The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. — 1862

My Take – The dogmas of the past are how we got into this mess in the first place.  It didn’t start with Obama, or either Bush.  Almost every president in the 20th century either actively pushed the government into our lives and pocketbooks, or did nothing to turn it back.  Even Reagan, who is lionized by conservatives today, only slowed the growth.  If we are to come back from the financial abyss that yawns before us, we have to make the hard decisions, take the hit both politically and financially, and cut out the growth that is threatening to strangle us.

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 finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.  — 1838

My Take – No nation is invulnerable, as we have all learned in the past few years.  But if our country is to every truly fall, its causes will be found in our inability to act like a nation.  If America fails, it will not be conquered, but will split and rot from the center out.  Our responsibility as citizens is to work together to forestall that day for as long as possible.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. — 1864

My Take – Leaders ought to have some absolutes in their beliefs.  “If X is not wrong, then nothing is wrong” is a wonderful thing for someone who is given power to have in their kit bag of beliefs. Lincoln was absolutely right in observing that we all come to our jobs with our individual beliefs and values.  The biggest difference between Lincoln and the last few presidents seems, to me, to be that Lincoln understood that the Constitution was superior to his own values and beliefs.

Lincoln absolutely hated slavery, but knew that under the Constitution he had no power to abolish it in the states that were not in a state of rebellion.  That’s why the Emancipation Proclamation only held power in territory that was captured from the Confederacy.  He fully understood that if you want to do something that the Constitution doesn’t give you power to do, then you don’t ignore the Constitution. You either work within its limits or go through the arduous process of changing it.  The Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery in the United States, was passed by Congress in 1864, but wasn’t ratified by the states until after Lincoln’s death in 1865.  Lincoln went to his grave living by his belief that the Constitution restricted him from acting on his personal animus toward slavery, no matter how much history would have lauded him for doing so.

That’s not to say that Lincoln was a saint by any means.  Some of the measures he took in his efforts to bring the Confederates back into the Union and to keep more states from going over might have gotten him impeached if anyone had had the guts to make an issue of it.  But he at least had the belief and made an effort to respect the Constitution in this manner.

What our current crop of presidents seem to believe is that the Constitution is more of a guideline, and that its limits are merely fuzzy lines on the map of politics.

• Don’t like abortion?  Pass laws you know will probably fail in front of the Supreme Court in order to score political points.
• Don’t care for guns or the people who own them?  Then get the Congress to pass a law that bans cosmetic things about some guns that will only inconvenience those who respect the law.
• Frustrated that the Constitution protects the nation from over-reaching law enforcement and government monitoring?  Then take advantage of public fear of narcotics and terrorism to turn local, state, and federal law enforcement into a standing army that protects the country from its own citizens.
• Don’t think it’s fair that some people work hard and get good health care?  Then pass a law that forces everyone who breathes American air to either purchase insurance or pay a tax/penalty/tribute so that you can give even more money to those who won’t work.

Yes, Lincoln had his warts, but we’d be better off if the politicians of the past few decades who profess to honor his memory actually acted a bit more like him.