Memorial Day

I'm not such a great wordsmith that I think I should be writing an epoch every year for this day.  Rather, I would re-post or re-print the words of those who's skill at writing far outweigh mine.  Therefore, I'm posting what I think is one of the best memorial speeches ever given, although it was given before the concept of Memorial Day came into being.

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

As an aside, the Bing homepage today shows a Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  The Google homepage?  Not so much.  Just a tiny little flag and a yellow ribbon at the bottom.

Now, given that they gave an entire page to a drawing of an admirer of Osama bin Ladin, you think they could have done something just a little bit more for the day where we remember or fallen military.  But no, not Google.

Fuck those pieces of shit.