The art of brevity was not lost on Abraham Lincoln. It is that brevity in all its glory that shines through in what endures as one of the most beautiful testaments to the art of oration: The Gettysburg Address rounds out at 272 resounding words. The nation’s 16th President humbly predicted that the world would quickly forget his words of that November day in 1863. Rather, he said, history would solely evoke the valiant acts of men such as those whose blood still soaked the consecrated battleground on which they stood. Of course, Lincoln was both right and wrong. Neither the men who sacrificed their lives nor his words would be forgotten. We remember and know that a terrible and ever mounting price would ultimately be paid, some 623,026 American lives, the steepest in man’s bloody history.
In what can only be described as the pinnacle of prescience, a 28-year old Lincoln foretold of the coming Civil War, which he presaged would come to pass if the scourge of slavery remained unchecked. In an address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois in January 1838, Lincoln spoke these haunting words: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” The enemy within.
Since that devastating brother against brother Civil War, so prophetically foreseen by Lincoln, more than 626,000 American soldiers have lost their lives defending the ideals and freedom of our Union. Today that Union stands, but it must now face the threat of an enemy rising within its borders to wage a different kind of war against our hard fought freedom.
To be precise, today’s dangers emanate from our nation’s boardrooms, where officers and executives have authorized an era of reckless abandon in the form of share buybacks. In the event the word ‘hyperbolic’ just came to mind, the ramifications of a lost generation of investment in Corporate America should not be lightly dismissed. This trend, above all others, has weakened the foundation of U.S. long term economic growth.
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