Happy 200th Birthday, February 12, 2009, to Abraham Lincoln.
What better way to raise a toast to Abraham Lincoln than with his own words (and three very choice guest toasters!)
To Abraham Lincoln, who, relating to the importance of transparency and the public’s “right to know” concerning government said:
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on the proper relation of God and humans, never assuming anything:
We trust, sir, that God is on our side. It is more important to know that we are on God's side.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on his “do-gooder” religion, said:
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. {…and on another occasion he wrote…} “I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”
In these quotes above, Lincoln echoed Thomas Paine, the architect of the American Revolution and author of “Common Sense” who wrote:
“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
To Abraham Lincoln, who, reminding us that Rome was not built in a day, nor the business of America finished by the writing of the Declaration of Independence or the mere adoption of the Constitution, said:
"I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal."
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on the proper attitude regarding compromise of basic principles, said:
Important principles may and must be inflexible.
the question of extending the slavery under the national auspices, --I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on the weakness of conservatism, said:
What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on the primary source of his political ideas, said:
I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, explaining that the genius of the Declaration of Independence was not something to be accomplished in a single generation, said:
It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland; but something in the Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on the hope of democracy, said:
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on whether elections should be suspended in time of war or national emergency (like the Civil War) said:
We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, applying the Golden Rule to slavery just as we might apply it to torture in our day, said:
I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should first be those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on the decisive importance of idealism in core American rights and values, implicitly identifying the Golden Rule (which inheres in various forms in all known spiritual traditions) as the bedrock foundation of equality, and why Equality is the path for the Nation to follow, said:
We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.
To Abraham Lincoln, who,, on what corrupts human beings, including Americans, said:
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”
Abraham Lincoln, on where the gravest threats to America shall come from:
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and its finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.
Abraham Lincoln, on which author he’s most inspired to read:
I never tire of reading Paine.
Abraham Lincoln, in his First Inaugural Address:
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on why the American Revolution was a real revolution, replacing power of, by, and for the people in place of the “divine right” of kings to rule, said:
Our Declaration of Independence has been copied by emerging nations around the globe, its themes adopted in places many of us have never heard of. Here is this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights. We the people declared that government is created by the people for their own convenience. Government has no power except those voluntarily granted it by the people. There have been revolutions before and since ours, revolutions that simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Ours was a philosophical revolution that changed the very concept of government.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on humanity and virtue, on “good people” and “bad people”, said:
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on the essence of public service as President, said:
I am, as you know, only the servant of the People.
To Abraham Lincoln, who, on the American can-do attitude, said:
Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address – one that needs no introduction:
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.
To Abraham Lincoln, and to Poet Carl Sandburg, who said, to a joint session of Congress in 1959:
"Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is hard as a rock and soft as a drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.”
Finally, to a Russian, author Leo Tolstoy, someone who had no particular cause, nor patriotic urge, to reach across oceans to give praise to a President of a foreign country, may have put things about Lincoln in the most remarkable perspective, and shall have the honor of the final 200th birthday Toast: He said, putting it all into the context of world history:
“The greatness of Napoleon, Caesar or Washington is only moonlight by the sun of Abraham Lincoln. His example is universal and will last thousands of years. … He was bigger than his country, bigger than all Presidents put together… and as a great character he will live as long as the world lives.”
–Leo Tolstoy
So, let us all toast to Abe Lincoln (and the latest to issue from the land of Lincoln!)
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