The Gettysburg Address as Delivered by Bernie Sanders
About 240 years ago, a bunch of old white men like me, except that they were slave owning imperialists, created a nation out of land stolen from the Native Americans. This nation was based on a great lie that suggested all men are created equal: it then proceeded to divide men based on class, wealth and race.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, where those lies are being told once again. The war is really about preserving the status quo for the 1% while pitting the 99% against each other to be slaughtered and killed. We’re told that we’re fighting to end slavery and preserve the union, but I submit that this nation was founded on slavery and a union which has enslaved all working – class men and women should perish from this earth.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. To do so would validate the reign of wealth and tyranny that the 1% have wrought. The brave working class men and women, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our the 1%’s poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, unless we seize this moment to start the Revolution. We need to join our working class brothers and sisters in the South, and create a new nation in our own image: a nation run by me and built on the principles that the working class must collectively possess the means of production.
We can never forget what we say here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the principles of the Revolution that we will fight to bring forth. It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us:
• By any means necessary we must liberate the wealth that is almost exclusively controlled by the 1%;
• We must transfer that wealth to the proletariat, where it can truly find its most fruitful expression;
• We must oppose by any means necessary the voices that would disrupt or slow the cause of our Revolution. Those voices must be vanquished to preserve that government of the people, by the people, for the people, and run by me.
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brook...r-billionaires