The most effective speeches in political history are rarely orations. Truly great speeches do not communicate ideas to an audience so much gather and punctuate sentences that are already half-formed in everyone’s thoughts. A truly great orator does not manufacture a moment. He is part of it and consequently knows when to step aside and give voice to the event itself. Then the speech becomes part of the action rather than a substitute for the actions themselves. Really powerful speeches are astonishingly obvious, brief to the point of curtness and remarkably, entirely devoid of the word “I”.
Edward Everett, who had served as Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative, Governor of Massachusetts, president of Harvard University, and Vice Presidential candidate was the main speaker at Gettysburg. His speech, which took over an hour to deliver, can be found here. It is erudite, full of soaring phrases and classical allusions and almost no one remembers it. Abraham Lincoln’s much shorter address, on the other hand, is known verbatim to millions. It is plain and contains no fancy words. Most remarkably yet, it does not contain a single instance of the first person singular. Not once in his most famous address does Abraham Lincoln say, “I”.
It was not a fluke. As if to re-emphasize the rhetorical lesson, Winston Churchill would duplicate the feat in the next century. He would deliver an even shorter speech than Lincoln’s on VE Day. On that occasion a huge crowd had gathered in central London to hear him formally announce complete and unconditional victory over Nazi Germany. This is what he said:
God bless you all! This is your victory! It is the victory of the cause of freedom in every land. In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best. Everyone has tried. Neither the long years, nor the dangers, nor the fierce attacks of the enemy, have in any way weakened the independent resolve of the British nation. God bless you all!
Like the Gettysburg address, those were all the words there were. No classical allusions. No soaring phrases. Just plain unadorned words. And yet like Lincoln’s speech nearly fourscore years before, it was surpassingly effective because Churchill could muster something more than any mere famous orator could marshal. He could sound the chords of memory. He could summon up shared experience. He could achieve what only truly great captains of history can occasionally accomplish: to reach out and touch the people he led and become for a moment indivisible with them and synonymous with the event. Winston knew his part in the play and that was what imparted drama to his lines. Years later Clement Atlee called Winston “”the last of the great orators who can touch the heights.” But Churchill even at 80 corrected him. He replied:
“I have never accepted what many people have kindly said – namely, that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved unconquerable. It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.”
In a time when conventional political wisdom holds that image and substance are interchangeable, it is interesting to remember an era when the public knew which was the lion, and which was the roar.
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A little self-knowledge goes a long way.
Ha ha ha ha! Nice shot Wretch. Trouble is Teh Won will not see it because it cannot be reflected from his mental mirror.
I think humanity has to suffer through these mistakes of conscience in order to grow. Kind of like yeast is needed to make bread. By the action of a bacteria we get wonderful bread.
The current game is to try and take a drink every time Obama uses I in a speech. They had to reduce it to a sip. 21 I’s the last time the game was attempted.
“We” is the word.
While Rush Limbaugh is considered bombastic, he credits his early success to the fact he already had an audience who was hungry for a conservative view point. That the bombast was part of his entertainment shtick.
Everyone should notice that in addition to being erudite and presenting complexity in a brief and smooth manner, Richard’s writing has a low “I” count…….Do I get a cookie for the snow job?
The immediate reaction from the crowd to Lincoln’s speech, following the weighty tome that constituted Everett’s’, was muted. The reaction was pretty much one of “That’s all?” It took some time for the eloquence and import of what the President said to sink in.
Pres. George W. Bush is no Lincoln when it comes to speeches, but he had his moments, the most of impressive of which to me was the “I can hear you!” from atop that crushed fire truck at the WTC site.
Obama will be remembered for his oratory. But 15 min after he goes out the door no one will recall one word. He has never had and will never have his “I can hear you!” moment, spontaneous, heartfelt, and thrilling.
Lincoln was one of the great masters of English Prose in the md-19th century, perhaps the greatest of the tine. This address was not a mere fluke. Go read the 2nd inaugural address.
No doubt, by his untimely death, we were cheated out of his memoirs of the War. It is a great loss.
We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing.
He claimed that the secret of his success was that at Harrow School he was not considered bright enough for the Classics course and was placed in the English track. He knew the English language and the English people. Churchill was perfect in the moment and the British people displayed their virtues with him. With the cynicism of a true romantic he was unencumbered by illusions about Democracy.
At the first chance they had they threw Churchill out and swallowed the National Health Service.
There was good in the old craft of political oration. A politician was expected to have command of the facts and then to thoroughly and at length explain his position to his constituents. It was not all bombast and waving a bloody shirt. Large crowds of common people would gather and listen for hours as a candidate went over an issue and described and justified a proposed policy in detail. Any errors in logic or omissions in fact would be exposed by the press.
The argument is often made that television and the sound bite have replaced true argument, a series of logical steps based on facts and leading to a conclusion, with emotional messages. I can not think of any other time in history in which serious politicians would have even thought of bring a bill before the Congress that has not been read by most of the members and which can not be explained and defended in detail before the public.
Well, it may have been that the electorate had “command of the facts”, or at least leived in the real world.
Then again, FDR was really just a more resonant, cultivated version of the sort of media politicians we have today.
He did not start the bombast, but his understanding of mass media of the day push the business quire further along.
Hitler once said something to the effect of “I want a loud speaker on every street corner of every city in Germany”, and he new of what he spoke.
How we do we get people like Churchil and Lincoln. The answer may be other than the politicla culture of thier times.
Having said that, how large they loom now. Like Titans they are. as if another race of Man.
With all this protracted political melodrama surrounding the WOT, it seems almost impossible that the entire British part of WW2 took as much time as we have dithered after 911.
There is still a hole in the ground at the WTC.
This says something about us.
Perhaps, wretchard. Perhaps.
However, the audience is different now. And the circumstance.
And the culture.
We absorb into culture many aspects of our melting pot. Some good. Some…well, rather less genteel than some would like.
Take sports stars for instance. Trash talking, acting out personal passion plays every time a successful minor event involves them, demonstrations of self-aggrandizement and grandstanding for the slightest contribution. Team sports dominated by grandiose gestures of spotlight hogging by the individual.
How about movies? A night of awards that is interminable, punctuated by some of the most imbecilic rambling, lecturing, pontificating…preceded by a red carpet drooling over the inane, the inept and the inarticulate. Eight to twelve hours of brain death.
Have you gone to the theater lately and watched a feature film? Special effects and plot lines thinner than a runway supermodel. Trick or trite. Screenwriting is remedial at best.
Newspapers and magazines? Pulitzer Prizes come in Cracker Jack boxes these days. Deep as a toe ring and often plagiarized, most of the ink is spent hiding facts and distorting them rather than digging for them and analyzing them.
Lincoln and Churchill would find post modern American and British audiences a wholly different set of ears.
What is left out in composing (and not just in writing/oratory) can be skillfully used and highly important in the result, as Wretchard explains and in fact often demonstrates.
Our culture…trash talking, etc….there is a diffusion of the prison culture into the broader culture at large. Perhaps just a part of “victim is King” (didn’t we turn our backs on kings at some point?)
If you ever have the chance, go to the Lincoln Memorial and read the Gettysburg Address inscribed one of its walls.
Transcendent.
America is starving for a leader who can capture the moment like a Lincoln or Churchill. But isn’t it interesting that such men are (or at least have been) delivered up during great moments of national tribulation. Before and after WWII Brits had little use for Churchill. But he was their greatest leader ever.
Tolstoy concludes War and Peace with a peculiar treatise countering the Great Man theory. Whenever Iread that excellent novel, my eyes glaze over at the end, but I think he’s onto something here. I have confidence that America Greatness will emerge from the recent atrocity of Obama, but I fear the price will be tribulation well beyond what we have seen so far in living memory.
Yes, toad, here’s your cookie.
Bush at Ground Zero gave an excellent performance. I don’t recall the words, just the mood, which his words set and maintained. Actually, thanks to great speechwriters, some of Bush’s first several states of the union speeches were outstanding.
Y’know, I’ve given this some thought from time to time. Especially in big public venues, I wonder if the words are ever heard directly. Churchill created the lion with his words, and that’s what we remember, the achievement of the words. They were, after all, just words.
Obama, on the other hand, when he isn’t talking in the first person singular, is generally talking about putting lipstick on a pig and denying that he really just called his opponents (or predecessors or non-supporters) swine. I don’t remember his words, just that our POTUS stands up and calls his countrymen swine. And gets heavy applause for it from his party.
‘Here was the man who marshalled the English language and sent it into battle, when we had little else.’ (Karsh)
This thought is often attributed to J F Kennedy, but Karsh said it in 1941 when he photographed Churchill. But whoever said it first identified Churchill’s marvelous weapon.
Most of the time we must somehow manage without a Churchill or a Lincoln, but they can still serve as leaders if we would only follow them.
Jim
I wonder what Osama bin Laden ever said to get himself so many followers. In the years after 9/11 you could find translations of what the various shiekhs and imams were saying in Friday prayers at mosques around the Middle East (and in Australia). It was instructive. Saudi Arabia has retired most of those imams now, although they still have their religious police. Australia’s chief trouble-maker is “retired”. I wonder who is speaking to and for the Taliban these days, and to the military in Pakistan.
