[StBernard] Conservative Review - Honoring Lincoln

[Westley Annis]

Honoring Lincoln
by Jack Kemp

No matter where we are on Feb. 12, every American from 
sea to shining sea will celebrate the 200th birthday of 
our greatest president -- Abraham Lincoln. Song, speech, 
pageant and ceremony will mark the occasion.

The nation's capital, where Lincoln helped preserve 
the Union, will offer numerous opportunities to cele-
brate. The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission 
hosts the national ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial, a 
birthday breakfast, and a Webcast teach-in available 
to students around the world. 

Congress pays tribute in the Capitol Rotunda, and the 
Library of Congress opens its national exhibit.

Exhibits at several Smithsonian museums offer glimpses 
into the 16th president's life with photos, documents 
and artifacts. In celebrating Lincoln and his legacy 
of freedom, democracy and equality of opportunity, we 
celebrate the true meaning of America.

Few leaders in history have captured the hearts and 
minds of so many people in so many nations as Abraham 
Lincoln. He is so universally revered that he sometimes 
seems as much a president for the world as for our own 
country. From Springfield, Ill., to Warsaw, Poland, 
from Red Square to Tiananmen Square, Lincoln is an in-
spiration.

There is a very logical (SET ITAL) global (END ITAL) 
extension of Lincoln's view of the "American idea" -- 
that the principles enunciated in America's Declara-
tion of Independence are universal, and that freedom 
is not just for some people, but for all people, and 
not just for one time, but for all time.

These ideals were the driving force behind Lincoln's 
life and his political career. The Declaration of 
Independence was so central to his politics, and so 
close to his heart, that in the bleak winter of 1861, 
on his journey from Springfield to the inauguration 
in Washington, he felt he had to stop at Independence 
Hall in Philadelphia.

He knew the American experiment in democracy and free-
dom was in grave peril, as was his own life. And in 
the very building where the declaration was signed, 
Lincoln spoke of that "something in that 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."

And then Lincoln added the words that prophesied his 
destiny, and that of our nation: "If this country can-
not be saved without giving up that principle, I was 
about to say that I would rather be assassinated on
this spot than to surrender it."

Lincoln risked both his career and his life to save the 
Union and defend the inalienable rights to life, liber-
ty and the pursuit of happiness for all people.

Were he with us today, Lincoln would remind us that 
the global surge toward freedom really began in the 
Revolution of 1776, the revolution whose promise won't 
be fulfilled until all nations embrace the inalienable 
rights Thomas Jefferson inscribed in our declaration.

Lincoln was not the first to link the success of Amer-
ican democracy to the hopes of all mankind. From our 
republic's earliest days, George Washington, Alexander 
Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other 
great statesmen believed that the American experiment 
in human freedom and democracy was without precedent -- 
and would, if successful, be a precedent for others.

It is interesting to speculate how different our nation 
might be today had Lincoln been given the chance to guide 
America through Reconstruction. It is as true now as it 
was then that so much depends on having the right leader-
ship with the right motives and at the right time in his-
tory. Tragically, from the Emancipation Proclamation until 
this day, the dream of equality of opportunity and free-
dom for all has yet to be completely achieved.

But Lincoln showed us the way. He believed that the Amer-
ican system of upward mobility was the bedrock of our 
democracy, that no individual is excluded from the Amer-
ican Dream and that poverty is not a permanent condition. 
And, like the story of the "Good Shepherd" from Hebrew 
and Christian scripture, he believed we must move forward, 
but not leave anyone behind.

Lincoln drew on this classical liberal view of human na-
ture when he introduced the Homestead Act of 1862, which 
transferred over a million acres of public lands in the 
West to the immigrant-poor and became the most successful 
anti-poverty program in American history.

Within a year, nearly 100,000 homesteaders and immigrants 
eagerly seized the opportunity to own their own land. 
They built homes and farms on 1.5 million acres, forging 
better lives for themselves, their families and indeed 
their country.

His support for the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862 
revolutionized higher education in America and was a bless-
ing to millions of future students -- and to the nation 
that benefited from their cultivated creativity and genius.

For Abraham Lincoln, true welfare meant not dependency, 
but well-being; not equality of reward, but equality of 
opportunity; not reliance on the state, but reliance on 
oneself and one's family. He wrote, prophetically, "The 
progress by which the poor, honest, industrious and reso-
lute man raises himself, that he may work on this own 
account and hire somebody else ... is the great principle 
for which this government was really formed."

Professor Gabor Boritt, in his great book "Lincoln and the 
Economics of the American Dream," cited the rest of Lincoln's 
argument:

"I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; 
it would do more harm than good. ... I want every man to 
have the chance -- and I believe a black man is entitled to 
it -- in which he can better his condition -- when he may 
look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and 
the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men 
to work for him! That is the true system."

In the most "radical" speech Abraham Lincoln ever gave, he 
compared America to a house divided against itself, half-
slave and half-free. I would submit that today America is 
once again in danger of being divided -- this time, however, 
into two economies, one rich, the other poor; one affluent, 
the other in abject poverty; one a springboard to opportunity, 
the other a trap of despair and dependency.

Lincoln understood that it is impossible to support equality 
of economic opportunity without also upholding equal civil, 
human and voting rights for all.

Until the Civil War, the threat to American democracy had 
come primarily from foreign powers, but Lincoln faced America's 
supreme crisis: The nation that embodied mankind's last, best 
hope seemed hopelessly divided. He believed that "as a nation 
of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

Slavery was the first great test challenging the American demo-
cracy's central principle of equality. Lincoln's moral indig-
nation over slavery was unbounded. In his 1854 Peoria speech 
replying to the little giant, Sen. Douglas, he said:

"I hate ... the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate 
it because it deprives our republican example of its just 
influence in the world -- enables the enemies of free insti-
tutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites -- 
causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, 
and especially because it forces so many really good men 
amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental 
principles of civil liberty -- criticizing the Declaration 
of Independence and insisting that there is no right principle 
of action but self-interest."

To Lincoln, slavery was an abomination, a hideous stain de-
filing the nation's soul; it could only be cleansed by a bapt-
ism of fire in civil war.

Since the day Lincoln was taken from us by the assassin's 
cowardly hand, American democracy has met great challenges 
again and again: the injustice of segregation, the evil of 
"Jim Crow" laws, the despair and economic contraction of the 
Great Depression, the crises of two world wars, the shameful 
unconstitutional denial of voting rights, among others.

Our democracy is being tested today not only by our war 
against terrorism here and abroad, but also by levels of 
poverty, homelessness and despair unacceptable to a compass-
ionate and affluent nation here at home. As the world's 
leading example of democratic capitalism, we must make it 
work better at home so that all our people are empowered 
and fully enjoy true equality of opportunity.

On the eve of the bicentennial celebration of Abraham Lin-
coln's birth, and 145 years after his Gettysburg speech, 
Lincoln's belief that all human beings are created equal 
and endowed with inalienable rights -- the faith upon which 
liberal democracy is based -- is still the last, best hope 
of people around the world.

Because of democracy's long march from Independence Hall 
through Gettysburg to the streets of foreign lands, the 
world increasingly knows this simple yet profound truth: 
The yearning for freedom cannot be extinguished, the 
struggle for inalienable rights will never end, and noth-
ing can deny the transcendence of liberal democratic values.