{"id":3271,"date":"2012-10-07T10:12:59","date_gmt":"2012-10-07T14:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3271"},"modified":"2013-09-12T10:45:41","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T14:45:41","slug":"government-of-the-people-by-the-people-for-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3271","title":{"rendered":"Government OF the People, BY the People, FOR the People"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Healing the Soul of America<\/a>, Marianne Williamson quotes Lincoln\u2019s famous words: \u201cthis nation … shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 She goes on to say \u201cWhat a radical concept that is\u2014a government of the people, by the people, for the people.\u00a0 It means, of course, that not only will the government consist of our citizens, elected by our citizens, but that its mission shall be to serve<\/em> our citizens.
\n\u201cWe should take a good look at that sentence\u00a0 ….\u00a0 If ours were a government for the people<\/em>, wouldn\u2019t our children receive the best education in the world?\u00a0 If ours were a government for the people<\/em>, wouldn\u2019t we have universal health insurance?\u00a0 If ours were a government for the people<\/em>, wouldn\u2019t we have massively committed to \u201cclean\u201d energy sources by now?\u201d\u00a0 pp82-83<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great issue of our times is not taxes, a balanced budget, social security or medicare.\u00a0 Those are all rather elaborate red herrings.\u00a0 The great issue that confronts us, as it confronted Jefferson\u2019s generation and Lincoln\u2019s generation and every generation to some degree, is this: Is America to be ruled by<\/em> all of us and for<\/em> all of us\u2014or has the American government in fact become a government of, by and for a relative few<\/em>?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 p83<\/p>\n

\u201cA mean group of selfish people did not decide to steal America; what happened is that we gave her away.\u00a0 We have not been vigilant on behalf of our own good.\u00a0 We have failed to make periodic recourse to democratic principles, allowing ourselves the disempowerment of ignorance and distraction.\u00a0 We have turned our eyes away from things that, in a free and democratic society, the citizenry cannot afford to turn our eyes away from.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 p84<\/p>\n

This is a very intelligent, well-educated woman who is deeply rooted in spirituality.\u00a0 In her talk on the Occupy movement<\/a>, she speaks of \u201cself-correction\u201d \u2014 this is what democracy can do, this is what we need to do.<\/p>\n

I wondered where those highly significant words came from and checked Wikipedia<\/a>.\u00a0 Lincoln\u2019s law partner, William Herndon, had brought him some sermons by the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker.\u00a0 He says:
\nOne of these was a lecture on ‘The Effect of Slavery on the American People’…which I gave to Lincoln, who read and returned it. He liked especially the following expression, which he marked with a pencil, and which he in substance afterwards used in his Gettysburg Address: ‘Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Healing the Soul of America, Marianne Williamson quotes Lincoln\u2019s famous words: \u201cthis nation … shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-interesting-link","category-present-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}