I have mentioned before how much I love the Intertron...and how you can stumble across some of the most interesting perspective in the oddest places.
Well, a music site I often visit, This Recording, is often full of weird and enthralling long posts about life. Today, for instance, they spent more than 1,000 words listing what strong lesbians they would try to date if they had a lesbian time machine. I don't know how it was so endearing, but it was.
That said, editor Alex Carnevale also recently featured what he describes as "The Ten Best Political Speeches Ever." It's a varied and fascinating crew, not limited to the usual suspects (not a Kennedy in the bunch, you'll notice).
Take the time to check out the list yourself (where you can even download the speeches), but in the meantime, here's the rundown:
10. Barbara Jordan’s Address to the 1976 Democratic National Convention
9. Ronald Reagan after the Challenger exploded
8. Barack Obama’s Address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention
7. Winston Churchill, We shall fight them on the beaches
6. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
5. Malcolm X, “The Ballot and the Bullet”
4. Mario Cuomo, Address to the 1984 Democratic National Convention
3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address
2. Reverend King at the March on Washington
1. Ronald Reagan’s Speech at Point du Hoc
Saturday, September 6, 2008
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An interesting list I guess, but it's ludicrous to put any of Reagan's speeches (or Mario Cuomo's) above Lincoln's Second Inaugural, which I think is without question the single greatest speech given by an American politician. It is actually profound. A couple of passages:
"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."
Of course that referred to the North and South during the Civil War, but those words are still quite relevant today. It's actually quite a complicated passage which requires a bit of unpacking. Unlike most political phrases crafted by speechwriters, it is extremely ambiguous, and thus far more connected to actual human reality. But my favorite passage comes when Lincoln considers the Civil War as penance for the mortal sin of slavery:
"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"
"...every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword..."...Wow. I'm not sure that any white politician (or possibly even African American politician) since then has spoken so eloquently about the almost unimaginable injustice of slavery and, more importantly, the depths to which Americans had to go to earn penance. Forget reparations, Lincoln is suggesting it would not be unjust if half the country died to put an end to slavery. Though he was not at all a religious man in the traditional sense, he did this in well-crafted evangelical language that would have resonated with the reformers of the day but also with Christians of most any ideological stripe in the present.
Comparing it to Reagan's speech on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day - which was eloquent, but also partially subservient to Cold War rhetoric, in contrast to Lincoln's speech which was basically devoid of politics or glorification of military victory - is, well, wrong.
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