(Parts adapted from the Declaration of Independence [1776] Lincoln's addresses at Springfield [1838] and Gettysburg [1863])
Ten score and some years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that certain truths are self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
To secure those ends, our government was instituted, deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed. Now we are engaged in a great ideological battle, testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure as a free and independent nation with liberty and justice for all.
The history of our republic has been a history of government forever increasing the limits of its power. Since World War Two this process has been much accelerated. It has resulted in increasing injuries and usurpations, paralleled by the debilitating compounding of the national debt, the erosion of moral and educational standards, and the commensurate evolving tyranny such developments engender. On certain issues of vital national importance, our administrations and legislators seem no longer answerable to the people, but rather to un-elected and unaccountable powers, foreign and domestic, destructive of the ideals of government so wisely and clearly expressed and initiated by our founders.
As a nation of free men, we must live on through all time or die by suicide. If we die by suicide, it will be a suicide aided and abetted, indeed engineered and inflicted, by an international cabal of financial and corporate interests intent on the subversion of our nation into a new international order, predicated on false premises, in total mockery and contempt of the concept of "the consent of the governed." In such case it is the right of the people—it is their solemn duty—to take all necessary measures to institute such safeguards to their liberties as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
It is for us now as never before to rededicate ourselves to the monumental task before us—the task of reviving and restoring true representative, constitutional, and just government. We must succeed in this effort for our own sake and for the sake of our posterity—that from the thousands of honored dead who have fought our great battles of the past, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that those dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
To this end, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, always jealously reserving the American right and spirit of resistance to tyranny, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we individually and collectively, as sovereign Americans, rededicate ourselves and pledge anew our sacred honor to defend our Constitutional Republic.
Common Ground, Common Cause, Common Sense!