Obama, You’re No Abe Lincoln

Barack Obama officially announced his presidency last week from the steps of the old State Courthouse in Springfield Illinois where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech. Obama’s message, loaded with sound bites and symbolism, signified nothing except repackaged racial and class politics. In response, History Professor Gerald Matacotta thundered his disapproval from the podium at the annual GOP Lincoln Dinner at Antun’s in Queens Village last Sunday saying, “Obama, you’re no Abraham Lincoln.”

Abraham Lincoln launched his own presidential campaign with his “House Divided” address commencing the struggle against slavery. He bluntly stated, “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” Either the country would be all slave or all free and there was no middle ground. He pointed out that continuing the status quo indefinitely was impossible and invoked our founding document, the Declaration of Independence in order to declare the extinction of the institution of slavery. He attacked the pro-slavery conspiracy of slaveowners, Southern apologists and Democrats who aim to nationalize the institution that would invalidate the ideals of our Founding Fathers for universal liberty.

According to Richard Carwardine’s award winning book, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, Lincoln stood his ground and would not make concessions to his opponents clamoring to preserve the status quo, although the “soft on slavery” Democrats and increasingly more congressional Republicans urged him to compromise in order to save the union. The swelling cries of “timid men” were advising a return to the Missouri Compromise line in order to keep the house together and avoid secession by the southern states. But Lincoln wouldn’t yield to this delusional half free, half slave proposal telling a Missouri Republican, “he would sooner go out into his backyard and hang himself.” He would not renege on the founding Republican principles against the expansion of slavery into new territories or be bullied and blackmailed into yielding on these principles. Lincoln told wavering Republicans, “if we surrender (to the bullies and blackmailers who we defeated by constitutional elections) it is the end of us, and the end of government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum.” Lincoln felt that if he yielded an inch to Republican Party backsliders on moral principles he would lose all power as president. Moreover, he warned Republican leaders that losing principles at a time of crisis would be suicidal for the party that got him elected, and determined to prevent his party from becoming “a mere sucked egg, all shell and no principle in it.” As a result of these admonitions, Republicans stood up during that congressional session to defeat all such cowardly compromise resolutions.

This is the bold nature of the leadership we need today in order to return to the original principles of America’s “war on terror,” the long abandoned Bush Doctrine which pledged enmity against any nation that harbored terrorists, and to take preemptive and unilateral military action if necessary against any rogue state that was involved in the production of WMD or that safeguarded terrorists. Instead of holding on to these principles, many Republicans have accommodated the “soft on terror” Democrats. As a result moral relativism has taken hold of our nation to fill the vacuum in leadership of the congressional Republicans and the softening of Bush administration principles beaten down by the continuous pounding of the anti-war drums. The morally bankrupt Democrats following in the footsteps of their pro-slavery forebears of antebellum America, have united with House Speaker Pelosi and her staunchest supporter, Rep. John Murtha to pass a treasonous nonbinding resolution against President Bush’s strategic plan for victory in Iraq. In this manner, the Democrats have announced their intentions to abandon Iraq and surrender to terrorism, uniting to provide aid and comfort to our enemy as Ralph Peters wrote in the New York Post, calling it “the most disgraceful congressional action since the Democratic Party united to defend slavery.” Seventeen timid Republicans have likewise caved in and traded away their moral principles by voting for the resolution to support the enemy and undermine our troops.

Some Republicans have held out resolutely, such as Rep. Peter King who condemned the disgraceful resolution that attempts “to control and restrict strategic battlefield decisions” and Rep. Sam Johnson who described “being a POW in Vietnam and becoming disheartened as he learned of protests back home.” Such bold voices are now urgently needed to speak out loudly and vociferously to drown out the beating drums of surrender and defeat, as Lincoln would have done. Our leaders must go back to Lincoln’s principles and deliver another Gettysburg Address to tell the American people exactly what we are fighting for and who our enemy is. We need leaders who are not afraid to stand up and wage a total war when necessary as Lincoln did, for a total victory. We need to show the world American power and articulate the message of American strength and patriotism. We will continue to fight until our principles of Liberty have spread throughout the world and are respected and feared by every tyrant and rogue state. We have to hear that these principles are worth fighting and dying for and that our fallen heroes on the battlefield have not died in vain. We must overwhelm the self-righteous apologists, and drown out the pious homilies of the seditious politicians and power-lusting academics who spit on America and whose consciences have been numbed and lobotomized in the void of moral relativism. The eagle must soar once again into the skies of victory.

Barack Obama’s voice is undoubtedly not one that speaks to the principles of American strength. This Democratic apologist is a “soft on terror” voice of naiveté and surrender who has plagiarized Lincoln’s powerful words and grafted his eloquent statements onto his own ludicrous peace plan to bring the troops home by next March in order to force the Sunni and Shia to come to the table to find peace through diplomacy. He promises that after he ends the war and our divided house is finally one, he will end poverty, provide universal health care, ease the crisis of global warming, and end our dependence on foreign oil. Obama’s abominable speech was a disgrace to Lincoln’s name and legacy.

During the contentious elections of 1964, in which Lincoln was elected to a second term, the Democrats chastised Lincoln for a war they characterized as “four years of failure” and called for an immediate end to the war and bringing the crestfallen troops home. History has a strange way of repeating itself. But Lincoln stood resolutely against the clamor as the Union armies were on the threshold of victory. Lincoln delivered his most famous speech for his second inauguration, declaring peace and unity, based upon the principles of American strength in defense of the constitution:

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

True compassion and healing only emerges out of strength and victory.

CORRECTION:

A reader, Anthony Nardi brought to my attention a quote that I have erroneously attributed to Lincoln and asked that I issue a correction. I stand corrected according to the following paper on Lincoln researched by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. That said, Lincoln defended the arrest of Vallandigham and several treasonous Maryland legislators arrested for voting for secession. He suspended habeas corpus and utilized his constitutional power at full throttle mandating wartime arrests to prevent the obstruction of military mobilization. Maybe the exact words weren’t Lincoln’s, but the spirit was his to “arrest individuals, and suppress assemblies, or newspapers, when they may be working palpable injury to the military” as an advisor confided to him.

Regarding your reprint of your Queens Village Eagle article on Democracy Project, you have quoted Abraham Lincoln in the following context:

When Lincoln was elected to the presidency, the Southern states seceded and the nation was plunged into Civil War. As Commander-in-Chief he led the divided union through the war and ultimately united the nation based on the just cause of equality for all and emancipation of the slaves. He stood valiantly against any party or foe that would undermine this righteous cause saying: "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged."

The quote that closes that paragraph is erroneously attributed to President Lincoln. Evidence of such may be found here: Misquoting Lincoln