Concerned about increased political violence and American democracy under threat from the GOP, President Joe Biden addressed the nation Wednesday evening, and taking a cue from Lincoln’s inaugural address, urged the American people to be “we the people,” and not enemies.
“We must remember that democracy is a covenant,” President Biden said. “We need to start looking out for each other again, seeing ourselves as we the people, not as entrenched enemies. This is a choice we can make.”
“Disunion and chaos are not inevitable,” Biden added.
The President began his moving remarks with the attack on “my friend” Paul Pelosi, the husband of the Speaker of the House who was brutally attacked by an assailant who recently had spouted far-right wing conspiracy theories. That man bludgeoned Pelosi in the head with a hammer in what prosecutors are calling a “near-fatal” attack.
President Biden made clear who’s to blame for the massive polarization in the country.
Anf he warned of the “alarming rise in the number of our people in this country condoning political violence.”
“We are not enemies, but friends,” President Abraham Lincoln told Americans in 1861 as he ended his inaugural address. “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Watch President Biden’s videos above or at this link.