Tag Archives: Abraham Lincoln

national news, political news

Kim Davis proves the Founders got it right

4 Comments

huck

Here’s the latest social media missive from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

“This morning, on ABC’s ‘This Week,’ Mike Huckabee said Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples is equivalent to Abraham Lincoln’s refusal to accept slavery, which was the law of the land when Lincoln became president. ‘You obey it if it’s right,’ Huckabee said, arguing that Davis shouldn’t be jailed. ‘Should Lincoln have been put in jail? Because he ignored the law?’

“So if Kim Davis who opposes gay marriage can refuse to issue a perfectly legal marriage license, a Quaker clerk who’s a pacifist can refuse to issue gun licenses, a clerk who’s a committed environmentalist can refuse to issue building permits, and a clerk who believes in a $15 minimum wage can refuse to issue Walmart a permit to build a new store. What planet does Huckabee live on?

“Here’s a man who was governor of Arkansas and wants to be president of the United States, and he compared Kim Davis to Abraham Lincoln? Sometimes I’m flabbergasted.”

Me, too, Mr. Secretary.

I’ll just add that the Kim Davis gay marriage license debate has demonstrated precisely why the Founding Fathers got it exactly right when they wrote a secular document — the U.S. Constitution — that would become the framework for the federal government.

 

national news, political news

Nugent has right to expose his ignorance

I’ve taken great pleasure criticizing the blathering of the Motor City Madman, one-time rocker Ted Nugent.

Nugent is a profane loudmouth. Many of his utterances border on sedition.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ted-nugent-obama-is-causing-veteran-suicides/ar-AAankZq

He’s also an American citizen who has the same rights the rest of us enjoy under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. He has the right to make an ass of himself. He does it regularly and he does it well.

The French writer, historian and philosopher Voltaire said it better than most when he wrote: “I do not agree with what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

Nugent said recently that the rash of veterans’ suicide is a result of President Obama’s policies. Yep, he blamed the president of the United States for those tragic deaths. He said “the commander in chief is the enemy.”

He’s referred to the president as a “subhuman mongrel” and added an assortment of disgraceful, disgusting statements to make whatever point he seeks to make.

I disagree with every single political statement that flies out of this guy’s mouth.

However, he’s entitled to say these things. He’s as American as anyone else, which just goes to show how diverse our national family has become.

Voltaire’s understanding of the right of free speech is unparalleled.

Even nut jobs like Ted Nugent are entitled to be heard.

Which brings up another famous quote from another notable statesman.

This, from President Abraham Lincoln: “Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

 

national news, political news

What makes a good commander in chief?

Scott Walker says that being an Eagle Scout prepared him to be commander in chief of the greatest military force in the history of the world.

So, there you have it. Join the Scouts, earn enough merit badges and you, too, can serve in the Oval Office.

The Republican Wisconsin governor was answering the question on a conservative radio talk show.

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/election-matters/scott-walker-suggests-being-an-eagle-scout-has-prepared-him/article_a8f0957e-5f09-504b-961d-c67c2927eb23.html

I won’t dismiss Walker’s Eagle Scout accomplishment as being irrelevant as Walker prepares to enter the 2016 GOP presidential primary donnybrook.

In truth, I don’t know what prepares someone to be commander in chief. The qualifications of the 44 men who’ve served as president are a mixed bag, to say the least.

A couple of our greatest presidents — Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt — didn’t serve in the military. Yet they saw the country through two horrific wars. Virtually all Lincoln’s presidency was eaten up by the Civil War and yet he held the Union together. FDR mobilized the nation after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor and led the nation beautifully as it carried the fight to enemies in the Pacific and across the Atlantic in Africa and Europe.

Republican Dwight Eisenhower ascended to the rank of general of the Army, but didn’t have to mobilize the nation during his two terms as president. Republican Ulysses S. Grant became an Army general, but his presidency was marred by scandal.

Our three most recent presidents among them have very little combined military experience. Democrat Bill Clinton didn’t serve in the military and in fact avoided the draft back in the 1960s; Republican George W. Bush served for a time in the Texas Air National Guard, flying fighter jets stateside; Democrat Barack Obama also has no military experience.

Does prior military service equate to preparation for being commander in chief? I don’t know.

And does such service mean more than achieving an Eagle Scout ranking? I don’t know that, either.

It seems to boil down to judgment and whether a president has the right judgment — and perhaps the temperament — to lead the world’s premier fighting force.

Maybe a stint in Scouting helps develop those traits. Then again, maybe it doesn’t if the individual doesn’t already possess the innate skill and judgment required to do the most difficult job on Earth.

