"150 years ago today, the greatest speech in the history of the world was delivered by Abraham Lincoln" @ AMERICAN DIGEST

March 4, 2015

"150 years ago today, the greatest speech in the history of the world was delivered by Abraham Lincoln"

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Abraham Lincoln: Second Inaugural Address. 1865.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at March 4, 2015 9:54 AM

Y'know, in reading that speech again, what strikes me most forcefully is the idea that, when the speech was given, there were a great majority of its hearers who could understand it.

Try explaining that rhetoric to your average honor student today.

Posted by: Rob De Witt at March 4, 2015 11:11 AM

Abraham Lincoln was a liar just like most politicans. He threw newspaper editors in jail because he didnt like their opinions

Posted by: bgarrett at March 4, 2015 11:45 AM

It took the nations first impressment to guarantee this new freedom. Hmmm. They's go into attics looking for young men. You were free to volunteer in the North, but you were not free to not volunteer. That type of thing has greatly expanded over the years.

In the South you were free to not volunteer. There would be a dress left at your door and other forms of shaming, but there was no impressment. Or you could just leave, like Samuel Clemens. No place left to avoid them anymore.

That war was a great loss, not a great victory. There are people and places that should be separated, not unified. Can we not see this everywhere in 2014?

Posted by: james wilson at March 4, 2015 11:56 AM

The bondsman's debt has been paid many many times over. Yet I don't see any end to the payments.

JWM

Posted by: jwm at March 4, 2015 1:03 PM

Getting really tired of hearing how 'great' this lying shill for the railroads was. He was almost single-handedly responsible for transforming the Republic into an empire at the barrel of a gun - built on the very foundation from which the Colonies had declared independence: crony capitalism, a corrupt monetary system and central banking.

This may have been Lincoln's most deceitful speech, given that he unilaterally provoked and pursued the war he lamented, which ultimately resulted in over One Million American casualties. When Congress requested the documentary evidence detailing Lincoln's orders, which had provoked war by violating agreements with the States of both Florida and So. Carolina, he told them to piss off. His words: "the communication of the information called for would not, at this time, comport with the public interest." Executive privilege.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:809?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

Lincoln's illegal, unnecessary war fundamentally transformed what had been a voluntary alliance of sovereign States, with a limited central government, into an empire built upon conquered and conscripted provinces, their Citizens illegally drafted into a "national citizenry" by the never-duly-passed 14th Amendment, to be taxed, both directly and indirectly, by Lincoln's cronies and successors.

Lincoln didn't free the slaves or save the Union. He nationalized the plantations and made every Citizen in the nation a slave to the federal government and the banksters who run it. His legacy is the unsustainable debt, rampant federal corruption and racial animosity that has transformed the U.S. into a banana republic where the President of the United States can openly engage in federal crime with the blessing of half the electorate.

Happily, I won't live to see the clueless rubes deify the current Liar-in-Chief 150 year from now, in way Lincoln is mindlessly worshipped today.

Posted by: goy at March 4, 2015 2:38 PM

All of the crazies are out tonight, huh GVL?

Posted by: Fat Man at March 4, 2015 6:22 PM

The text you quote is the text that is inscribed on the Lincoln Memorial. There is a problem with it. The word bondsman means surety (e.g. bail bondsman), not slave. The KJV of the Bible uses the word bondman in several places that contextually mean slave or indentured servant.

The The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln uses the word bond-man. The autograph of the speech found on-line at LoC.gov shows bond_man. Clearly the writer had inscribed bond man and then tried to add a ligature between bond and man to make them bondman.

Posted by: Fat Man at March 4, 2015 6:37 PM

Lincoln was a lying bastard.

The celebration should be for a real American patriot, John Wilkes Booth Day, April 14th.

Of Lincoln, Booth wrote:
..."Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment.... I struck for my country and that alone. A country that groaned beneath this tyranny, and prayed for this end, and yet now behold the cold hands they extend to me. God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong. Yet I cannot see my wrong, except in serving a degenerate people."...

