I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
-Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Speech, 1861
I was reminded of that last night when Barack Obama said the following:
The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America -- they have served the United States of America.
Barack Obama took it to a whole new level last night with his acceptance speech before more than 84,000 people. It wasn't all sweetness and light. It was a call for unity, but a call for good people to unite against the status quo, George W. Bush, and John McCain. I don't care which side you're rooting for, if you say you watched it and were unmoved, you're lying. Working for MSNBC, Pat Buchanan -- Pat Buchanan -- ran his segment out of time while praising the text, as Rachel Maddow looked on in amazement. Seriously, he wouldn't shut up about it.
This is a speech we'll be talking about for a long time. This is a speech that will be studied and emulated. Not just by politicians, but by writers in general. This was one helluva speech. An "Ask not what your country can do for you," "Four score and seven years ago," "We few. We happy few. We band of brothers" level speech...
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