Perhaps others can comment on their own perspectives regarding the following comments – I am interested to know if this observation is widespread, or simply my own prism on the world.
The truly effective leaders I have observed seem to share a self-awareness that manifests itself in a degree of humility. It isn’t always obvious at first blush, as they all have an acquired, learned confidence in communicating. However, not so deep beneath the surface, they know that their leadership is mainly a duty to fill a void that others are unwilling to fill. They are not always sure that they are truly equipped with all the tools necessary to lead others down the right path, so they spend an inordinate amount of time asking questions and listening to answers from many different points of view. In many ways, their final decisions really only reflect the unarticulated consensus of what the group knows to be the right thing, whether or not they want it to be the right thing. As a result, they also know that they are only acting as the focal point of the group’s interests – reflecting back at them the correct course of action and crystallizing that call to action in a manner that is internally understood. Good leaders work hard to sort through the dissonance and self-delusions of the group and find the core truths that can be articulated so that the group can be aligned to a singular purpose. Leaders do not divide, they unite – it has been a long time since we have seen one on a large scale.
“There is still a hole in the ground at the WTC.”
Perhaps that should continue to be so. Lest we forget.
#14 – Novangelus – your perspective is a particularly western, if not US perspective.
Mao, Castro, Hitler, Napoleon, all provide instructive historical counters to your perspective.
Edward Kennedy, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Boss Tweed – are all US analogues. They were/are all truly effective leaders.
I think we tend to forget how divided was the US north under Lioncoln – remember, McClellan ran against him in 1864 and may well have won had Grant and Sherman not delivered at the last possible political moment.
While I agree with your formulation, I think it somehow needs to be narrowed a bit – some of the very best lead for the common good – others equally effective lead – to crush their enemies.
novanglus, I dunno about that. I’ve seen business leaders – if we assume that senior managers are ipso facto “leaders” – of all shapes and sizes, from loud and oblivious to quiet and insightful. I’m not sure what they have in common, certain social skills and a respect for organizational imperatives might qualify. Whatever gets the job done, and there are different ways to go about it.
I recognize what you’re describing as a “truly effective leader”, and in my own small way I try to emphasize that at even the smallest level, team-building, mission-setting. But I’m afraid at this lowest level such concepts are waaaaay out of style. And looking at Obambus, I’m afraid I’m seeing that at the highest level such concepts are also – absent. Neither did McCain make much of those same noises. Who did? Reagan, of course.
Would they work today? I think so. I think they’re pretty much timeless, as long as us naked apes keep doing what we do. So why are they so rare? Could we sit down and synthesize some? Well, that’s what the academics call “narrative” and do sit down and attempt to synthesize, to some extent or another, Lakoff preaching it to the Democrats in some small way, but his emphasis is linguistics, not social dynamics. I don’t think it’s all that magical. Few human activities are, most can be taught and learned, to a fair journeyman level. Can’t make a Michael Jordan out of any short, fat kid, but you can coach kids, teach teamwork, and get better results out of modest materials, and give them something to remember and be proud of.
If I have a complaint about American business today, it’s that they ignore such issues. Where have all the MBA’s gone? Gone to Goldman, every one. Nobody studies leadership, or more modestly group dynamics, communications. Communications means Blackberrys, iPhones, email, IM, texting. Drech. It seems unheard of for new managers at the bottom three levels, to be sent to a simple Managers 101 class. Used to be absolutely standard. Instead, groups are now supposed to be “self-managed”. I guess that’s how our country, and the world are supposed to go, now. The organization is supposed to just “be”. This is more than an absence of other ideas, there is an affirmative belief that this self-organization exists and is preferable. That it may be entirely sanctimonious and self-serving and WRONG, is another matter, and you may guess my position on it.
‘There is still a hole in the ground at the WTC.’
“Perhaps that should continue to be so. Lest we forget.”
I am inclined to agree. But America is primarily a positive, forward-looking and active country. We need to rebuild with a taler symbol of American power and prestige.
Well, we are divided as never before. Even in the Civil War on side was not out to destroy all that had gone before.
Today, that Marxists among us ive no real common ground but cheapen language, institutions and the culture itself to give the illusion that we have common ground.
Every known civilized recourse fails us. How can a leader “unite” us. There is nothing to “unite”. They are lost to us. Where is the common ground?
Marxism is a sickness of the soul, or, if you like, a collective personality disorder. How is this “moved” or “reasoned with”>
But no matter, they are at war with us. They just did not have the decency to announce it openly.
A leader today would have to lead that nation in rejecting their project, exposing them and saving the institutions to the degree that they can be save. Churchill had no problem such as this. Civil society having been destroyed, in Russia or Nazi Germany he would have been murdered, exiled, co-opted, or forced to work behind the scenes.
we are dangerously close to that cusp now ourselves.
Josh: I agree with you very much about Bush. Many of his speeches were excellent. Of Course, they are not on the level of Churchill or Lincoln, but they were they meant to be, nor was this even required.
I have often felt puzzled by the denunciation of Bush are an poorly spoken, illiterate bumpkin. Yes, his elocution suffers, but not so badly as some would have it. Certainly if you or I were facing a rabid mob such as the MSM we might stutter a bit too.
That the Democrats and the left are so moved by the maudlin leavings of people like Obama and Clinton, or even JFK, makes one wonder if they are listening at all. It appears almost as a willful group hallucination. Here sentimentality trumps sentiment, gimcrackery trumps spirit. One heard the same sort of nonsense in the USSR, but there few believed it. Here half the nation is swept away by it. Strange indeed.
History will more indite the opposition then Bush, that is should the nation survive to write it.
Leave the hole in the ground? Smacks of surrender and cowardice to me.
We should build them back much like they were, only taller.
Perhaps Sarah Palin has the potential to lead in the sense of Richard’s observations. She seems to get an awful lot of attention with very few words – death panels, drill baby drill.
Note: awful in the sense of inspiring awe.
It is reasonable to guess that the Gettysburg Address was a conscious classical allusion to Pericles’ Funeral Oration. In any case, I’ve always felt that the Gettysburg Address was a bunch of slogans strung together to avoid identifying the issues, and to whitewash the slavery of our forefathers. I think that most of us think the speech is great because we have always known it is great, sort of like the absurd “Ask not what …” of Kennedy.
It’s like the old joke, “Dear John, I’m writing you a long letter because I don’t have time to write you a short one.” Brevity is hard, and appreciated by any audience.
As far as the first-person-singular issue, one way to understand the difference is that both Lincoln and Churchill came to power by promoting ideas without ambiguity – the centrality of freedom and the need to confront slavery, and the greatness of the British nation and the need to confront the Nazis. Then, having won hard-fought victories, they gave speeches that were generous, noble, and short.
President Obama, on the other hand, came to power by promoting his ambiguous identity – two autobiographies (but we don’t know what he really believes), less than two years in Washington (but no accomplishments), a post-racial image (but long-time associations with racists), a calm, moderate disposition (but the most liberal voting record in the Senate), anti-war (except for the war in Afghanistan). Then, having won a hard-fought victory, he gives speeches that are nasty (blame Bush), brutish (I won), and long.
What a strange time we live in. It’s hard to know whether to be optimistic or pessimistic. Yes, there is an amazing resilience in the citizens of these United States. But Americans seem to be tired. They’re tired of working so hard to keep their job, satisfy their customers, and stay solvent; they’re tired of watching the accumulation of power in Washington and the corrupting influence it has on our nation; they’re tired of protecting their kids from the corrosive culture; they’re tired of defending their faith against the fanatics who look to expunge religion from the public square; they’re tired of the rest of the world excoriating America and Americans for various mistakes we’ve made while ignoring the tremendous positive impact we’ve made on the world; they’re tired of banks turning away borrowers who want to create or grow a business, while themselves borrowing from the taxpayers for free to invest in government bonds and paying out most of the profits to their executives; and they’re really tired of the unrelenting change and dashed hopes.
But a holiday is a time to rest. Perhaps, during this time of year when Christians celebrate the unfathomable gift of his Son that God bestowed upon us, we will catch our collective breaths and renew our strength. We will then be prepared to enter, not just a New Year, but a New Decade.
In this New Decade, we will discover what whether America continues to be exceptional, or whether we have reached our limit and will begin our descent to the ordinary.
Count my vote for the former, please.
Godspeed to everyone here at the Belmont Club. Have a great holiday season, rest well, and cowboy up!
L3
Leo’s #23 would make a pretty fine political speech itself.
And by way of comparison with “both Lincoln and Churchill swept to power by promoting ideas with an ambiguity” Obama swept to power by promoting ambiguity itself.
It’s quite astonishing that you can have certain people who have outstanding verbal skills, deep voice, enunciation, long, complex sentences, good vocabulary – and not a thought in the head. Al Gore and John Kerry are perhaps the two best examples of this I can think of, and hey, didn’t they just happen to be the two previous Democratic candidates for president?
