My NDP speech:
9th August, 2009
Parliament House
[Addendum!
My NDP speech, narrated by an undisclosed actor at an undisclosed facility at an undisclosed time
]
"Two score and four years ago our fathers brought forth on this island, a new nation, conceived for Money, and dedicated to the proposition that some men are peasants and lesser mortals and others are elites.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war with the Quitters, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a memorial for those who here gave their private sector salaries that that nation might enjoy better governance. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The selfless men, all underpaid, 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 peasants, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced - to accelerate GDP growth regardless of the Gini coefficient. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored Ministers we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these Ministers shall not have suffered salary cuts in vain -- that this nation, under ***, shall have a new era of economic growth -- and that government of the party, by the party, for the party, shall not perish from this island."