Sic semper tyrannis

Posted by: itor at March 4, 2015 7:13 PM

Dingbats like bgarrett, wilson, and goy are a dime a dozen at Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell web sites. Their complaints are completely ahistorical and unworthy of refutation.

I will assert that Lincoln is among our greatest politicians, that his speeches are among our most important public documents. Anyone who does not accept and embrace the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address, neither understands nor embraces the United States of America and its exceptional role in History.

Posted by: Fat Man at March 4, 2015 7:14 PM

We get it, Fat Man. Only a lunatic would rather be alone with a rational thought than insane with the rest of the world. But, yeah, we got out tonight. Doesn't happen much so you're right to be concerned.

Posted by: james wilson at March 4, 2015 7:23 PM

Sorry, I didn't mean to ignore you itor. You are a dingbat too.

Posted by: Fat Man at March 4, 2015 7:35 PM

Here's one more dingbat rebel, Fat Man -

Our constitution legalizes succession. The war with the South was illegal. Abraham Lincoln should have been impeached and thrown out for treason after the bombardment of Fort Sumter.

Now that Americans are so wise about Lincoln and all, we've got a megalomaniac named Obama with his crown, telephone and pen following Lincoln's example of lawlessness. I wonder how many are going to die this time.

"History is written by the victors." - Churchill

Posted by: Denny at March 4, 2015 7:46 PM

Sorry, GVDL. Love ya, but you and Fat Man are wrong about saintly Honest Abe. He was Lenin in a stovepipe hat, and it's largely thanks to him that this country is ruined. I'm sorry he was murdered -- I'm against murder, as a rule -- but it was at his hands that the Constitution was murdered.

If the Confederate States had simply been left alone, slavery would have petered out and today the USA and the CSA would be tighter than America and Canada. Plus we'd own Cuba and the good parts of Mexico. As for race relations, look around you and tell me that the Union's glorious victory has benefited blacks -- or anybody else.

All hail the Federal Entity, brought to you by Abraham M.F. Lincoln.

Posted by: B Lewis at March 4, 2015 7:48 PM

Here we go again, the dogpile on Lincoln.
The state of our nation is not because of what Lincoln did or did not do.

Look no further than the Democratic Party.

Our Social Security

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program.
He promised:

1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary;

No longer Voluntary

2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual
Incomes into the Program;

Now 7.65% on the first $90,000

3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from
their income for tax purposes each year;

No longer tax deductible

4.) That the money the participants put into the independent 'Trust Fund' rather than into the
general operating fund would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program and no other Government program;

Under Johnson the money was moved to The General Fund and Spent

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.

Under Clinton & Gore up to 85% of your Social Security can be Taxed

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month and find that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to 'put away', you may be interested in the following:

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent 'Trust Fund' and put it into the general fund so that Congress could spend it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the Democratically controlled House and Senate.

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party.

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the 'tie-breaking' deciding vote as President of the
Senate, while he was Vice President of the US

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?

A: That's right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.
Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!
Then, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!

Dick Kantenberger
Gifted Education Writer
Examiner.com

Posted by: chasmatic at March 4, 2015 11:11 PM

"Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments"

In fact many immigrants from the infamous Mariel boatlift were over 65 and began receiving SS on the day their foot touched dry American land. This continues today. If a "dreamer" is given amnesty and "earns" citizenship they can sponsor and bring in their parents and grandparents and if any of these people are 65 or older they will immediately be eligible for SS. This is a big reason why the amnesty is such a time bomb. It will destroy SS for Americans. Make no mistake, one way or another you will have to continue to pay for SS but the SS system will go bankrupt and fail to provide a meaningful retirement for senior citizens. This is no accident. This is part of the left's belief in redistribution as articulated by their hero Karl Marx: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Posted by: GoneWithTheWind at March 5, 2015 7:15 AM

"Democrats" did not impose the current economic / monetary / federal system that was foisted on every single one of the United States and their Citizens through brute military force beginning with the events of April 6, 1861.