And then we got a third of the same basic type, Obambus. Now, I do believe Obambus is a tad smarter than Gore and Kerry, perhaps more intelligent than the two of them put together. That and four bucks will get you a vente latte at Starbucks. But with Obambus, too, the verbal skills are waaaaay out ahead of his ability to put together two facts or solve a problem.
Problem is, it is quite common to read a book by its cover, and take verbal skills as proxy for intelligence – and to take intelligence as proxy for leadership skills, or whatever one might seek in a POTUS. I actually studied cognitive psychology and computational linguistics many moons ago in the university, and at least as an avocation for much of the time since then. I’ll say again, it is remarkable how one can consider verbal skills as NOT directly a sign of intelligence, but thanks to Messrs. Gore and Kerry, the evidence is plain to see.
Dubya, on the other hand, had verbal skills much poorer than his intellect. Now, that is not unknown. We see it all the time in nerds, who may be brilliant in their own ways, and just not verablize or socialize very competently. So, really, why should we be shocked when the converse doesn’t also hold? But there it is.
But even Dubya, with a few speechwriters, or a fiery context like 9/11, managed to carry the day. So the speechifying can be done.
But travesties like Gore and Kerry – and Obambus – remain land mines for the body politic.
–
verablize? hey, I like it, think I’ll leave it.
“Note: awful in the sense of inspiring awe.”
She inspires affection. So did Reagan. So did Churchill (at least on this side of the Atlantic).
I’m not sure we need an awesome leader. Isn’t that what Obama was supposed to be?
When Reagan’s funeral cortage went by on the LA 405 freeway, traffic on both sides of the freeway stopped and parted for his hearse in respect. I don’t think it was awe that made people of all races and social status pay that sort of respect to him.
And what I feel for Dubya is affection … for him as a Texan, as an American, and as a President who tried him damndest to keep us safe.
(BTW, I’m with Mongoose on the WTC hole. I’m appalled that the hole is still there, and we haven’t managed to re-erect those towers bigger and better and taller. Even a third world country like Dubai is able to put up a new building in the time New York has been dithering. But then NY is solidly pro-Obama, so they must *like* dithering.)
“He [Churchill] could sound the chords of memory. He could summon up shared experience.” Well, Obama shares no memories with ordinary Americans–he can’t even remember how many states (57?) there are–and his experience of attending Reverend Wright’s Black liberation, America-bashing church is an experience that most other Americans have not had nor want either.
I live in Canada and watched the Queen’s short Christmas address yesterday. It was directed to the 53 countries that are members of the Commonwealth, to people in states such as Australia, Canada, India, Jamaica, Malawi, Malaysia, and Singapore–over 2 billion people. Despite the diversity of nations and peoples, the Queen connected with her audience. Why? Because the speech was about the people listening to her, not about her.
Dubai put up a big new tower that now may stand empty for the next twenty years or until it falls over, whichever comes first.
I guess NYC has not been lacking in office space the last few years or the WTC replacements could have been built much faster. Puts economics and rationality before emotion, but there it is.
22. LTEC:
Slogans? Whitewash?
“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.” Abraham Lincoln
“The government had to choose between war and shame. They chose shame. They will get war, too.” Winston Churchill.
Opposed to this? The only thing that is redeeming about the latter is that it was given by someone trying to explain away twenty years of distortions and himself, some one campaigning for office, and not an office holder performing the duties of his office.
Whitewash. Slogans.
Winston Churchill roared well.
The only thing “untimely” about Lincoln’s death was that it was 4 years too late. Far better for the cause of liberty if Booth had shot the bastard in 1861.
Lincoln was a political monster who played a central role in destroying the First American Republic. He laid the basis for the Centralized State we have today. His campaign against Southern Independence was genocidal. All his beautiful speeches only served to mask his attack on our founding principals. In that sense, he had a lot in common with the current bastard in the White House.
I remember my senior year at LSU in 1980 when Reagan came to campaign at the Maravich Assembly Center; the place was packed and absolutely electric from the energy of college students.
Why was that?
As much as Reagan’s oratory skills played a part, I suspect that as LL3 mentioned, people were tired of being embarassed by Carter, the second oil embargo and Iran sticking it in our face with the hostages, sky high interest rates, the Rust Belt/Detroit getting ravaged by the Japanese and said oil prices, the TV/electronics industries getting smoked also by said Japanese, the country was still getting over the Vietnam war, etc…
People wanted to feel like we could still take this country in the right direction in spite of the many problems we had to deal with.
I’m not sure if people are fed up enough yet or if we have a critical mass of people paying enough attention to be fed up yet.
WadeUSAF 29 and MD10, thanks for those.
NahnCee: Though not a Texan, I have similar feeling toward GWB. I have never bought into the slanders pitched at him by the left or the Right. I find these offensive and outrageous. He makes Obama look like an evil little boy, and I’d wager that most Americans would agree now. It is sad that so many are so easily manipulated by the MSM.
One day some will look back on this time i shame and wonder what they were thinking to beahve so badly toward him, or so I hope.
Contrarian @ 31:
Here! Here!
As a born and bred New Englander, I was raised to believe in the moral supremacy of the North and that the “real Americans” won the Civil War. As I have grown older and witnessed the abuses by the Federal Government, I have been forced to rethink that indoctrination. The more I read from the Founders, the more I feel that the Confederates were the ones who had it nearer to right. Their unfortunate mistake, self inflicted, was clinging to slavery as a property rights issue that undermined the moral arguments.
As I read on another blog today, we no longer have property rights in this country. Try owning a home outright – once it is “paid off” you are still a mere renter, because if you fail to pay your taxes the local government will take it from you. Try to own the fruits of your labors – the product of your hands and your mind are confiscated by local, state, and federal government tax collectors, for the really productive that means more than half of what you produce is taken under threat of fines and imprisonment. On the one hand, a woman’s body is her own to do with as she chooses, unless she is yet unborn, then another may choose to end her life. And under the new health care legislation, you are not free to choose to be unhealthy – you are compelled to enter into a contract with another private entity to purchase services that you do not want freely. Where does this end?
We are slaves to the new oligarchy. I pray that the Ballot Box Revolution of 2010 succeeds next fall. If not, we are headed for Civil War and that kooky Russian Professor may yet be right about the fragmentation of the United States. I’ve lived in Blue States all my life, but I am preparing for the day when we load up the truck and move to a new nation, perhaps a newly reborn Republic of Texas or Free State of New Hampshire.
I have always found it to be the most mesmerizing speech I’ve ever read. You can find analysis of it easy enough, but it surprises me that the analysis misses some obvious things – Lincoln’s love of groups of 3 as a rhetorical device and his transforming use of visceral Christian imagery and theology in support of his goals.
The 3’s have always jumped out at me, since they give a consistent rhythm both to his ideas and his speech. They are what give the speech it’s musical, poetic quality. It’s also the structure which he hangs all of his ideas from. I’ve emphasized them in the following breakdown since they have always felt so fundamental to me.
When it was quoted above, I was reminded of how I have always diagrammed/understood the Address in my own head. This is my own take on it, and is a rough portrayal of how I understand it’s ebb and flow, and it’s meanings.
1st paragraph summary: Our history.
Our fathers:
1)brought forth a new nation
2)concieved in libery
3)dedicated to equality
2nd paragraph summary: Why we have come here.
We are:
1)engaged in a civil war
2)met on a battlefield of that war
3)come to dedicate a part of that battlefield.
“It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”
(Not only echoes Pericles, but also echoes a well known line from Protestant liturgy of the day, “It is truly right, meet, and salutory that we do this. Causes what follows to become more of an intercessory prayer than a speech)
3rd paragraph summary: We are unworthy of the task we have come to do, but we have now been sanctified by the blood which has been shed for us. We must therefore dedicate ourselves to the cause of those who willingly gave up their lives for us.
1) we can not dedicate
2) we can not consecrate
3) we can not hallow
(true sanctification of this ground is something we have not the power to do, because we are not worthy)
The brave men
1) living and dead,
2) who struggled here,
3 have consecrated it.
(true sanctification only comes from blood that was shed voluntarily)
(note that this includes those on both sides of the battle)
The world will
1) little note us
2) nor long remember us
3) but will never forget them
(We are not worthy of memory, but those who shed their blood have earned eternal devotion through their sacrifice.)
“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.”
(We are not here to dedicate this ground, rather we are here to BE Dedicated BY this ground and the Blood which was shed upon it)
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us”
(Our salvation will only come through our personal dedication to the cause of those who willingly shed their own blood for us)
“for which they gave the last full measure of devotion”
(No greater Love hath a man, than he lay his life down for his friends)
Climax: We here Highly Resolve that:
1) These dead shall not die in vain
2) This Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of Freedom
3) That Government
……….1) of the people
……….2) by the people
……….3) for the people
shall not perish from the Earth.
(The Government, the People, the Secular,the Religious, even Life and Death itself are all mystically fused in a glorious summation)
I don’t know of a Pope that has ever given a speech that is both this eloquent and yet so theologically powerful. Of course, he is twisting the theology into something new,to meet his own ends. But you don’t have to agree with what he’s done here to recognize both the beautiful artistry and the sheer power of his rhetoric – and with so few words!!!
