Today is Lincoln’s birthday
[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited version of a previous post.]
His actual birthday, that is.
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.
But all too often, it suffices that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time.
“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.”
Republican pounces!
I will not be surprised if soon our ahistorical fringe demands an end to the holiday for the slaveholder Washington.
It’s not me who can’t keep a secret. It’s the people I tell that can’t.
–A. Lincoln
___________________________________
I never heard that one before. Damn straight!
Mike, they already are, and Lincoln too.
In JH I memorized “O Captain, My Captain”.
And in HS in English class we discussed “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening “, also about Lincoln. Oh, not sure what class but “The Gettysburg Address”, some of which I can still remember.
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”
Lincoln’s admonition came at a time when both sides mostly shared the same values. Believed in the same Christian God. Both sides believed mostly in the same Constitution. Only differing on the issues of slavery and whether States could unilaterally declare their secession from the union.
Today, most on the left do not believe in a God at all, at most paying mere lip service to a distant “higher power” that doesn’t impose any moral restrictions upon them.
Today, most on the left dismiss constitutional prohibitions, when they act as an obstacle to their agenda.
Today, most of the left do not believe in inalienable rights, which by definition must extend from a creator. Instead,
inherent to that position is that there are only State granted and revocable privileges.
Today, those who vote Democrat are comfortable with a two tiered system of ‘justice’ that favors only them.
Today, most on the left insist that a separate life growing within a woman’s body has no right to life whatsoever.
The above differences are merely the tip of the iceberg.
Increasingly, we have less and less in common with them.
But most alienating of all is that disagreement itself is an anathema* to them. It is not we on the right who say they must go but rather they who say that we must go… into the night.
* “a person or thing accursed or consigned to damnation or destruction.”
Do not imagine that their hate for Trump is singular, that same level of hate and intolerance extends to all who oppose them, however mild & limited that disagreement may be.
Ideological fanatics do not tolerate dissent and ideological fanaticism reigns supreme in today’s Democrat party.
They occupy an entirely different moral universe than we. One in which an opposite ‘magnetic pole’ exists.
Interesting discussion about W.T. Sherman in that linked 2009 thread, notably this:
If you substituted the name of a top Israeli general (not sure who that would be) for Sherman, and “Israel” for “the North,” it would fit the present situation in Gaza pretty well. And yet Israel is exercising much more discretion than Sherman ever did, for better or worse.
I agree, it is time to ” Make Gaza howl “.
And yet Israel is exercising much more discretion than Sherman ever did, for better or worse.
That isn’t so clearcut. Sherman was destroying industrial and agricultural capacity. Gaza doesn’t have much of either.
Had Israel been showing Sherman’s “discretion”, the war would have been over in a week.
Maybe not.
Two weeks, then.
I have found it to be very distressing that the isolationist (usually pro Putin and hard core MAGA) faction of the Republican Party buys inot the “Lincoln was a tyrant” nonsense.
Given the way things are going in our former constitutional republic, don’t be too surprised if statues of Lincoln get torn down because, according to some hate-America-first leftists, he was a racist and never wished to free the slaves.
BrooklyBoy:
Yes that is particularly repugnant about those “liberty loving conservatives;” could be worse, could be Democrats.
W. T. Sherman is the favorite arch villian of the (we was ronged) revisionists of the far right. Boo hoo and sad trombone.
@JohnTyler
We’ve already seen them do it. For instance they removed one statue of Lincoln the Emancipator, in spite of it being commissioned by freed slaves.
My favorite Lincoln quote comes from his application of a multi-front strategy for bringing down the south, “those that can’t into the actual skinning can hold a leg”.
But you can’t fool mom.