 

 

Uncategorized

Didn’t wait on history to carve TR into stone

2 Comments

One of this year’s Christmas gifts, from my older son Peter, got me thinking about how quickly history is able at times to judge someone’s greatness.

Peter gave me a book, “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism.” It’s the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s latest tome chronicling the lives of great Americans.

What intrigued me is that of the two men mentioned in the title, one of them is memorialized on Mount Rushmore. Then something occurred to me.

Teddy Roosevelt became president in 1901 after President William McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt, who was 42, was the youngest man ever to assume the presidency; John F. Kennedy in 1960 became the youngest man, at 43, ever elected to the office. TR was elected in his own right in 1904. He left office in early 1909, turning the presidency over to Taft. Roosevelt then became so let down by Taft’s presidency that he sought the office once more in 1912, running on a progressive platform under the label of the Bull Moose Party.

The result of that campaign produced President Woodrow Wilson.

What does have to do with Mount Rushmore? Well, Gutzon Borglum began carving out the faces on the South Dakota mountainside in 1927, just 15 years after Roosevelt’s last run for public office and only eight years after his death in 1919. The other three men honored on that mountain are George Washington, the father of our country; Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln, who fought successfully to preserve the Union during the Civil War. Their greatness was long established by the time Borglum’s crews began blasting away on Mount Rushmore.

TR’s legacy, it could be argued, had yet to be finalized, as he in effect was a contemporary of the sculptor.

My thoughts have turned to whether someone could undertake such an project in that context today. I do not believe we’ve had a president since Roosevelt who’s quite measured up to any of the four men whose faces are carved into the mountain. Some have argued for Franklin Roosevelt, TR’s cousin, while others have said Ronald Reagan deserves to be added to the sculpture.

I prefer to leave the mountain as it stands.

Still, it strikes me that Gutzon Borglam took a gamble when he included Theodore Roosevelt in that pantheon of great Americans.

I’ll look forward to reading one more historian’s take on how he earned his place on the side of that mountain.

Uncategorized

Critics fabricate anger over Gettysburg absence

President Obama today decided against attending ceremonies marking the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s brief but poignant speech in Gettysburg, Pa.

So what?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/190733-website-woes-force-obama-to-skip-gettysburg-ceremony

The White House said the president took a pass on the ceremony because of on-going problems with the healthcare.gov website, which the administration is seeking to fix by the end of the month.

Still, critics on the right have found reason to criticize Obama for not attending the event. There was this, for example: “His dismissal of the request shows a man so detached from the duty of history, from the men who served in the White House before him, that it is unspeakable in its audacity,” wrote Salena Zito of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Ask almost any person in this historic town; even his most ardent supporters here are stunned.”

Well, I hasten to point out that President Reagan did not attend the 125th anniversary of the speech, which occurred when he occupied the White House. I do not recall much hissy-fit pitching over that. Indeed, the Gipper never even visited Gettysburg while he was president. It’s also been noted that of all the presidents who have served since Lincoln, only one of them — William Howard Taft — attended ceremonies on the site of the famed Civil War battlefield.

The criticism, of course, demonstrates the state of play these days. Barack Obama is having a difficult time at the moment. The Affordable Care Act is proving to be much more problematic than he envisioned. World hot spots keep setting off sparks. The economy is still a bit sluggish.

Does he deserve criticism? Sure he does. It goes with the territory.

He doesn’t deserve to be beaten up over being absent from ceremonies marking the sesquicentennial of the Gettysburg Address. Hey, he took the oath of office twice while placing his hand on President Lincoln’s Bible; he routinely cites the wisdom of the 16th president as one of his guiding lights.

Uncategorized

Now this was a speech for the ages

Americans are filled this year with commemorations of seminal events in our nation’s history.

We’ve noted already the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, with its climactic speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who proclaimed for the ages that “I have a dream today …” This Friday marks the 50th year since a gunman shot down the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, as he motored through downtown Dallas.

Today also marks the 150th year since another milestone moment. President Abraham Lincoln stood on a field that once was the scene of immense carnage and delivered the Gettysburg Address.

The speech is remarkable for two things: One is the content of the text and the profound wisdom it contains. The other is its brevity. Here is the speech … in its entirety:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

President Lincoln was incorrect about one element of his remarks. He declared “The world will little notice, nor long remember what we say here … ”

Wrong, Mr. President. The world remembers.

And many of wish we could return to an era when statesmen rose to speak such wisdom.