His soldiers didn’t call him “Father Abraham” for nothing.
Moghoose #7 and #20, Balck Shoe #18, Nahncee #26:
I recall reading a New Yorker saying that when he drove by the WTC hole he would say “It’s still a hole, and that’s your fault George Bush.”
Well, excuse me, but the WTC, hole and all, is PRIVATE PROPERTY. And the President of the U.S. should not be able to control it or be responsible for filling it in with a building, unless it is purchased and turned into a National monument or something else Federal.
Fact is, with NYC losing population and running businesses away with increased taxes, building another WTC is no longer economically supportable. They don’t need the office space any more than Miami needs some more condos.
As for leaving it a hole, well, maybe my 25 years in the USAF is showing but if we leave it a hole let’s fill it with ICBMs and make damn sure everybody knows they are pointed at the Religion of Peace.
A great orator giving a great speech is simply engaged in the act of putting to words that which the audience already knows…Even if listeners aren’t yet able to give [conscious] form to the articulation themselves. The public speaker sets and/or liberates the context for the audience.
The dearth of truly great public speech in this ‘post-modern’ world is likely because post-modern speaking targets have been conditioned to generally care little for anything that is not trivial or even base. Our mass indulgence in the end of history fantasy and our dabbling in the multiculture’s newspeak vocabulary inoculates its hapless victims further against higher understanding. The modern right to self-esteem is not equivalent to the necessary instructive self awareness that allows for positive transformational speech.
The superficial speech of the day can only be elevated to the divine in the minds of a superficial people. As it is in the political sphere, we the people get exactly the oratory the [democrat] mob deserves. Therein is why the nebulous rhetoric of Hope & Change can be valued above what is, what was, and what will work. It takes great energies in words and deeds to create and sustain a high civilization, but little in the way of the same to destroy it. Deconstruction is what the rhetoric of the day is; it’s ends remains what they’ve always been and it will not be otherwise.
Transformational speech is a double-edged sword which is wielded to strike at the hearts and minds of the tired and uncertain -of any level of awareness- who are shown a vision of some unified framework, bound by words that resolves a shattered mess of ideas into a completed image within which all who have heard can be made to discern a recognizable reflection of themselves.
The orator’s artful transmutation of words into motivation can either illuminate greater truths – the light of which reveals pathways to essential goodness, or said oratory can be used to obscure ‘truths’ in a dense fog that leads only to subservience and tyranny.
We decide…Or, as in the case of our [Hegelian] Dialectician in Chief and his coterie of true believers, “yes we did”.
Crap in, crap out is a feedback loop.
RWE: Where has someone said that the WTC property should be seized by the President? I do not kow what you are getting so excited about. No one was asking it be commandeered, but that it be rebuilt, or something else put there.
BTW, the WTC is/was owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
It was merely leased to Silverstein.
#31 Contraian
It is speculation to imagine what Lincoln could have accomplished in his second term, as a measure of ensuring a new birth of freedom.
It can be argued, and I believe with merit, that he did not ask for the war, but once given no option he waged war. He did not wage peace. But when it came time to make and ensure peace, his designs for reconstruction were generous where generosity was not expected, and firm where a firm hand was required.
I do not know if putting the central government back into the genie’s bottle was a thing that could have been accomplished, or if the events of the world afterward would have allowed for more or less control of the central authority, again that is speculative. But it was not Lincoln who fired on Sumpter, it was not Lincoln who insisted that a human could be owned by another. If that makes him a bastard then I I am happy to claim him as my brother. For I am a bastard son of Columbia as well. The great thing about this nation, from my lowly point of view is that up until recently we all had a share in shaping events and all had a voice in determining the outcome. No one person can be blamed and no one person can be credited. But one man can certainly give voice to the sentiments of many, and as with Mr. Lincoln’s, make the case plain, simple and undeniably.
Damnation in my opinion is too kind for the man who killed “Father Abraham”.
President Bush did not ask for war, but president Obama seems determined take advantage of the growth of the central government for more growth and more power. It is not a new birth of freedom he seeks, and it is a new form of slavery that will result.
Why shouldn’t the WTC hole be seized by the State and a monument built (like Mt Rushmore) rather than an office building? If private New Yorkers can’t get it together, then I have no problem with the government stepping in and making it happen.
And, we could add a clause that only currently unemployed people could work on it, whatever it is, which should create a job or three in a country that desperately needs them (job applicants would have to show their birth certificates and the job site would be an English-only place, however).
I just want whatever goes up there to be big and huge and awe-inspiring. I’ve never been thrilled with the ideas featuring peaceful tranquility and reflection on all the bad things America has done to deserve that day.
Interesting give and take here re: rebuilding or not rebuilding the WTC. Thank you, Mongoose, for raising it. And the center IS the property of a public entity, regardless of what RWE says.
To me the issue isn’t the slack commercial real estate market in NYC. It’s the lack of national character that allows a backward enemy to gouge a hole on our jeweled crown and then we merely grin a little, wipe off the grime and don the headpiece again without really repairing the damage.
We’ve been humiliated and are too ashamed or beat-down to fix it. Shame on us. Until we regain our national pride – and that might never occur – our national resolve can’t be worth a tinker’s dam to the rest of the world, in my view.
Contraian: How shameful of you.
Embracing Slavery in the name of Liberty is one of the vilest of hypocrisies. So is the embrace of Treason in the name of Tradition. As you do so, so did the South. They wreaked the Almighty’s vengeance for it. The North was merely his instrument.
A nation built on on slavery must collapse from the moral rot alone. This Lincoln well knew. A nation built on the codification of the divinely given rights of Man cannot long countenance the sinful enslavement and debasement of one man by another man as a right and prerogative. It was the South’s intransigent refusal to face this simple truth that made the Civil War inevitable.
Had the South in war or peace got their way there would have been no great American nation, and as it devolved down to anarchy the European powers would have picked up the spoils.
The great work of America was just beginning in 1864. The extraordinary result would not have been possible using the labor of slaves. It was the work of free men. It could be no other way. Her great destiny as a force for freedom in the next century would have never have been met.
Moreover, it is a grievous wrong to hold the outcome of the Civil War with the rise of the statist Left as co-equal. One is a profundly moral outcome; the other is a deepely immoral one. One did not cause the other.
This too is a vile hypocrisy.
Lincoln was a great man; Booth the vilest of men. Lincoln was one of the great moral actors of the 19th century; Booth was the lowest sort of immoral cipher. If you cannot see this then you side with Darkness and not with Light.
Lincoln’s death was untimely indeed for those of us left below. his work done, the Good lord called him home after his sufferings. Perhaps he felt that nation did not deserve Lincoln’s judiciousness and mercy in Peace after how poorly they treated him in War.
I should say that you confuse the notion of “contrary” with the notion of “perverse”.
Mongoose-
How shameless of you to embrace a genocidal maniac like Lincoln as your hero. You have obviously absorbed all the brainwashing the left-wing “Yankee” propagandists have been spewing out about this monster for generations.
The leviathan state we have today–the product of both major parties–is the direct result of Lincoln’s war against the founding principals of the American federation of states. Lincoln apologists love to wrap themselves in the cloth of self-righteousness, but the truth is he violated virtually every facet of our Constitution in his war against Southern Independence. That you don’t understand this only shows your ignorance of the history of Lincoln’s War.
Long live the memory of John Wilkes Booth.
Please shun Contrarian.
There certainly are many things debatable about Lincoln and his policies, but there’s no point doing so with someone who calls Lincoln a “genocidal maniac.”
This evening when I signed on to BC I thought I was hallucinating when I read Contrarian’s remarks at #31 and #43, and Novanglus’at #34.
For those who have any doubt about Lincoln’s greatness I recommend Harry Jaffa’s two monumental books on the subject — Crisis of a House Divided, and A New Birth of Freedom.
Our two founding documents, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution contradicted each other. While both were products of a natural law view, the Constitution had elements of positive law when it allowed slavery and declared slaves to be 3/5 of a man when it came to determining population numbers. Eventually the contradiction between slavery in the Constitution and “all men are created equal” in the Declaration had to be resolved.
It was Lincoln’s greatness to have seen this as early as 1854 and repeated many times until his untimely death.
Perhaps there is a more than a grain of truth in Contrarian’s statement that Lincoln violated the Constitution in his war against Southern Independence. But the slavery portions of the Constitution had to be violated if we were to reconcile that document with The Declaration.
Furthermore, the course of Reconstruction would have gone in a much more equitable direction had Lincoln presided over it instead of Andrew Johnson. This should be obvious to anyone who reads Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. “With malice toward none, with charity toward all…”
And for LTEC at #22, I couldn’t disagree with you more. Read in the context of a decade of speeches by Lincoln, and with the Second Inaugural next to it, The Gettysburg Address clearly supports Professor Jaffa’s interpretation.
Lincoln is stating that when the country was founded 87 years earlier its basis was the principle that all men are created equal. It is clear that Lincoln saw the Civil War as a battle over whether a nation based on God given equality could endure, and that meant that slavery had to be eliminated.
