President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is a tough act to follow. A mere 272 words long, Lincoln delivered it to a stunned audience of 15,000 in just two minutes. The speaker who preceded him droned on for hours, but Lincoln managed to pack more eloquence and impact into his speech than anything said about America’s Civil War before or after.
Intended as the dedication of the National Soldiers Cemetery, Lincoln went far beyond that task to immortalize the sacrifices generations of Americans have made to preserve democracy from enemies foreign and domestic. Lincoln’s closing remarks summoned his own and future generations to “be here dedicated to that great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion — that we here 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.”
Solemn words, and a clarion call to President Donald Trump’s supporters today. After all, today’s Democratic Party is not the opposition Reagan and the Bushes negotiated with to find compromise. Today’s Democratic Party is composed of zealots who scorn democratic norms.
Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has been under increasing challenge by this new progressive Democratic Party for the past 10 years. Democratic Party ranks are dominated by people who quite literally detest America’s history, traditions, and form of government. They don’t hesitate to break laws, lie, deceive, and use violence to thwart the will of the people.
When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, the party went all out to undermine our democracy by sabotaging Trump’s presidency. It did so in flagrant violation of centuries-old norms, convinced of its righteousness because it believed itself superior to the “basket of deplorables” who voted for Trump, to quote Clinton.
Since then, progressive Democrats have done anything and everything in their power to stop the deplorable, anti-globalist, anti-immigrant, racist gun nuts and religious zealots.
First, they tried lies and fabrications to stop Trump from winning in 2016. Clinton’s presidential campaign funded the Steele dossier, a collection of falsehoods intended to discredit Trump and buttress Clinton’s claims that he was colluding with Vladimir Putin to defeat her. Next, FBI Director James Comey used the phony dossier to justify investigating Trump’s campaign and eavesdropping on his team even though the FBI knew the dossier itself consisted of uncorroborated, unreliable conjecture.
When Clinton lost, President Barack Obama, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper jiggered intelligence agency assessments of Russian campaign interference to suppress findings that Moscow had no discernible influence on the election outcome. Obama ordered a new assessment, and Brennan muscled his underlings to include the discredited Steele dossier allegations in their revised (and largely improvised) “findings.”
This wasn’t intelligence analysis; it was forgery disguised as an intelligence product. These leaders corrupted the integrity of the U.S. intelligence community not just to serve a narrow partisan agenda but to undermine a legitimately elected American president.
Our democracy is still under attack. Govs. JB Pritzker (D-IL), Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Tim Walz (D-MN), and many Democratic mayors openly defy the enforcement of federal immigration law and orchestrate massive civil disorder. They are trying to nullify federal authority and law. We should stop calling them progressive Democrats and call them what they are: neo-Confederates. Just like the Confederates that the Union Army defeated at Gettysburg, these blue state leaders think they have a divine right to defy constitutional authority.
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Trump should use the bully pulpit at Gettysburg to call on the voters to defeat these modern-day seditionists at the polls this November. Our very freedom to choose the course of the nation by electing a president whose policies we support is under attack by neo-Confederate Democrats.
To honor Lincoln’s legacy, we must defeat them.
John B. Roberts II worked on President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 and 1984 campaigns and in the White House. He was an international political strategist and executive producer of the McLaughlin Group. He is an author and artist.