That action was taken by a lawless federal government co-opted by former Whigs, whose chosen name was on par with other Bizarro-World monikers such as "Affordable Care", "Employee Free Choice" and "Net Neutrality", in that it was instrumental in destroying the Republican Form of Government guaranteed to each State by the Constitution.

(Re-)Establishment of central banking, a debt-driven monetary system controlled by bankers, direct taxation, regionally-unbalanced protectionist tariffs, a conscripted "national citizenry" and Hamiltonian crony "capitalism" - again, all the evils the Colonies fought to free themselves of - are what set the stage for the abuses we have witnessed since (including Social "Security"). Political party has been irrelevant since that time - it'a a kabuki conflict designed to keep the electorate of the empire's vassal states engaged in constant, partisan squabbles over wedge issues, while the real enemy chips away at liberty and picks everyone's pocket daily through ever-increasing levels of direct tax on every conceivable activity (or no activity at all), as well as through the relentless inflation inherent in the creation of money through debt via the "Federal" Reserve, built on the foundation of "American System" economic policy. That's Lincoln's only 'gift' to posterity.

It's not possible to correct the U.S.' present, doomed path without pinpointing the fork in the road that put us on that path. Of all the events in U.S. history, that fork is the one that is most jealously protected, most egregiously distorted and most carefully camouflaged by statist efforts going back 150 years. That's because it was the point in history where the U.S. abandoned its founding principles as a nation of independent, sovereign States, with a general government accountable to their combined, superior authority, and turned to follow the doomed example of every empire that preceded it. Our society is living the truth in the axiom that "it's never different this time."

Posted by: goy at March 5, 2015 8:28 AM

Chasmatic has, apparently, absolved Lincoln of responsibility for our present state because....Democrats! But, wasn't Tom Jefferson was a Democrat? Andrew Jackson made it his life's work to end the Federal Reserve of that era, and he succeeded. The Republican Party was formed as radical party and assumed power as a radical party. They got the same percentage of the vote as Adolf's band did in 1933, and conducted their Reichstag fire at Fort Sumter. But where the German form of Fascism is not subtle, the democratic form was so new, so clever, and so subtle that it had not yet been named. The Republican progressive flame got old after Teddy, and the Democrats said, let's do this!

Tocqueville--"
If despotism were to be established in present-day democracies, it would probably assume a different character; it would be more widespread and kinder; it would debase men without tormenting them.
Thus I think that the type of oppression threatening democracies will not be like anything there has been in the world before; our contemporaries would not be able to find any example of it in their memories. I, too, am having difficulty finding a word which will exactly convey the whole idea I have formed; the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. This is a new phenomenon which I must, therefore, attempt to define since I can find no name for it.
I see an innumerable crowd of men, all alike and equal...he exists only in himself and for himself; if he still retains his family circle, at any rate he may be said to have lost his country. Above these men stands an immense and protective power which alone is responsible for looking after their enjoyments and watching over their destiny. It is absolute, meticulous, ordered, provident, and kindly disposed. It would be like a fatherly authority, if, fatherlike, its aim were to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks only to keep them in perpetual childhood; it prefers its citizens to enjoy themselves provided they have only enjoyment in mind. It works readily for their happiness but it wishes to be the only provider and judge of it. It provides their security, anticipates and guarantees their needs, supplies their pleasures, directs their principal concerns, manages their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances. Why can it not remove from them entirely the bother of thinking and the troubles of life?
Thus it reduces daily the value and frequency of the exercise of free choice; it restricts the activity of free will within a narrower range and gradually removes autonomy itself from each citizen. Equality has prepared men for all this, inclining them to tolerate all these things and often even to see them as a blessing.
They derive consolation from being supervised by thinking that they have chosen their supervisors."

"The unity, the universality, the omnipotence of society’s power, and the uniformity of its rules represent the outstanding feature of all the political systems invented in our day. They recur at the heart of the strangest utopias. The human mind still pursues these images even in its dreams."

