“A New Birth of Freedom”

A New Dawn: President Obama

This morning I woke up with a new hope for the future that there truly will be “a new birth of freedom” as President Lincoln declared in the Gettysberg Address more than a century ago. On that day the man who became known as the Great Emancipator said:

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.

Over the century since the Civil War this country has had its share of problems. It has seen depression and prosperity. It has seen World War and it has seen a tenuous peace. It has seen sham elections and democracy. It has persevered, and it will continue to do so. As another president said on his Inauguration day:

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

As apt today as it was on January 20, 1961, this “new generation of Americans” can rejoice for freedom has come once more to our corner of the world. Today, there is a feeling of pride “from sea to shining sea” that President Obama will bring the change that he has promised, and that he will bring honor back to the White House and back to the United States of America.

It is impossible, whether Democrat or Republican, not to feel moved today for we are all a part of history. On that day in November, when I stepped into my polling site, Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising began to play on my Ipod, and I took it as an omen that Senator Obama would become President Obama. The excitement that I felt on that day is nothing compared to what I feel today. The last eight years has brought a bitterness to this country and to the world, but today there is only hope. A hope that will not die.

During the March on Washington on August 28, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the crowd of people, black and white, of a dream that he had. He said:

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

That dream, while it has not completely been fulfilled, is on its way into existence. Dr. King went onto to say:

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Have A Wonderful Inauguration Day and a Wonderful Four Years!
L