When I was younger, I believed that only occasionally were people called to defend democracy against the forces of evil, and I sometimes lamented that I hadn’t been born into a generation with the opportunity to do so.
If you conclude from this that I was a dumbass kid who thought he knew what his life was going to be like when he was ten, you’re not wrong.
If you conclude from this that I was a weird-ass kid who thought about shit most kids never considered, you’re not wrong either.
I am no longer young, and I’ve never been stupid, so I learned long ago how wrong I was. Democracy is not under threat of a once-in-a-generation attack by foreign nazis. It is under a persistent, every-single-goddamn-day attack by home-grown nazis.
My parents must have done something right, because I grew up understanding the bedrock upon which every answer to every important question must be built was pretty simple. People matter. Truth matters.
As one might imagine, the current political situation gives me agita on a regular basis.
I have decided to answer the call my younger self wished he could receive and save democracy with the only tools I can use with any skill whatsoever—words.
That’s what this site is for. I stole the name from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. On the occasion of the dedication of a burial ground for those who defended freedom with their last breath, President Lincoln called on the rest of us to continue the fight:
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, Gettysburg address
The work is unfinished, and will likely always be so. Even if we achieve the dream of living in a world where even the poorest have enough, and even the oddest feel they belong, we will face the Sisyphean task of fighting off the forces of oppression.