Hate to admit it

[dexfarkin]

http://www.learntheaddress.org/

But GWB didn't do bad. He had nothing of the rolling grandeur of some of the others, but he nailed the sincerity. Shame about the utterly fraudulent Iraq war that killed hundreds of thousands...

Comments

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I wish the project had been the 2nd Inaugural Address, which openly states the war was about slavery and deals with the "god is on our side" crap in a way openly implies a brutal conflict is just punishment for having built a country on slaves:

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

I'd love to see Bush work his way through that. The primary reason the Gettysburg Address is famous is its brevity, but America's annoying tendency to deny the sheer evil of the confederacy made this vague speech the ur-text of the story.

[dexfarkin.livejournal.com]

With all the errs, ums, and mispronunciations, it will be twice the length of the others.