What could be...

THE MOST SIGNIFICANT PIECE OF JOURNALISM
THIS ELECTION SEASON

George Will on Gettysburg

Money quote:

Ours would be a better nation if boys and girls of all regions, and particularly the many high school and even college graduates who cannot place the Civil War in the correct half-century, could be moved, as large numbers of Americans used to be, by the names of Gettysburg battlefield sites, such as Devil's Den, the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, Culp's Hill and Little Round Top, instead of being like the visitor here who said it is amazing that so many great battles, such as Antietam and Chickamauga and Shiloh, occurred on Park Service land; and another visitor who doubted that the fighting here really was fierce because there are no bullet marks on the monuments.

And this sterling observation:

Recently, a Gold Star mother finally visited Gettysburg, after driving by it often en route to visit the Arlington grave of her son, who was killed in Iraq. She was especially moved by these words from a Gettysburg newspaper published four days after the battle: "Every name . . . is a lightning stroke to some heart, and breaks like thunder over some home, and falls a long black shadow upon some hearthstone." Gettysburg still stirs, but not as it used to, or should.