Today is Lincoln’s birthday
When I was a child, Lincoln had a birthday all his own. Nowadays he’s lumped in with other presidents. And who knows where he’ll be in the future?
When I was a child, Lincoln also fascinated me more than any other president. One reason was a superficial one: he was just about the strangest-looking president ever (see this). Another was his eloquence, and a third was his sense of humor.
Which brings us to a series of Lincoln quotes. This first one seems especially apropos today:
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
More:
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
It’s not me who can’t keep a secret. It’s the people I tell that can’t.
I hope this prediction is correct:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
And of course, one of the most famous:
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Thank you for reminding me.
The History Channel is airing a three night docu drama on Lincoln next week. Despite the precipitous decline in quality THC sometimes gets these things right but I have fears about this one. I’m afraid we’ll get a ton of emphasis on how Lincoln was really an evil white supremacist.
Hope I’m wrong.
Note, the Jacobin types the Democratic Party succors are implacably hostile to people of accomplishment, such as those who built this country at every level. So, the Lincoln statutes will be coming down. If the Republicans can manage even a mild reversal of course, it will be extraordinary and out of character.
What the Democrats favor is manufacturing icons out of people drawn from the Democratic Party’s mascot groups and period sachems. That these people were only of temporary local significance is immaterial to them.
O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
–Walt Whitman (1865)
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This poem got to me as a kid even before I knew it was about Lincoln.
When contemporary poets go on about how declasse it is to write intentionally about a subject (I mean, really!), I remind them of Walt Whitman.
In August of 1864 Frederick Douglass visited the president at the White House for a second time and met privately with Lincoln for several hours. Douglass wrote about some of what was discussed but of course Lincoln never did.
Would be so interesting to know that conversation in full.
I mentioned to a group of young (20s, 30s) people that I work with that Feb 12 was once celebrated an Lincoln’s Birthday, that we got off school. They had no idea.
They thought President’s Day was as old as Christmas.
Such eloquence. Benefits of a public education.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
The largest feature of the ‘woke’ bigots is that they absolutely despise the above notion. As Asra Nomani has noted, This philosophy is blatantly cultish, peddling the idea of original sin, but without the forgiveness.
We didn’t get Lincoln’s or Washington’s birthdays off school, but they were celebrated. My Mother always made a cherry pie on February 22nd.
You already know what I am going to say, but I’ll say it anyway.
Der Abraham saith,
So, it’s a nice, even charming, piece of rhetoric. But the people and polity it addressed is dead and gone.
And even at the time, it was not true that the populations were not enemies but friends; or, that the bonds of affection, assuming they ever existed, could be maintained or restored. The break was geographical, but more than that, one of moral psychology.
Nowadays? Regardless of where you live, no soy boy, cuck or Karen, no woke grandma or sparkle pony riding drag queen out to train toddlers, could be, or does in fact see itself, as anything other than the enemy of those who refuse to enable and affirm them; and who instead, want nothing to do with them.
Alas, that disinterest of the latter party, like the proverbial interests of war is also not reciprocated.
The progs are out to refashion all human existence; and their molesting passions recognize no limits, and no point of satiety.
Wheat and tares living side by side until the arrival of God’s Kingdom and the great sorting, is one thing. In the life of a republic ostensibly dedicated to political liberty, it is another proposition altogether.
Who could live happily among such people? Who would want to try?
It is obvious that they can hardly stand themselves.
Powerline has 2 good pieces on Lincoln today.
Art Decor @1:07 PM, the Lincoln statues are already being torn down. Statues of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt in downtown Portland were torn down in October of 2020. Also the statue of an elk for some reason. The city government did nothing to stop it and, so far, have done nothing to put them back up.
When I was in school I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address. And if you’re ever in DC, go up into the Lincoln Memorial and read the excerpts of his second inaugural address. We had a country. It was founded in blood and rededicated in blood. We’re losing it.
Those who voted for Biden fall into two camps; the ideological fanatics to whom DNW refers and the hoodwinked. The former are ideological fanatics. Peaceful coexistence is impossible with the fanatical. Some portion of the hoodwinked can be saved, the rest will refuse to see regardless of how obvious the truth.
“There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not [refuse to] see.” Leonardo da Vinci
Art Deco wrote, “Note, the Jacobin types the Democratic Party succors are implacably hostile to people of accomplishment, such as those who built this country at every level.”
That brings to my mind one of the comments at Ammo Grrrll’s PowerLine post yesterday …
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/thoughts-from-the-ammo-line-414.php
Here’s the part of the comment that impressed me, especially its first sentence:
“People today don’t realize the sacrifice that others made so they can hate their country without fear of retribution.
“America is truly a special place.
“If we lose it, the world will not see its like again for a long time, if ever.”
http://disq.us/p/2mrngks
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
–Abraham Lincoln, (December 1, 1862)
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When I read the words of Lincoln, it’s hard for me not to believe in God and the greatness, which lies within humanity and occasionally emerges in the Course of human events.
The quotation about secrets, “It’s not me who can’t keep a secret. It’s the people I tell that can’t,” reminds me of a story about Frederick the Great.
The year was 1756, and Frederick, believing he would soon be attacked by Austria, decided to strike first. As he prepared to leave for the front, a courtier came up and asked where the troops were marching to. Frederick leaned down and whispered “Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes, your majesty!” replied the courtier.
“Good,” said Frederick. “So can I.”
I too am a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln. At several points in my lifetime I’ve studied him, and I have yet to find any “cause” for him becoming who he became. No sign of a mentor or teacher. He seems to be one of those people who came into the world fully formed. A truly amazing human!
huxley,
I had no idea that poem was about Lincoln. And I’m no kid!
The project of the Left proceeds by extraordinarilly classic means: divide us to rule and conquer us.
Decline is Obama’s and now Biden’s signature accomplishment.
Now come it’s institutionalized division through CRT.
The ultimate beneficiary becomes mastery of the world: the Left declares that every global problem demands a global solution, from climate change to racism!
https://www.fpri.org/article/2011/10/sovereignty-or-submission-liberal-democracy-or-global-governance/
To the victors belong the spoils of international world government: fascism sold to everyone as beneficial, needful socialism.
All now now down to our future masters! All Hail Caesars!