When my children were 10 and 7 years old we made one of our first trips to Washington D.C. I stood with them at the Lincoln Memorial and read the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address out loud to them. The spoken speeches brought tears to my eyes and chills to my kids. We were all amused when other tourists stopped to watch and listen to this private family moment.
Whether Lincoln or Washington was our greatest President really doesn’t matter. We were fortunate beyond measure to have had them.
And if someone wants to argue that the statism of today dates back to Lincoln or to Hamilton, the discussion either leaves the rational or would take volumes to unravel. For me, Lincoln saved the soul of America.
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural—Arguably the greatest speech ever–by anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Contrainian: I actually think you are a lefty plant, but for the sake of the reputation of of BC, I shall respond:
Lincoln was no genocidal maniac, What nonsense. It is a bizarre formulation as he was freeing one race and saving the nation of another. You make no rational sense. You make no moral sense.
Most certainly, he was not making “war against the founding principals of the American federation of states” he was upholding them. One of the central principles was liberty for all men. Are you saying that Slavery was a founding principle of this nation? It is a great wrong to slander the good men of the founding generation by grouping them with aristocratic slave owners present at the founding. So far as concerns the latter, “principle” was merely mask and dodge for their immorality. It was the south who went against the founding principles of the nation, principles that they never really assented to in the antebellum South. You overstate the weight federalism and understand the weight nationalism in consciousness of the nation prior to the war. If the States were as loosely tied to one another as you maintain, the Civil War would not have been possible. The North would not have fought it.
Furthermore, the North was in no way populated by “left-wingers” in the 19th century, they were capitalists through and through. Nor was the federal apparatus a socialist tyranny after the war. There are preposterous claims.
Is is comically inaugurate for you to say that Lincoln tyrannically pursued that war somehow against the wishes of the peoples of the Northern States. It was the will of the citizens of the Northern State that led them to war, not Lincoln. The Federal government had not the power. Had the States refused to fight, there would have been little that Lincoln could do about it–he had little means of coercing them. It was the States that contributed the bulk of the Army’s regiments and they fought as much under the banners of their States as that of the federal government. All assented, North and South, to engagement in war. This civil war was just that: A Civil War. It was inevitable.
Another wqually comical display of your ignorance of history is your refusal to see the South’s role in the rise of the State in the 20th century. You can thank Southerners such as Wilson for the income tax and the creation of the firm foundations apparatus of the State. If the Democrat Party is the vehicle of the rise of the left, it is the Souths support for that party that allowed them to get into power and consolidate this position. They could not have done it without the South.
They did this by appealing to their racism and their bitterness. They did this by shoveling mountains of money to the South during the 1930′s and during the War years.
It is, of course, the Democrat Party that is the Party of “Yankee left-wingers”; It is the GOP, the party of Lincoln, that has been resisting them, and doing so for generations.
You have quite departed from sanity–morality too.
Either that or you are some sort of Moby trying to debase this forum and ruin its reputation.
Either way you should be ashamed of yourself.
Confounding Slavery with States Rights have hampered the decent from moving the nation back to a more balanced federalism. It has been a very successful agitprop technique of the left for some 70 years.
Perhaps it your intent to continue this deception of the Left.
Marty: just so. The 2nd Inaugural shows that the Gettysburg address was no accidental or momentary eloquence but rather the norm.
Lincoln was arguably the best writer in America in the 19th century, though he is not thought of that way today.
Marty-
I guess your approach to differing opinions is shunning. Sad!
Lincoln was the Commander in Chief, was he not. Can you honestly say that the campaign of Sherman’s army was not genocidal? What about Fremont’s Shenandoah campaign, which was directed almost entirely at civilian farmers in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Lincoln bears the ultimate responsibility for these genocidal acts against Southern Americans.
Batman also has a problem with my views, although both you and he seem to grasp that Lincoln did some bad things. Like suppressing newspapers and jailing editors and publishers who disagreed with him; jailing many state legislators in Maryland who were pro-south; violating habeas corpus. It is for reasons like this that I say he violated virtually every aspect of the Constitution. If we condone these acts, then we should not be surprised if the Obama people carry out the same types of political suppression in the crisis that faces our country in the immediate future.
This string started with the effect of great speeches on people and history. Lincoln, like Obama, could give a stirring speech. But we should not be seduced by words, but should look at the actions and consequences that flow from them.
A year and a half ago I shared my opinion on what to do with the WTC site on LGF but saved it to my blog,
My refinement would be to move the UN to Governor’s Island, so it would always be in the sight of the middle tower.
mongoose,
There are times where I disagree with you and I understand the temptation that some have to question whether the cost we paid to end slavery was worth the damage done to the federal system. That is I understand it but disagree with them. On this one I am with you.
The costs of the Civil War and the resultant centralization of power and debasement of the states is solely the fault of the oligarchs of ant-bellum South Carolina and those leaders in the other southern states who knew better but failed to stop secession. If Virginia had stayed in the Union then North Carolina would have stayed in. There was at least a chance that given the real affection for the Union across large tracts of the South that the Confederacy might have peacefully imploded. We will never know. Some argue that slavery could not have been ended peacefully but I suspect that the plantations were going to fail anyway and the probability of ending the practice might have been near. The need to address the status of slavery and the impossibility of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, which was cited in the Acts of Secession, was thorny and would have still left a legacy of bitterness on all sides. It is hard to argue that such an alternative would not have been better than 600,000 Americans dead and a century of bitterness and poverty.
All that said the South chose the War and Lincoln properly fought it with one goal in mind, restoring the Union. John Wilkes Booth did the South no favor when he killed Lincoln. The Constitutional issues should not remain frozen in time but should be addressed. The Confederate Constitution was an interesting document. There are ideas in it worthy of consideration or at least useful in stimulating debate. The quality of the construction of the subsequent 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution has produced mischief. Like the Commerce clause the Citizenship clause and the Due Process clause, both in section 1, have proven to elastic and subject to abuse by those in Congress and the Courts seeking to centralize power. We now face the possible abuse of the Apportionment clause in section 2.
To be blogged under the title “Open Wounds.”
Mongoose- Sad to disappoint you, but I am not a lefty plant as you suggest. Politically, I am a libertarian with a strong commitment to very limited government. Ironically, Lincoln is a hero to the Left, both communists and socialists. That should tell you something about Lincoln’s political influence. American communists even named one of the brigades they sent to Spain to fight for the Comintern the Lincoln Brigade.
The reason why the Left loves Lincoln and why I say he laid the foundation for the leviathan state we live in today, is that he destroyed the federative principle of the original United States, setting in motion the move to a centralized unitary state. This in fact was what the war was all about, slavery notwithstanding.
Contrarian,
Genocide is what Hitler did to the Jews and nearly did to the Poles, gypsies and others; maybe what the Turks did to the Armenians; maybe what the Khmer Rouge did to Cambodian urbanites, maybe what Stalin did to the kulaks and Volga Germans, and almost did to the Ukrainians; what happened in Rwanda in 1994.
It is most emphatically NOT what Sherman did in Goergia or Fremont in the Shenandoah. Scorched earth, yes, but not even “ethnic cleansing,” let alone “genocide.” You show your utter lack of perspective and knowledge with the word “genocide”.
If you wanted to exchange about nullification, the right of secession under the Constitution, suspending habeas corpus, the legality of the Emancipation Proclamation, shutting down opposition newspapers or the morality of the March to the Sea, fine. But throwing around the word “genoicide” places you outside the realm of rational discourse.
Trying to fit a mid-19th C US politician into mid-20th C European political definitions is also rather pathetically ahistorical.
Good evening.
I broke my own advice, shan’t do it again.
Contrarian: When it comes to analyzing things you are, to quote Life of the Mind, downright autoproctological.
Whatever Abe Lincoln’s shortcomings were, he was not a vengeful man. He, Grant and Sherman
put their heads together and devised a means of avoiding that lawless period of time called Reconstruction. Had it not been interrupted by John Wilkes Booth, a heck of a lot of our past and present difficulties would have been avoided.
And if you think for one moment that killing Lincoln before Appamatox would have changed the course of the war, you betray your lack of knowledge about Uncle Sam’s self-repairing chain of command. Truth of the matter is that the Confederate Secret Service had men with loaded rifles in easy pistol shot of Lincoln almost every day of
late 1864 and early 1865. They could have killed him any time they wanted to. But being the astute spooks they were, they knew this would only lead to unholy reprisals. So instead, they figured on kidnapping him and holding him hostage. That might have worked, but the end came before they could act. So they stood down their operation.
Booth, a minor and peripheral go-fer, was out for personal glory and rounded up some other mental midgets for his plot.
With firend like that,m the South needed no enemies.
I would suggest you escape the clutches of that pompous ass DiLorenzo and read some of Harry Turtledove’s alternate histories. He gives a fair and balanced view of Lincoln, warts and all, and he had plenty of them when it came to economics.
AS far as Lincoln’s alleged “repressions” in the North, most of his “victims” seem to have been memebers of or associated with an
unholy organization called Knights of the Golden Circle. Their conspiracy envisioned
a slave-owning empire stretching all the way to Tierra Del Fuego and maintaining same with methods worthy of Stalin.
