It’s a week after Election Day and what a fascinating election it was. You can see my initial assessment of the election in my newsletter (link below), but in this podcast I’m going for a bit of a palette cleanser. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed or generally weary with all the election coverage, may I recommend the Gettysburg Address?
Arguably one of the greatest speeches, if not the greatest, in American history, Abraham Lincoln’s brief words memorializing the Gettysburg battlefield present us with enduring lessons on the nature of the American state, and casts an expansive moral vision for the future of the republic.
Today on the podcast, I’m joined by Lincoln scholar Dr. Matt Van Hook who is an Assistant Director and Associate Professor in the Torrey Honors College at Biola University. We recorded this podcast before the November 5th election, but it’s a timely walkthrough of a timeless work of political thought and prose.
Digging deeper
My post-election writeup: Called. It.
William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth TurningAn American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny
Penn State, “Introduction to Modelski’s Model of World Leadership” (Long Cycle Theory)
Lincoln and Democratic Statesmanship, edited by Michael Zuckert
My other “readthrough” podcasts of American founding documents
The last word
“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
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