The American Founders read every bit of political theory written in the Western world since the Greeks and studied the governments of every county and burg in Europe to unlock the keys for a sustainable republic, and even successfully invented new systems to apply to a large republic, which Montesquieu--who they revered--said could not be done. Lincoln unraveled it in one stroke. That was not his intention, perhaps, but that was the thread he pulled. Henry Adams, later in life full of regret for his support of the war, wrote that Washington in 1866 was a beehive of activity breaking out of the constrains of the old system, an activity he contributed to. That was Lincoln's legacy.

Posted by: james wilson at March 5, 2015 9:14 AM

Since james Wilson has cavalierly cast off the mooring lines and drawn comparisons between Republicans and "Adolf's band", I shall drift a bit further, losing sight of shore. ("There be dragons" indeed, piffle)
Lincoln was the figurehead for the Illuminati's movement to shape global economy. Freed slaves allowed the North to ramp up its industrial efforts and all states united provided funding for fledgling political and social agencies.
You might thank General Motors, the Catholic Church and Freemasons for allowing Honest Abe to serve as the instrument of change.

"Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations. If conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend to keep the conflicts under operation since they hope to profit from the situation. To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth. — W. S. Burroughs
I'm drifting in your direction james, can't see the coastline anymore. If you mention von Däniken you'll have to stay after class.

"kabuki" nice turn of phrase goy. I would have used "Punch and Judy". As Yogi Berra once said "When you come to a fork in the road, take it" so we won't have to go back so many years to see where we got derailed, merely look to which party was in power when down turns occurred. Kennedy was the last good Democrat and he took the hit for our current half-breed faggot POTUS.

Hope and Change my arse. We are following the cloth.

Posted by: chasmatic at March 5, 2015 10:41 AM

Chasmatic and Fat Man take a religious view of Lincoln, which makes discussion fairly impossible. But the Founders were very specific. The type of government they designed was completely unsuitable for centralized power; in fact, the Constitution was an anti-trust act for central government.

Centralized power began with the Bank of the United States, which Jackson beat down, then it stuck with Lincoln. That is the world we live in now, and can never leave. I'm done thanking Lincoln for it, although he does indeed deserve credit.

Jefferson
I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on the grounds that “all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” To take a single step beyond the boundaries drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition.

Madison
If congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands, they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state regulation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress...Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of limited Government established by the people of America.
I am unable to conceive that the people of America, in their present temper, or under any circumstances which can speedily happen, will choose, and every second year repeat the choice of .........men who would be disposed to form and pursue a scheme of tyranny or treachery......who would either desire or dare ......to betray the solemn trust committed to them. What change of circumstances time, and a fuller population of our country may produce requires a prophetic spirit to declare, which makes no part of my pretensions.

Henry Adams
The political dilemma was as clear in 1870 as it was likely to be in 1970. The system of 1789 had broken down, and with it the eighteenth-century fabric of moral principles. Politicians had tacitly given it up. Nine-tenths of men’s political energies must henceforth be wasted on expedients to patch the political machine as often as it broke down.

(And, apparently, defending Lincoln.)

Posted by: james wilson at March 5, 2015 11:17 AM

james, it's become clear to me that the religious view of Lincoln is a cornerstone of the federal government's despotic rule.

Mindless, unquestioning worship of Lincoln is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to a State Religion, one in which Lincoln is portrayed, falsely, as the "Savior of the Union" and the "Vanquisher of Slavery".

That worship is characterized primarily by incessant parroting of Lincoln's florid prose as if it were scripture. Simultaneously, it requires one to ignore his serial usurpations, lies, politically expedient support for the statutory protection of slavery, racist white supremacism and the laundry list of destructive, unconstitutional actions pursued by him, his duplicitous administration, their eager minions in the federal army and the collection of bankers and monied interests who co-opted the function of the federal government under his so-called "leadership", for their own purposes.

