Memorial Day Addresses are epideictic (ceremonial), used to affirm/reaffirm American values. Typically, they do three things: 1) Give meaning to the loss of life; 2) Explain audience's obligations as citizens; 3) Explain audience's obligations to the nation & to honor the dead.

As I've explained before, Trump doesn't know how to speak about American values--failing every opportunity to perform the "priestly role" of the presidency. He also doesn't understand the language of obligation, of what we owe to ourselves, nation, one another.

Although not delivered on Memorial Day, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysberg Address is my vote for the nation's best memorial speech.

Since we know Trump won't live up to this rhetorical moment, here is the Gettysburg Address.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

"Now we are engaged 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 battle-field 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, 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."

Lincoln emphasized "people" in that last line--not of, by & for. Read it again. Happy #MemorialDay