Would that we had a Lincoln.
I've been trying to convince my fellow conservatives that they have been wasting their time in a fruitless quest for a new Ronald Reagan to emerge and lead our party and our nation. I insisted that we'd never see his like again because he was one of a kind. I was wrong! Wednesday night I watched the Republican National Convention on television and there, before my very eyes, I saw my Dad reborn; only this time he's a she. And what a she! This was Ronald Reagan at his best -- the same Ronald Reagan who made the address known now solely as "The Speech," which during the Goldwater campaign set the tone and the agenda for the rebirth of the traditional conservative movement that later sent him to the White House for eight years and revived the moribund GOP. Welcome back, Dad, even if you're wearing a dress and bearing children this time around.
~Michael Reagan, Chairman, Reagan Foundation, syndicated talk show host and son of President Ronald Reagan.
“Would that we had a Lincoln.”
That would be the gangly, sociopathic lawyer from Illinois, who feels free to suspend the Constitution at will.
We have one.
You mean, someone willing to kill 600 000 Americans and destroy 1/3 of the country to impose his will?
Unfortunately, the one who comes closest to the part played by Abraham Lincoln in our looming tragedy is Obama himself.
Perhaps FReepers living in Europe don't see debt-based money used to fuel ever-more-powerful socialism as akin to negro slavery, but it is every bit as divisive and has every bit as much potential for violence. Obama, the socialist, sees clearly that the 50 states cannot exist much longer half-slave (NY,DC,NJ,IL,MA,CA,MD) and half-free.
To quote the Lincoln you long for, "In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half [socialist] and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other."
I do believe that Obama and the forces behind him are quite prepared to use force to re-unify the nation on the core issue of the right of the government at Washington to dictate what may be done with your property, up to and including confiscation by either regulation or fiat.
So in that sense, the looming crisis of an election that the people are not ready for (not ready to choose, I mean) IS quite similar to 1860.
“Would that we had a Lincoln.”
No way. Would that we had a Jefferson. Or a Churchill. Or a Reagan.
Personally, I think we do have a Reagan in development. But it’s a she.
But if you want to avert a Civil War then he would not be my first pick now would he?
And to prosecute a war ?
that is debatable
to give inspiring speeches and do WHATEVER it took to win...unlike today say when we prosecute wars...then yes...you might have a point.
to offer decent terms to the states he defeated...well there he does have my undying respect and that sets him apart from the jackals that were chomping at the bit behind him to destroy the south as punishment...I believe his written desires at the end of the war prove he did want reconciliation which I admire about him...had he not been cowardly assassinated we might have avoided the pleasures of Reconstruction