The Temple and Statue of Zeus, at the far end of the Mall in D.C., symbolically epitomizes the length to which Lincoln's statist ideological acolytes and political heirs have gone in the quest to engineer a counterfeit, pseudo-religious legitimacy in support of the Leviathan Lincolnite State, and to ingraine that faux legitimacy in the psyche of every "national citizen" at an existential level.

Posted by: goy at March 5, 2015 12:20 PM

Well Gerard, you let loose the dogs of war there; what say you to goy? As a mere observer, I would enjoy your response, I'm sure - as I cannot augur what it would comprise, even though I'm an avid devotee of the craic on this here forum.

Posted by: Frank P at March 5, 2015 2:58 PM

The problem here is that at the founding of the First American Republic, those who didn't like it, the Tories, removed themselves to Canada. When the First Republic fell, and was replaced by the Second, those who didn't like it were the vanquished in a contest of arms. A very few left, the rest were treated as all war losers have been since the beginning of time: powerless, totally at the mercy and whims of the victors.

The Third American Republic is falling, the Fourth (if there is to be one), has not yet come. We are betrayed from within and invaded from without, by people who would see our Constitution broken, the complete and utter destruction of the American Republic, and its replacement with a neo-Marxist aristocratic tyranny.

Whaddya gonna do, losers? Re-fight ancient battles you lost? Or put your damn shoulders to the wheel and help us throw back the traitors and invaders, and secure the Fourth Republic of Liberty?

Posted by: John A. Fleming at March 5, 2015 4:03 PM

That thought is incoherent, Fleming.

There's no way back indeed, so there is no fight to be fought and nothing to put your shoulder into except where you are arranging their Utopian schemes into some semblance of usable order. They can't do it, and sometimes they even admit that they can't; this is your job.

I backslide, all the time. But I won't kid myself any longer.

I find the losers to be quite pleasant and a wonderful read, because they know this is not a contest to be won or lost. They've lost. Reagan was as good as it gets under universal suffrage and better that we deserved. He made America safe for two Bushes, a Clinton, and The One.But fight on, nobody is telling you not to.

Posted by: james wilson at March 5, 2015 5:04 PM

No, it's not. The complaining about Lincoln is losers behaving like the losers they were and always now will be. Pining for the lost glory days of the First American Republic, and anger for its loss, is for losers.

What is lost cannot be regained. I can guarantee you that the Fourth Republic, if there is to be one, will not be the First, Part Deux, New and Improved. Few today can even see dimly what it could be. In this moment, there is the opportunity for each person to choose their path, to form alliances with their fellows, and forge a new destiny.

I do know that there are legions of little men and women, mediocrities with delusions, who think they should be the boss of the rest of us. And lurking in their midst, biding time, poking and prodding, waiting for the golpe, are evil men who are prepared to do anything to seize power and wield it.

Don't be a useful idiot. Work towards your future, not someone else's.

Posted by: John A. Fleming at March 5, 2015 6:43 PM

Same incoherence, different paragraph. It is hardly possible to have a new republic worthy of liberty without understanding where the first unraveled, and to stop worshiping the unraveling. No one has been pining here except the worshipers of Lincoln. No group of people are more thoughtful or prepared about what might be necessary if opportunity arises, because they have gone to the trouble of understanding the unraveling. They know they are not going to vote their way out of this. The useful idiots are the ones who think that they are going to put their shoulders into that.

Neither do I see such people leaving society or discussion. What they have done is to leave the political circle jerk in which I know I have spent most of my life. The future, if it is ever worse, is predictable. If good, it is completely unpredictable, which favors the prepared. My opinion is that Lincolnistas are not prepared, an opinion you do not share.

