Volume XII, Issue IVa
Mr. Trump and Mr. Smith
President-elect Trump speaks from the Lincoln Memorial.
Frank Capra thought that the swamp needed to be drained... in 1939! He created in Jimmy Stewart his 'everyman' character: Jefferson Smith. Jefferson Smith begins his Washington career with a trip to the Lincoln Memorial. Donald Trump begins his career in Washington with a trip to that same memorial. He acknowledged and thanked the scores of 'regular' Americans who worked to send him there.
Jimmy Stewart's classic film: Mr.Smith Goes to Washington.
Everyone Should See This Film
This Classic Tale [click to watch] of a man of integrity who finds himself in the United States Senate, and who ultimately has to fight for that integrity, is one that we would do well to heed today!
“Capra was able to make this film so good because he both believed in the American ideal, and understood how easily it could be co-opted and undermined by the unscrupulous and the greedy. America, he's telling us, should be celebrated because it’s the kind of country that can produce a Jefferson Smith; but at the same time, we must always be on our guard, because it’s also capable of destroying one.” -- Gina Dalfonzo [2.]
Jimmy Stewart as Senator Smith visiting the Lincoln Memorial.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 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
November 19, 1863
Bliss Copy, as reproduced on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial.
During the War Between the States, the unfinished Washington Monument was used as a slaughterhouse and the monument grounds were used as a drill field. When work resumed after the conflict, marble quarried from a different vein in the quarry left a permanent line at the stopping point. [3.]
