Timeless Wisdom

“The best way to predict the future
is to create it.”

–Abraham Lincoln

 

 

Being a Humanitarian Isn’t Easy

My last post drew an interesting comment:

“Humanitarians” do not start wars which kill 700,000

My knowledge of American History is good enough for me to know that Abraham Lincoln DID NOT start the Civil War. The forces of South Carolina, which ultimately grew into the Southern Confederacy, started it by demanding the surrender of the garrison at Fort Sumter in April of 1861.

If anything, Lincoln was determined to STOP a war that pitted brother against brother and created an internal cancer of a country feeding upon itself. Read the history; it’s there. Who in their right mind would CHOOSE to lead a mess like that?

It had to be worse than a 100 Iraqs. 

I’m not Abraham Lincoln’s apologist; I don’t have to be. We’ve made holidays of the birth of only two presidents, and he was one of them.

We don’t honor killers in that fashion.

We carved in granite on the Mall in Washington, D.C., what is arguably one of the finest short speeches ever written, The Gettysburgh Address. It contains a number of words like “we,” “our,” and “us.” There’s not a single reference to “I.”  It’s a collective call to honor. We think enough of this man’s words that we encourage our children to learn them and recite them. 

Not exactly the philosophy of a killer, huh?

In all fairness to Mr. Lincoln, our Founding Fathers saved the Civil War for him by electing to pass on the issue of slavery. In addition to the moral components of the issue, they were afraid that abolishing slavery would cause collapse to the economies that depended on slave labor. Some of these men themselves owned slaves.

That issue simmered and festered until it errupted 85 years later. The war was on.

Lincoln didn’t whip it up for a little something to do while he was in the White House.

 

James Sutton, Psychologist     www.docspeak.com