Lincoln’s actions towards such were in accordance with his constitutional duties
and enabled by the Congress passing a Declaration of Insurrection and Rebellion, in accordance with their assigned duties.
Lincoln could have had such tried by Court Martial and executed. But he knew better than to make martyrs of them (as James Buchanan had done with John Brown). So he
used creative tactics that did not survive the war itself or we would have had Reconstruction in the North and well as in the South.
As to your charges of genocide: The Shenandoah Valley was a granary for the CSA. As such, it was as legitimate a target
as Ploesti. Taking it away from the South involved destroying property, not people.
And in The March to the Sea, “Uncle Billy”
killed about 600 Johnny Rebs and lot about 100 Billy Yanks. Savannah wisely capitulated and was neutralized with no apprecialbe damage. The march North through the Carolinas produced casualty figures virtually identical to the previous March. Counting all the collateral damage that may have occurred, Sherman’s decisive campaign resulted in less than 3000 deaths. This in a war that saw 13,000 dead in one day at Antietam, 25,000 in three days of Gettysburg, unholy messes at Shiloh, Vicksburg etc and 8000 dead in 10 minutes at Cold Harbor.
Had it not been for Sherman, there would probably have been famine in the Deep South
commencing in 1865 and continuing for some 2-3 years. In addition to which, Confederate remanants would have been slaughtered pitting their muzzle loaders against the Trapdoors of the North. I can see my personal bloodlines having been eliminated before the XXth Century ever goot close.
In short, The War Between The States came to the second best conclusion possible to man born of woman. The best solution would have been for them to fight to a draw, have two republics on the North American continent that would have cooperated well enough when the 20th Century nasties came along. That conclusion became impossible after Glorietta Canyon New Mexico kept the CSA from obtaining the type of logistical support it had to have.
What was avoided was a conclusion in which either side felt betrayed. That would have been unmitigated disaster and we would be
a Balkanized and subjugated people today.
And many others would be in even worse shape.
As it is, we have got us a fighting chance,
and that is all anybody ever has, can have, or needs.
Count your blessings, son. Those whom you dislike won them for you.
Josh, Mongoose, NahnCee, others: As I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted:
What Lincoln, Churchhill, and Dubya all had in common came through in all their speeches at critical times. Namely a backbone of steel. Let us all trying to emulate that quality, shall we?
Marty- I guess one man’s scorched earth is another man’s genocide. But leaving that aside I am glad to learn that you think these other subjects, including Lincoln’s attacks on constitutional principles, are open to discussion. Regardless of Lincoln’s great speeches and eloquence, his actions are what he should be judged by. And I think his actions were a terrible, and unfortunately successful, assault on the founding principles of our country. Most Americans have had the Lincoln myth drummed into them by our state run education system. The reality is much different. Great speeches do not necessarily lead to great acts. Eloquence is no substitute for principle. We are getting another lesson in this from the current occupant of the White House.
“Mongoose- Sad to disappoint you, but I am not a lefty plant as you suggest. Politically, I am a libertarian with a strong commitment to very limited government.”
Contrarian – as you choice of name indicates, emotionally you are an immature junior high school brat, saying bad things about everything just to get attention for your own undeveloped and undoubtedly unappreciated self. You probably go through life claiming that white is black, that up is down, and that good is evil. Not to mention that dumb is smart, which is the only reason you could possibly have for thinking well of yourself.
You and your unthinking contrariness are boring. I wish you’d take it somewhere else where equally undeveloped minds might be impressed, because without facts all you have left here are green and unappetizing opinions. Blech.
Actually, I find the Lincoln question very interesting. In essence, he was stuck between two evils – prosecute the war not asked for to the fullest extent, or to allow the South their freedom, which would have included the freedom to enslave. Also, there’s the old adage about good intentions and hell. Did his good intentions lead to our present hell, as Contrarian asserts? Or would the other road not taken have led to even greater evil? Counterfactuals, sigh.
Which evil choice was the lesser one? Machiavelli would have understood the dilemma. I think he would have agreed with Lincoln’s choice and methods, including the violations of the Constitution. That was the lesser evil.
One key point to make was even though Lincoln set the precedent, those after him didn’t need to (all the subsequent presidents). If anybody should be blamed, it’s them. Lincoln faced a difficult set of options. They did not.
Due to Booth’s murder, we would never know if Lincoln would have continued with his violations of the Constitution, or restored it to its role of prominence and guiding light for the US, by acknowledging his violations of it and thus ensuring the exception that proved the rule.
I am not a citizen of the US. I have no real beef in this debate. But I see echoes of it in my ancestral homeland of China – democracy, stability, prosperity, emancipation, freedom… how do you achieve them, and which would you achieve first? Even now, these questions remain unanswered.
Mongoose,
Well, consider how fond he was of Shakespeare–obviously some of it rubbed off on him.
And then following up on your #19: I continue to be baffled at the reaction to Bush’s supposed lack of eloquence, especially in relation to the 2004 election. Sure, sometimes he used a malapropism or mangled a phrase, but you almost always knew what he meant. Contrast that to Kerry, who could talk longer while conveying less actual information than just about anyone on the planet.
Wobbly guy: Well we do know. The constitution was upheld. It was amended to prohibit slavery. No broad ranging federal powers were implemented across the nation as a whole in the aftermath of the Civil War. There was no income tax. No federal police force. No FBI.No armies of government officials massed in huge and powerful federal bureaucracies. Lands held by the federal government were distributed to the the citizens by various methods.
Yes there was the federal occupation of the South, what was called “Reconstruction”, but this was inevitable all thing considered. Soon it too passed.
The South, after reconstruction, was pretty much ignored.
Political life in the North pretty much went on as before, though there was a new spirit alloyed by a growing national consciousness.
The West was won. Vast, bustling private enterprises were created and rigorously perused. A vigorous new titan emerged which gave the average man more freedom and opportunity for self-betterment than the world had ever seen before. The nation was an altogether better place.
It is a delusion of the some corners of the modern Right that State’s Rights were demolished by the Civil War. This would come in the 20th century.
It would come by wholly other means than the Civil War.
With the charge that the Civil War stepped outside the bounds of the American political tradition handed down by the founders and was thereby the necessary precursor and enabling foundation of the modern socialist state, the burden of proof is on the side of the accusers.
Thus far we have seen more smoke and fire than light out of them.
It may well be that the massive migrations of Central Europeans accustomed to the welfare states of Central Europe, the very people the Democrats manipulated to rise to power in the 1930′s, had more to do with the ascendancy of socialism in the USA than anything that went before.
If we are to undo this condition, we must decouple the argument from the Civil War. That it has been so joined in the first place is suspect and specious. We must place the break with the founding traditions squarely where it properly belongs and cease giving the propagandists of the Left more fodder for their lies and misdirections.
Dave @53 and Kirk; Agreed.
The rebuttals of Contrarian, except for LOT’s, are woefully ignorant of the historical facts. See Jeffrey Hummel’s “Freeing Slaves, Enslaving Free Men” for analysis of Lincoln’s flawed choices and statist biases.
The Civil War happened because in the South the planter class wanted to maintain their wealth-generating operation, and in the North the industrialists wanted access to Southern markets and natural resources. Large portions of yeoman farmers in the South and in the North opposed both secession and war.
There were several ways that Union could have been restored without war. See Hummel for details. Lincoln, being a politician, took the short-term view and violence was quicker than peaceful means. It was Lincoln’s call-up of Northern militia that caused the Upper Southern States to join the Gulf States in secession. You people need to read outside the winners’ writing of history.
April 12 and 13 1860, Beauregard fires on Ft. Sumter.
April 15th, President Lincoln called for 75k volunteers from “the various states” to in essence recover federal property and put down what was still a minor insurrection. The southern politicians made their bed, both then and in 1783. For the cotton Gin held out hopes that slavery could again become profitable placing the moral dilemma squarely on SOUTHERN politicians.
Slave or free? The response to Lincoln’s call for a meager force of untrained militia was the answer. The South made its own bed, the terms and conditions were well understood then.
Everything Lincoln did in the early days of his presidency was aimed at maintaining the Union Peacefully. Southern politicians made their own bed. Why would anyone today wish to lie down in it.
Oops, that ought above to read, April 12 and 13th 1861. Not 1860.
Dave @54, justly steeled, justly stated.
Riddle: Because our reponses do not agree with your prejudices or manias does not make us “woefully ignorant” of anything whatsoever–just the opposite is the case in fact. If you have a argument then propose it, but you would do well to control your condensation for those who deserve it, providing any can be found who do.
The causes of the Civil War have been long discussed and meditated on, including the one you propose. The purely class based, economic determinist argument you echo is well know and came along long before Prof. Hummel articulated it. The whole business was hotly debated even prior to the war. How could this not be? It is tedious in its deterministic dismissal of the broader moral nature of both mankind in general and the crisis of slavery in particular, and therefore must be dismissed for its lack of sufficiency, however necessary it may be, but it is even more tedious to imagine that this argument is a new discovery. It is no such thing.
I assure you that we Americans a quite more intellegent than either you or Prof Hummel give us credit for. This “theory”–and that is most surely all it is–may be new to you, and somehow a “daring” opinion, but it is neither to the rest of us.
