Moe Howard, and his contributions to our freedom!
WTFGhost
@oldgold: charity toward his ass-remoras, but, only while they’re still sucking. (Do you think he realized they’re *fish* and not extra penises?)
Steve LaBonne
As we are congratulating our naturalized-citizen friends, let’s remember that they are going to need all of us to vigorously defend their full citizenship rights, equal to those of native-born citizens. Those rights are at serious risk from the threats to denaturalize people for transparently political reasons. Nobody’s citizenship is safe while anybody’s is being threatened.
columbusqueen
I’m descended from a New Jersey Revolutionary War veteran. I also have Civil War veterans on both sides, since Mom was from Ohio & Dad from Georgia. As a reenactor told me once, “They really love Uncle Billy down there!”
brendancalling
@Eolirin: As I am sure you know, there are other places in the USA to put green energy projects.
H.E.Wolf
I’m wearing my Norman Rockwell “Rosie the Riveter” T-shirt – the one with the flag as her backdrop, the union membership buttons on her coveralls, and her work-booted foot crushing a copy of Mein Kampf.
Bulgakov
A 4xGreat Uncle of mine was Wm McKee Dunn who was a Brigadier General near the end of the Civil War. His son, Wm M Dunn, Jr was General Grant’s Aide-de-Camp starting with the Vicksburg campaign. Junior escorted Lee from the Confederate line to Appomattox Court House to surrender to Grant.
Our common ancestor was Eleanor Brewster Dunn (my 6xG Grandmother), one of the 3 Brewster Sisters (not the Arsenic & Old Lace Brewster Sisters). The Brewster Sisters, “Patriots of the American Revolution” for their service to General Washington’s troops (feeding, mending clothes, etc) were buried in the Dunn Cemetery which is surrounded by the University of Indiana, Bloomington. http://cwcfamily.org/sisters.htm .
Our family has been defending American democracy since its inception (both my Grandfathers were in the AEF in WW1 and my Dad served during WW2. We aren’t going to let the treasonous Republican Party take our country for themselves.
H.E.Wolf
Leaving aside the question of sites for programs and plants, I prefer to work from a starting point of generosity of spirit… or how will anyone be able to tell I’m not a Republican?
H.E.Wolf
I remember. Happy Anniversary!
H.E.Wolf
Hooray, and may it be the first of many more!
H.E.Wolf
@glory b:
I read it, thanks to your recommendation. It saddened me deeply, as it should have.
H.E.Wolf
Heading out with my bucket of kids’ chalk to write “O beautiful for spacious skies” on half our sidewalk… and “Lift every voice and sing” on the other half.
May we all find brother- and sisterhood, today and every day.
artem1s
Read the middle parts of the Declaration today. These are the grievances the founders wanted the Monarchy to answer for. LACK of GOOD GOVERNMENT. The past ten years, enabled by the worst Chief Justice in our country’s history, the GQP has overturned 249 years of progress toward addressing these grievances.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Ohio Mom
@kalakal: Congrats to You!
lowtechcyclist
@Sheldon:
You’re lucky you weren’t born three days later. I can still remember that day, and I expect I always will.
Elizabelle
Thank you for this post, David.
dnfree
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
We also pay taxes on 85% of our social security (based on income), and we’re fine with that. People who make less than a certain amount are ALREADY exempt from paying taxes on social security, so for them this means nothing at all. The social security website says about 50% of recipients currently don’t pay taxes on that income.
Taxpayers filing as single with provisional income less than $25,000 and taxpayers filing joint returns with provisional income less than $32,000 do not pay federal income tax on their Social Security benefits.
Taxpayers filing as single with provisional income between $25,000 and $34,000 and taxpayers filing joint returns with provisional income between $32,000 and $44,000 pay federal income tax on up to 50% of their Social Security benefits.
Taxpayers filing as single with provisional income greater than $34,000 and taxpayers filing joint returns with provisional income greater than $44,000 pay federal income tax on up to 85% of their Social Security benefits.
[email protected]
My family moved too late to the US to fight in the Civil War, but the 1st Minnesota was mustered from the farmers and frontiersmen of southern MN where I grew up, which was a nice connection. “The Last Full Measure” is a very good regimental history IIRC.
dnfree
My dad, born in 1920, had a long-lived uncle who served in the Civil War and apparently enjoyed talking with young folks at family reunions. So since I of course knew my dad, I’m just one remove from someone who fought in the Civil War. Amazingly, my grandchildren born in the 2000s knew my dad, so they also are only one remove from a Civil War veteran. Hard to imagine, it seems so long ago.
My dad’s uncle also attended the Lincoln-Douglas debate in Freeport IL in 1858.
https://iagenweb.org/boards/fayette/obituaries/index.cgi?read=521684
glory b
@artem1s: And Nancy Mace screamed that Hakeem Jeffries referred to it as AN INDICTMENT!!!!!
Fun fact, Hakeem Jeffries brother Hasaan is a historian who got his PhD from Duke, currently is a professor at Ohio State and has an interesting podcast, Learning Hard History.
bluefoot
@RevRick: As some have said, the Gettysburg Address changed it from “The United States are..” to “The United States is…”
I loved that Garry Wills book. I can’t read the Gettysburg Address without tearing up.
I don’t know where we are now. I said yesterday that it feels like a murder-suicide. But perhaps I can resolve that to work toward this nation having a new birth of freedom.
Eolirin
@brendancalling: Are we going to transmit that power all the way across the country? The red states are a geographic blob. If energy isn’t being produced with green tech there they’re going to use fossil fuels instead. And some of those red states are ideal for wind and sun in a way that not every blue state is. Are we going to just leave those resources on the table out of spite? If we’re talking subsidizing building more EV plants, fine whatever, be preferential, idgaf. But for green projects a lot of it needs to be local and it needs to be everywhere.
Sheldon
@lowtechcyclist: it’s the day my birth certificate was processed. (Obviously in the morning.)
what a horrid day.
Kayla Rudbek
Some of my paternal-side ancestors were the rear echelon at Fort Snelling, Minnesota dating back to territorial settlement (so probably fighting against Minnesota Lt. Governor Flanagan’s Native American ancestors). My mother’s side wasn’t in the USA until shortly before WWI (Great-grandmother was a pastry cook in the Vienna imperial kitchen from what I understand). They saw bad things coming and decided to leave, and now I’m seriously wondering if I should be trying to pull up stakes, or to stay here and oppose fascism.
Kayla Rudbek
@twbrandt: my great grandfather forbade German speaking in the house after my grandmother came home from school being harassed about her accent.