Posted by: james wilson at March 5, 2015 8:11 PM

james wilson: I am not as well-read nor articulate as some of the esteemed commenters here. Perhaps you can help me with a couple questions.
If I am reading the comments correctly Lincoln single-handedly initiated the decline and fall of our great nation?
Did Jefferson, Madison, any of the Founding Fathers ever mention that the First American Republic was best suited for small groups, say a couple thousand?
Hypothetically, which of the Founding Fathers would have done better than Lincoln at that time and under those circumstances?
If Lincoln was so bad, why is he venerated as he is? He is quoted, statues are set of him, he even appears on the money.
Of all the presidents he is held and cherished as a good one. Only a handful, maybe two hands full of presidents get that honor.

Posted by: chasmatic at March 5, 2015 10:07 PM

To my mind, to say "Lincolnista" is like talking about the Jacobite or sans-culottes or Septembrist or even Know-Nothing strain of American politics I didn't know there were anybody like that. It has no resonance with me.

So I was thinking about this today. It drove me crazy, trying to figure out this non-sequitir (to my mind) Lincoln-bashing. I wanted to settle this for now, and go back to my normal business.

Here's what I came up with. I decided that from now on, this is how I'm going to say the Pledge of Allegiance, out loud and I don't care who hears: " I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the Republic which it forms, a Nation under God, exceptional, with the Blessings of Liberty for All." That's the country I want to give my allegiance to.

Same point, another paragraph, trying to break out of GVDL's can't not be misunderstood. I equate nursing old wounds and grievances with being a useful idiot. It's not worth the time I've been given, and it gives aid and comfort to our enemies.

Posted by: John A. Fleming at March 5, 2015 10:29 PM

A useful idiot is not someone who refuses to participate in a thing, it is someone who thinks that he is. That would make me an idiot, and you a useful idiot.

And, you would of course repeat the Pledge, a salute to the centralized state penned by a socialist minister, accompanied by a salute so similar to the Nazi salute that this was altered to the hand over heart in the Second World War. This memorized display of obedience to the state would have so appalled the Founders that they would have abandoned the experiment in Philadelphia and gone home in disgust. But now it is our religious tradition along with the poetry of Lincoln.

I do not nurse old wounds and grievances. I lost nothing because I believed what you believed once, and for a long time. I finally gained an understanding that was once beyond me. That is enough. Now be good to your word and don't give it any more time.

Posted by: james wilson at March 5, 2015 11:16 PM

Chasmatic

"If I am reading the comments correctly Lincoln single-handedly initiated the decline and fall of our great nation?"
Yes, essentially. The Republican radicals, who were or would become the progressive Protestant force later in the century, were behind Lincoln, but without the gifts of Lincoln they were nothing. Lincoln was a great man, in the historical use of the word. A very great man.

"Did Jefferson, Madison, any of the Founding Fathers ever mention that the First American Republic was best suited for small groups, say a couple thousand?" They knew as Montesquieu knew that is was best suited for similar peoples in areas no larger than the American colonies, the smaller the better. Their federal small f scheme for a huge republic was original in it's genius. But even a great machine is vulnerable to ambitious men.

"Hypothetically, which of the Founding Fathers would have done better than Lincoln at that time and under those circumstances?"
They knew very well they were leaving a worm in the apple, but they all would have handled it differently, except Hamilton. There was no question at the convention that states could leave the union. Several states wrote codicils before the signing, explicitly claiming that right. Most were in the North. So, the Founders would have accepted the split. And now there were thirty-three states by the time of the war, not thirteen.

"If Lincoln was so bad, why is he venerated as he is? He is quoted, statues are set of him, he even appears on the money." So was Stalin. Lincoln is venerated because people who lose their principles have the greatest need for a leader. And Lincoln was an exceptional man, extraordinary in many ways.

"Of all the presidents he is held and cherished as a good one. Only a handful, maybe two hands full of presidents get that honor." The ability to thrive without an exceptional leader is the mark of a strong society. FDR was and is venerated, and he did more damage than Obama. But we were very weak in 1933. What was this societies excuse for venerating John Kennedy?

Posted by: james wilson at March 6, 2015 12:17 AM

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March 4, 2015

"150 years ago today, the greatest speech in the history of the world was delivered by Abraham Lincoln"

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