"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..."

The author goes on to state that the nation is "now engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure..." Today Americans, although not spilling each others blood, are engaged in a great war of conflicting life values, philosophies, and polarized politics. Lincolns wisdom was great because it was simple and to the point. He made it unmistakably clear in his short, but profound address, that all good things will undergo a testing experience. Such testing is both inevitable and painful. The gifted statesman eloquently and poetically rendered this message as he surveyed the fields of honor sprawling out before him on that November afternoon in 1863.

Lesson #1: "We the people" are capable of conceiving wise and good ideas for the freedom and pursuit of happiness. Beginning with the Declaration of Independence, then the Constitution of the United States, and moving throughout the expansion and growth of our country, we learned to adapt, invent, and overcome serious obstacles that stood in the path of that coveted pursuit.

Lesson #2: Although infighting has, and will, occur between us at times, we have learned to work things out, forgive, and put the past behind us for the national good."...with malice toward none, with charity for all..." Lincolns second inaugural address referring to the war - including Gettysburg

Lesson #3: "...that we here highly resolve, that these dead should not have died in vain..." Our efforts and current struggles are not in vain, and neither were those of our fathers, nor the soldiers at Gettysburg. It is each generation of Americans responsibility to highly resolve that security and liberty will be passed on to the next, regardless of the cost.

As we stand at yet at another crossroad in our national destination with the upcoming heated elections, and the extremely volatile foreign policy issues of Iraq and Iran unfolding before us like a thread whose end we cannot quite find, we can look to the timeless words of the sixteenth President and take heart. We can believe that these dead (our fallen military in all wars) shall not have died in vain, by learning to appreciate why they died, and why so many of us are alive and free today. Gettysburg also reminds one and all, that Americans will always fight and die for what they believe. We are not a nation of quitters, or a fractured society of losers. And by the grace of God never will be. At odds with each other occasionally - and sometimes with the world - our undying promise to ourselves and future generations must always be:

"... that this nation, under God, shall (always) have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall never perish from the earth."

Patrick J. Zuniga