WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL
ON THE WINGS OF A DREAM
It goes back to the scriptures and back to the founders
Back to what we pledged on our first day of school
Back to a dream of Martin Luther King
Back to what we mean by the Golden Rule
It’s a beautiful dream that says everyone’s equal
With rights to life, liberty, happiness too
A dream full of hope for a more perfect union
It’s still not too late for that dream to come true
Chorus
With faith we can fly on the wings of a dream
We still may become all we hoped we could be
It will take everyone and we’ll have to believe
That we can fly on the wings of a dream
©Copyright 2020
Love Gives More Music
Welcome to Songs and Stories from Home. It’s October of 2020. An election is upon us, and I would urge everyone that’s eligible to register to vote and then to vote in person or by mail. What voting can do is gives us, we the people, a voice so that together we may continue to give voice to the ASPIRATIONS OF A NATION. Aspirations found in words written in some cases almost 250 years ago that live in the hearts of our better angels and animate our lives today.
Words like those in the Declaration of Independence adopted by the 2nd Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that we are all created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are established by we the people. Governments who derive their just power from the consent of we the people.
And then there are words found in the United States Constitution ratified on June 21, 1788.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and all who follow, do ordain and establish this Constitution.
Because ratification was not easy or simple 10 Amendments were written to address objections raised by those opposed to such strong ties to the Federal Government, amendments that guaranteed personal freedoms. These became known as the Bill of Rights added to the Founding Documents in 1791.
Then seventy-two years later Abraham Lincoln added his own inspiring aspiring words when he spoke at Gettysburg of a nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that we are created equal. Now we are engaged, he continued, 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 battlefield 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, he continued, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot 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.
A hundred years went by full of lynchings and Jim Crow Laws and promises unfulfilled. Then in August of 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. standing in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln shared his dream.…deeply rooted in the American Dream, he proclaimed, a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the meaning of its creeds – we hold these truths to be self-evident – that all of us are created equal…I have a dream today…this is our hope…with this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope…
Personally I continue to find inspiration in this nation’s aspirations. I have voted in every Presidential election since becoming eligible to vote in 1968 when, as someone who supported Robert Kennedy, I voted for Hubert Humphrey who believed he said the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, those who are in the twilight of life, and those who are in shadows of life. He also proclaimed that compassion is not weakness and concern for the less fortunate is not socialism.
While every Presidential vote has been important when I look at what Richard Nixon did to this country and to the idea of “liberty and justice for all” I believe that the election of 1968 was the most consequential. That is until 2016. And now in 2020 the most important Presidential vote I may ever make for the future of my grandchildren and the world they live in and will inherit is the one I am about to make.
Between now and the election I will be sharing my thoughts on eleven words that most if not all of us have spoken out loud in front of our classmates as we stood and pledged as Paul Simon said in his song, My Little Town, our allegiance to the wall. One Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All.
LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL
I had a dream the other night
That our country somehow made things right
Was surprised at what it looked like
What had been there all along
We looked like one nation under God Indivisible
With Liberty and Justice for All
We acted a lot like sisters and brothers
Quarrels sure but we listened to each another
Didn’t treat some like us and others like other
It was the strangest thing
To act like one nation under God indivisible
With Liberty and Justice for All
Things were no longer black and white
In living color we were quite a sight
Things never looked so right so bright
As they did in that dream
To be one nation under God indivisible
With Liberty and Justice for All
©Copyright 2020
Love Gives More Music
ON THE WINGS OF A DREAM
It goes back to the scriptures and back to the founders
Back to what we pledged on our first day of school
Back to a dream of Martin Luther King
Back to what we mean by the Golden Rule
It’s a beautiful dream that says everyone’s equal
With rights to life, liberty, happiness too
A dream full of hope for a more perfect union
It’s still not too late for that dream to come true
Chorus
With faith we can fly on the wings of a dream
We still may become all we hoped we could be
It will take everyone and we’ll have to believe
That we can fly on the wings of a dream
©Copyright 2020
Love Gives More Music
