15 October 2007
Globish Gettysburg

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What an absolute crock of crap:

“Next, below, is what President Lincoln could have said, if he had
decided that his speech was not only for Americans, but targeted the
whole world. With this Globish wording, his impact would have been
greatly improved.Anglophones can hardly feel the difference. Non
Anglophones observe that they understand better. This is the main
purpose of Globish.”

Our fathers came to this land eighty seven years ago. They brought to
this land a new nation; it was formed in freedom, and was committed to
the belief that all men are created equal. Now we are involved
in a great civil war; it is testing whether that nation or any nation
so born and so committed to that idea can long live. We are
meeting today on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to give
a small piece of that field, as a final resting place for a number of
our sons: those who gave here their lives so that that nation might
live.It is completely fitting and right that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not give– we can not commit — we can not make holy– this ground.The
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have made it holy. They
have made it, far above our poor power to add or take away. The world will little note, and will not long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.It
is for us the living, rather, to be committed here to their unfinished
work; the work so greatly brought forward by the people who fought here.It
is rather for us to be here committed to the great task remaining
before us — that we take increased commitment to that cause for which
these honored dead gave the last full measure of commitment — that we
here highly decide and declare that these dead shall not have died for
no purpose — 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 pass away from this earth.

Oration is more than words, more than language, meaning or tone. Excellent oration commands – and draws power from – audience and timing. Without being fawning of Lincoln, it’s clear he knew his audience: he spoke that day not to the world, not to the nation, but to those war-tired survivors who congregated on that field. His words would surely have been different had he spoke from the steps of the White House or after the close of the war.

The Gettysburg address has long endured not because of its global appeal, but
because of its national and local. Any attempt to improve or alter his speech would result in a product that omits the timing and the audience, because we cannot view – we cannot lay claim to – those times and those people. Such an alteration would, like the above, ultimately seem hollow.

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