Dave,
downright autoproctological
Did I say that? Wow, I am good.
“One man’s scorched earth is another man’s genocide.”
Sounds like Michael Moore defending the 9/11 hijackers and Al Qaeda. But with even less justification.
Risible. Burning barns and houses is not Einsatzgruppen or Auschwitz or the killing fields of Cambodia. Doubly so when the area in question is far smaller than the cultural domain; no threat to the entire culture or race.
Words matter, one cannot have a meaningful dialog with someone who changes the meanings of words to be whatever he wants them to be. It’s like arguing with a 2-year old.
Mongoose @58,
I distinctly reading about Lincoln’s abuse of powers over the paper media, and suspending habeas corpus. Was it legal? Perhaps. Was it RIGHT? Ahhh… that’s a lot more contentious. Most importantly, it set precedent. And we know how lawyers love precedents.
I do believe there was a strong element of morality to Lincoln’s decisions, he thought what he was trying to achieve, the coherency of the Union and not incidentally, the abolishing of slavery, was the right thing to do. I think he even believed the ends justified the means, but this is one characteristic that defines the left. Perhaps that is why they are so enamored of him.
What Lincoln did was push the US further down the slippery slope. However… correct me if I’m wrong, but the US has been sliding down the slippery slope towards centralization long before Lincoln. He just gave it added impetus.
Which, come to think of it, tells us something about the stability of liberal democracy and the robustness of the US Constitution. I tend to agree the acceleration of centralization occurred in the 20th century, but precedents were set which made the process easier. That national heroes like Lincoln were the ones who started it made many decisions in favor of a larger state easier to justify.
The ultra-libertarian Austrians side with DiLorenzo, though that’s probably not news to anybody familiar with their virulent anti-state ideology.
http://blog.mises.org/archives/005741.asp
In the end, I think Lincoln tried to do the right thing, but we couldn’t have expected him to do anything else simply because it would set precedent for other, lesser men, to exploit. The onus lies solely on those who come after.
Mongoose @ 59 puts it all very well. One can think on Lincoln’s tactics, but the decline of State’s rights and growth of the Leviathan started with the Progressives and Lincoln’s effects on that and what followed were trivial if any.
RE riddle, the arguments that the Union would have been preserved without conflict are a bit like global warming alarmism—taking a low-probablilty “could” and turning it into a certain “would.” Anything might have happened, but there was and still is very little reason to believe the seceding States would have returned of their own volition.
You’re in the same bed as Pat Buchanan’s view of WW2, more or less.
People can legitimately disagree about Constitutional issues such as whether there was a right of secession and some of the things the Union did, but there is no realistic basis for pretending Lincoln didn’t face a genuine crisis. That’s just an excuse to say everything he did was unnecessary without actually debating it in a relevant frame of reference. In other words, BS.
Found this link which uses historical sources to show that Lincoln agonized over his decisions.
http://www.csulb.edu/~crsmith/lincoln.html
BTW, if he didn’t do anything, the Union would 100% have fallen apart. Whether or not that is a good thing (for human progress) is strongly debatable. I tend to the view that India and China would both be a lot better run if they were split into smaller, nimbler states. Perhaps the US could show the way now.
Texas could start the ball rolling.
My only qualm about Mr. Lincoln’s actions is whether if a free people wants to break away from a certain government, should they be allowed to. Why is it OK for Georgia to tell Russia to go jump in the lake, but not for Mississippi to tell DC the same thing?
We’re proud of our “one nation under God, indivisible” … but it seems to me that we’re rapidly approaching a fork in the road where we may *have* to become “divisible” or we’ll be back to brother killing brother, and parents killing children, in the name of Liberal vs. Conservative.
A couple of random questions came to mind:
1. Is Contrarian a Southerner? Knowing what I know of various arguments along this vein today, I’m not so sure. I live in Georgia, but I love Alabama best. Yes, I am a damn Yankee – I stayed.
2. It is too bad that Contrarian came in – lats a-spresd. This is the grist of an especially interesting subject (especially at the BC), considering how my original Yankee-esque thoughts have been somewhat modified for my love of my Southern neighbors; and especially interesting considering the current occupant of the WH.
3. It is incredibly interesting to me (a Christian) that my Southern brothers and sisters (Southern Baptists) could possibly read the Bible as a validation of slavery. I know I have the benefit of 20-20 historical hindsight and the current PC indication that nothing is as bad as someone disliking another for their color (actually, there are other things worse), but to me that kind of “thought process” is more a result of letting others do your thinking for you.
4. Is it not possible that this:
“Truly great speeches do not communicate ideas to an audience so much gather and punctuate sentences that are already half-formed in everyone’s thoughts.”
…could point not only to our better angels, but to our worst?
Wobbly Guy @67; Nahnbcee@70:
While a federal (as compared to unitary) system of governance may be had without allowing for the right of secession, a federal union cannot. Something the Founding Fathers managed to overlook. Their omission virtually guaranteed that there would be civil war sooner or later. Ain’t 20-20 hindsight wunnerful?
After all, secession simply means “I do not care to continue my association with you and shall take my leave.” It is a natural right of all human beings. In the geo-political world it cannot be had as readily as a Nevada divorce, formal methods have to be laid out in plain language. Regrettably, this was not done in Philadelphia back when.
BTW: In the case of Texas, there was a blatant illegality. When joining the Union in 1845, The Republic of Texas has agreed
to never join with any other entity. Therefore, seceding to join the Confederacy
was a no-no.
Solution would have been for Texas to secede from the secession. To say “hands off” to both sides and once again become its own Republic. As a practical matter, there was nothing either Abe Lincoln or Jefferson Davis could have done about it.
That was what Sam Houston tried his best to accomplish and nobody paid him a lick of attention. When Big Sam gets ignored in Texas, it is certain that The Devil Is Afoot.
The Knights of the Golden Circle were a genuine conspiracy that manipulated opinions and inflamed passions in both North and South. IMO there has not been enough done in researching their orgins, financing, etc. Any resemblance between the KGC and the Soros web might, or might not, be coincidental.
On the logistical front: In the 1850s, the Protective Tariff did result in largish revenues. That is because the South had to spend its cotton money that way or do without
material goods. The money thus collected was therefore paid by Southerners but spent on Northerners as they had the larger voting bloc on the Appropriations Committee.
This resulted in transferring income from the area(s) with the lower per capita incomes
to those with the higher per capita incomes.
Whenever this practice becomes commonplace,
the resultant hubris among recipients and
resentments among “donors” provides more than enough oily tender for spontaneous combustion. Add a few instigators and the
defecation is sure to encounter the oscillation.
That is what happened in 1860-61. Men had to react as best they could. Actual Austrians such as Von Mises, Hayek, Rothbard,
and (hopefully) Yours Truly try to take such considerations into their conclusions. A bunch of *soi disant* Austrians latch on to con artists like DiLorenzo because he makes them feel comfortable aping Keynesians and Marxists alike. IMHO, of course.
On the military front: Why do you think Robert E. Lee was so anxious to break through the center of Mead’s lines at Gettysburg? Answer: Stonewall Jackson had persuaded him (correctly) that there was but one way to get the damnyankees to cooperate.
Do unto Pennsylvania (New York? Massachusetts?) as Sherman did unto Georgia.
Fortunately, Marse Robert was unable to do so. Yes, it would have worked (Good News!)
but the later consequences wouled have probably destroyed North and South alike.
That is because after Sherman, the South was unable to continue, knew it, and bowed to the inevitable. The North would have had
plenty of means to continue but would have
been unwilling to use them and not known how either. Thus, the North would have felt betrayed and sold out for generations to come. More war would have been inevitable.
Turtledove’s scenario of World War I taking place on these shores as well as in Europe
strikes me as a probability.
And then who is there to stop the totalitarians? Methinks we did dodge many a Minie ball after all. TBTG.
There have been a few disparaging remarks about Thomas DiLorenzo’s books on the Lincoln myth. This is not surprising since Lincoln has been one of the primary propaganda tools used by the advocates of strong centralized government in our country. But BCers, keep an open mind and read Lorenzo’s first book on Lincoln: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. You can get this in paperback directly from The Mises Institute using this link:
http://mises.org/store/Real-Lincoln-The-P172C0.aspx
Forgive my simplicity, but to me there are several key basic questions.
Did the slavery permission in the Constitution contradict the “all men are created equal” in the Declaration? And if so, wasn’t slavery a stain on the Republic that had to be removed?
Didn’t Lincoln reveal his opposition to slavery by at least 1854, if not earlier?
Isn’t it true that in extreme situations we must do things that under normal conditions would be considered outrageous? For example, cutting a person open would typically be a crime, but during surgery it is not only acceptable, it is necessary.
Contrarian’s argument (and others who join it) is similar to saying that World War II was genocidal on our part because of what the British did in Dresden and what we did in Hiroshima. But war is indeed hell, and decisive though destructive action usually ends up shortening the war and saving lives, while dithering and conducting a gentle politically correct war usually lengthens the process and costs more in lives and treasure in the long run.
