Hats Off to Abe

As assigned, I wrote a short speech (instead of a paragraph) with the tone, content, and ideals that I believe Abraham Lincoln would have expressed in the face of the situation in Madison, Wisconsin this year. It is as follows:

        I stand before you today, seven score and nine years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, to once again defend the strength of the Union, although this time it is a Union of a different sort. Having completed neither high school nor college, I stand before you as an esoteric outlier. 

Though I received little formal schooling in my day, my day was far different than the day in which we have gathered on the steps of the Capital of the great state of Wisconsin. During my upbringing, although formal schooling was hard to come by, I always had a deep yearning to grow in my education. I read voraciously whenever the opportunity presented itself.  I would have been thrown into a joyous frenzy if I was given so much as a glimpse of the education system of today. Without my self-teaching I would never have become the man I was, and without the chance to expand their minds via education, I fear many a child will not grow into the men and women America needs them to be. 

But my speech today is about more than the importance of education; it is about the vitality of unity in America. Without our unity, we are simply men and women alone and vulnerable. In no instance is this more true than in the case of our construction workers, our plumbers and pipe fitters, our electricians, and the people with which we entrust the future of this great nation, our teachers. With that, I stand before you today citizens of Wisconsin, and I implore you to stand together. Stand together for today. Stand together for our future.