- - - - from Healing the Soul of America, by Marianne Williamson, 1998

America's first principles are inscribed not only in the Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution but also in Lincoln's Gettysburg address. President Lincoln declared at Gettysburg that "this nation....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." What a radical concept that is - a government of the people, by the people, for the people. 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 our citizens.

We should take a good look at that sentence - especially that part that reads "for the people" - and ask ourselves if we have decided to be the generation to repudiate Lincoln's words. President Rutherford B. Hayes once lamented that we were becoming a government "of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations." So what's new?

If ours were a government for the People, wouldn't our children receive the best education in the world? If ours were a government for the people, wouldn't we have universal health insurance? If ours were a government for the people, wouldn't we have massively committed to clean energy sources by now?

America's most fundamental problem is a crisis of our democratic process. We are being asked, as we were asked over two hundred years ago, to decide for ourselves and our children what it is worth to us to govern ourselves. While it appears that we have problems very different from those faced by earlier generations, in fact it is not the complexity of our current problems but rather the simple drama behind them all that should be garnering our attention. What we call the issues are not the issue. The issue is the disengagement of the average American's heart and mind from the democratic process. We have stopped participating in droves, and in our absence, forces not always in favor of the greatest good for the greatest number have exercised their own rights, often leaving the average American at a distinct disadvantage in our own country.

In 1864 Abraham Lincoln wrote these words:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

The great issue of our time is not taxes, a balanced budget, social security or medicare. Those are all rather elaborate red herrings. The great issue that confronts us, as it confronted Jefferson's generation and Lincoln's generation and every generation to some degree, is this: Is America to be ruled by all of us and for all of us - or has the American government in fact become a government of, by and for a relative few?