Abstract
Emma Goldman, one of the foremost Anarchists of the "Progressive Era" in the United States, is an essential contributor to this collection of responses to the Gettysburg Address. Goldman was and still is known above all for her willingness to question assumptions. While other respondents might be asking and answering the questions of why this speech is so significant, so unique, and so successful, Goldman would ask different questions: What's the big deal about this speech? What does it really commemorate? In celebrating the speech, what are we condoning? Why was the speech given? Whose interests did it serve? What did the speaker choose not to mention and why? These are the sorts of questions that Goldman pursued and attempted to answer throughout her life. Her insights into the problems plaguing the United States of the early 1900's often presaged the central tenets of political movements that began decades later. Her straightforward prose, both written and spoken, spared no convention, no institution, and no leader or icon simply because of its status as accepted or time-honored. Goldman's criticism of the Gettysburg Address will provide a necessary counterpoint to responses that accept its greatness, its historical value, or its claim to support of great American ideals. Just as she vehemently criticized World War II and especially American entrance into it, so Goldman would have condemned the Civil War as an attempt of the powerful to enforce a false ideal on the weak. She supported war under no circumstances and would have made no exceptions here.
Journal Title
Iowa Journal of Communication
Volume
25
Issue
3
First Page
100
Last Page
102
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Cuklanz, Lisa
(1993)
"for Emma Goldman,"
Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 25:
No.
3, Article 32.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol25/iss3/32
Copyright
©1993 Iowa Communication Association
