On some level, it seems a little inappropriate to bring politics into play on Veterans’ Day.  On another level, it seems not only appropriate, but obligatory.  To understand, after all, the significance of Obama’s disinclination to attend the 150th commemoration of the Gettysburg Address, Salena Zito’s instincts as a writer correctly lead her to spend around two-thirds of her column describing the historical scene.

After all, reading the text rings relevant today with the question that President Lincoln said the Civil War was testing: “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated [in the proposition that all men are created equal], can long endure.”  And it rings relevant today largely owing to the actions of the current president and the political beliefs that he is advancing.

“The brave men, living and dead,” who have served the cause of the United States of America, “have consecrated” the land — around the world —”far above our poor power to add or detract.”  We do have a calling, though, according to President Lincoln: “that these dead shall not have died” — nor the living have sacrificed of their bodies and their lives’ plans — “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.”

It is left to us to ensure that our veterans did not serve their country in order for our memorials to them to become weapons in a political campaign — mere historical stones decorating land owned by the federal government.  It is left to us to understand that government of the people, by the people, and for the people does not perish when a particular name no longer applies to a parcel of the planet’s land, but when the principles of freedom burn away under the hot glare of an ideology’s fierce urgency and a demagogue’s audacity.

To honor our veterans, today, perhaps no better thanksgiving can be offered than to try, just try, to remember who we are.