The key is not whether extreme measures are appropriate in extreme situations but rather, when the danger passes, are normal procedures restored.
Can Contrarian name a single war in which there has not been collateral damage? His analysis of Lincoln bears comparison to the Goldstone Report on Israel’s actions in Gaza. There is no such thing as an antiseptic war. So if one does not want the other side to use the full measure of their might in war, they shouldn’t start the war in the first place.
Those who point out that States Rights really didn’t disappear until FDR days are correct. The New Deal and its successors, plus the advent of national radio and television, have turned the country from a Federal Union to a National Government.
Given the delegitimization of Israel and the views of the United States currently held by elites throughout the world, Contrarian’s views of Lincoln are perhaps not as surprising as I thought when I first read them. Pity.
Batman- The question isn’t that slavery wasn’t a stain on our land, but how to go about ending it. The war against southern independence resulted in some 600,000 deaths, many of them civilian, and large scale destruction of the South along with military occupation. Perhaps you think it was worth this cost, but I don’t.
And I do believe that Dresden and Hiroshima were war crimes directed against largely civilian populations. But it can be argued that Japan and Germany declared war on us before we went to war on them, and in the widespread horrors of WWII, Dresden and Hiroshima are only chapters.
Lincoln’s pretext for attacking the southern confederacy was South Carolina’s attempt to reclaim Fort Sumpter in Charleston Bay. Since South Carolina had democratically seceded from the USA, and the Fort was part of South Carolina, they had a perfect right to take it. It was Lincoln who sent military forces into Virginia in the first Battle of Bull Run. Lincoln was the aggressor, the Confederacy simply defending their homeland.
My main point as previously stated is that Lincoln’s administration laid the foundation for a general weakening of the federal principal that our country was founded upon. We live with the consequences today. If you are happy with the welfare-warfare state that America has become, then Lincoln is a natural hero to you. If you are unhappy with what America has become, then you should understand the role that the Lincoln Administation played in moving us in this direction.
Yes indeed, Mongoose, the “broader moral nature of …mankind”. The North surely had the moral high ground. Like a pusher selling drugs to someone and then turning the customer in for a reward.
Northern Profits from Slavery http://www.slavenorth.com/profits.htm
And I do believe that Dresden and Hiroshima were war crimes directed against largely civilian populations.
Oh good grief, what sophomoric silliness! This is the mark of a complete nutjob. There is no point to this at all.
Mongoose- “sophomoric silliness”…”nutjob”…
Well, I’ve always thought that invective is a poor substitute for opinion and analysis.
I suppose if Lincoln had nukes during the war, you would have advocated he drop them on Richmond and Atlanta.
I guess it is our own fault that this discussion has taken the turn it has. Sometimes it is better to respond with indifference to such things.
But I do take umbrage at the assertion that seeing Lincoln as a hero equates with being happy with the welfare state.
What had elements of potential for discussing the legitimacy or lack thereof of drastic steps taken under drastic circumstances — a legitimate philosophical and practical question — has deteriorated into sophistry and illegitimate linkages. That is not what I turn to BC for. No thanks.
Oh my, Contrarian, logic tells me the point over Sumter is being stretched, more than a little. If the State of South Carolina had the right to peaceibly untie its bonds with the union, it was not a thing that peaceably would be settled by bombarding the fort into submission. That was totally an aggressive act which negated any resolve to settle the matter by diplomatic or other means. The foundation of your assertion of wrong is seriously flawed. If Beauregard acted without knowledge and support of the political leadership of the south, then he acted in a manner that most certainly was calculated to elicited their support. Such license is not unwillingly granted. Your claim, in my opinion, is not merely false, it is intentionally so. For it is only by ignoring verified historical fact can such a claim as you make be asserted.
My understanding is that Beauregard acted with the explicit orders of the Confederate govt. The fact remains that Fort Sumter was part of the State of South Carolina, which had democratically seceded from the USA. Lincoln forced the issue by his attempt to resupply his military forces occupying the Fort. Therefore, the Confederate govt. was justified in forcing its surrender. Perhaps this was not a wise diplomatic or political move, but it certainly was justifiable. Whereas Lincoln’s order for the US Army to attack Virginia was a totally aggressive military act with the intention of forcing Virginia and the CSA to capitulate and abandon their desire for independence.
I am always surprised at how the subject of Lincoln & The War (each viewpoint has a different name) generates so much discussion and oftentimes assumes the citizens during the 1830′s on had only a limited understanding what was the issue. Reading diaries and letters indicates the subject had been well discussed. The political moves of the era also indicate an excellent knowledge of the issues. The issue of States Rights was being debated during Jefferson’s Presidency, as were the moral issues of slavery.
I dislike the simplified history (Washington and the Revolution, Lincoln and the War & such) which has been presented in the past but I recognize the need for it. The moral and ‘patriotic’ lessons are important for the young children. But this should not be the end of teaching and discussion. I am also against the cynical teaching which is the present vogue.
I feel the teaching of more ‘complex’ history to young adults has been severely deficient and our nation has been reaping the rewards since the WWI era. At least then, after the death of Wilson, the country attempted to ‘return to normalcy’. Unfortunately, much learning damage had been done and at the sign of real trouble (the extended Depression), too many were ready to give away their birthright for a mess of pottage.
Yes, I generally subscribe to the Austrian thought but I back off from much of the extreme. I consider the flapdoodle over Lincoln to be very unproductive and distracting from the real issues at hand. To use this issue to disrupt the discussion our host began on this thread of BC is sophomoric.
Sorry to be so blunt, as I very seldom comment but read daily. I worked very hard to get my 2 children past such things.
contrarian:
Lincoln’s pretext for attacking the southern confederacy was South Carolina’s attempt to reclaim Fort Sumpter[sic] in Charleston Bay. Since South Carolina had democratically seceded from the USA, and the Fort was part of South Carolina, they had a perfect right to take it. It was Lincoln who sent military forces into Virginia in the first Battle of Bull Run. Lincoln was the aggressor, the Confederacy simply defending their homeland.
Rather, there were irreconcilable views which could only be settled by bloodshed. While the South considered itself justified in firing on Sumter, the North considered it an act of war. Irreconcilable differences. Refer to the various disputes during the 1850s: Kansas-Nebraska, etc. Recall Senator Sumner of Massachusetts getting beaten to unconsciousness in the Senate chambers, a beating that a Representative from South Carolina administered. While that hardened the North, John Brown’s attempted slave insurrection at Harper’s Ferry hardened the South. Irreconcilable.
Two points about “states’ rights.” 1) Secession is trumpeted as a right of the states. There are strong doubts that secession was decided upon in a fair and democratic manner. IIRC, in no state that seceded was a statewide vote taken to determine secession. Secession was decided in conventions, with carefully selected delegates. It appears to me that the slaveowning elite packed the conventions. It appears to me that the 90% of white Southerners who did not own slaves were disenfranchised in the convention votes for secession. Freeholders had much less interest in secession than slaveholders.
2) While the South crowed about states’ rights, they were more than willing to have the states’ rights of the northern states trampled on in recovering fugitive slaves.
I had family on both sides who gave their lives in the conflict. Had there been wiser leaders in the 1850s, perhaps conflict might have been avoided. If wishes were horses… By the time Lincoln became President, the differences were irreconcilable.
@81. Contrarian
How do you justify the continuance of a trade that most of the “civilized world” had explicitly abandoned, and through positive action reviled as not only inhuman but immoral?
At the time of Beauregard’s firing on Fort Sumter there was no “confederate government”. The document by which South Carolina claimed the right to succeed is disingenuous in itself as it gives as rational for that succession the treatment of persons under contract for labor and fugitives by other states as cause for the annulment of their obligations to that union and cites the Declaration of Independence as precedence for the claim. When in fact, upon agreement to the Constitutional compact in 1788 South Carolina agreed to the terms of that constitution. If the bill of rights attained for all men then the claims made by the State of South Carolina show that it was they themselves who willfully violated the agreement and continued to act within the contract so long as it was not enforced to their disadvantage and to the advantage of those individuals held in bondage against their will. The argument for succession constructed in that declaration agreed to by the slave holding citizens of South Carolina is disingenuous as a denial of responsibility and a denial of the rights of human beings as ever has been written. The application of the logic of the failed attempt at succession is not wise for your purpose, and cynically places at disadvantage and holds up for disparagement others arguments who would more legitimately seek the same or similar end. The disparagement of President Lincoln (or any president) to that end is, in my opinion, both foolish and beneath contempt (spit).
Ed, sorry but such is the strength of conviction and depth of emotion, that even 150 years now after the fact passionate argument rages on. That should be worth noting to your students/children.
Dave @72,
I remember reading that Lee planned on a flanking/rear attack at Gettysburg, that in conjuction with the main line of attack (Pickett’s charge), would have led to a decisive Confed victory, but Jeb Stuart flubbed his lines thanks to Custer. Nobody knows for sure.
Here’s an exerpt from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and a link to the text.
“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.” Abraham Lincoln
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;type=simple;rgn=div1;q1=nation%20under%20god;singlegenre=All;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln7;node=lincoln7%3A40