A Stroll to the Theater with President Lincoln

One day, while sitting for his portrait, President Lincoln chatted with the artist, Frank B. Carpenter. He described the Cabinet meeting of July 22, 1862, when he decided upon emancipating the slaves.

"Things had gone from bad to worse until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing, that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy, and without consultation or knowlege of the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation, and after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting upon the subject. I said to the Cabinet that I had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice, but to lay the subject matter of a proclamation before them, suggestions as to which would be in order, after they had heard it read. Secretary Chase wished the language stronger in reference to the arming of the blacks. Mr. Blair deprecated the policy, on the ground that it would cost the administration the fall elections.

"Nothing, however, was offered that I had not fully anticipated and settled in my own mind, until Secretary Seward spoke. He said, in substance, 'Mr. President, I approve of the proclamation, but I question the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The depression of the public mind, consequent upon our repeated reverses, is so great that I fear the effect of so important a step. It may be viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government; the government stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands to the government.'

"His idea was that it would be considered our last shriek, on the retreat.

'Now,' continued Seward. 'While I approve the measure, I suggest, sir, that you postpone its issue, until you can give it to the country supported by military success, instead of issuing it, as would be the case now, upon the greatest disasters of the war.'

"The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State struck me with great force. It was an aspect of the case that, in all my thought upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked."

I am a playwright. I often attend public readings of new works. These readings are usually followed by an audience critique. I have seen wonderfully useful criticism utterly ignored by aspiring playwrights. So many of them - keenly aware that no member of the audience has thought as deeply upon the plot, theme, and characters of their play as they have - dismiss the criticism. They would do well to consider President Lincoln's close attention to the input of his Cabinet. No doubt, he was the moral and intellectual superior of his several Department Secretaries. He had thought much more deeply upon emancipation than any of them. Yet, in all that deep thought, he had missed a huge piece of the puzzle - picking the best time for publication. Had he gone forward full steam ahead, Emancipation would have failed.

A great playwright, determined to pen a masterpiece, must have both qualities possessed by President Lincoln - moral autonomy and purposive humility. And a finely tuned ear to the input of others.

Bleating for Corey

The local talk radio anti-immigration loonie, Peter Boyles, labors day and night to stir up some sympathy for Corey Voorhis, a Border Patrol agent who provided sensitive information to the Bob Beauprez campaign during the recent contest for Governor in Colorado. He uses this to trash a very good man, Bill Ritter, the winner of that election.

In 2004, the Republicans tossed a gigantic stink bomb into the Presidential campaign when the Vietnam draft dodgers, Bush and Cheney, trashed the patriot, John Kerry, with their swift boat ads. Kerry, by not defending himself against these outrageous lies, demoralized the Democratic party. He had a duty to his supporters, and himself, to attack his slanderers. Bill Ritter did not make the same mistake in 2006 in Colorado. When the Trailhead Group tossed their stink bomb into Colorado politics, the Ritter campaign threw it right back at them. Bill did his duty.

Corey Voorhis broke the law. Whenever the anti-immigration loonies wax poetical about the Mexicans, they always seal their argument by saying, "They broke the law, therefore they are criminals." By that very logic, Corey Voorhis is a criminal. He broke the law. Case closed.

Lastly, the time has come for Peter Boyles, Tom Tancredo, Lou Dobbs, and the whole pack of demagogues to put up or shut up. They will, capriciously, turn the Arkansas Valley into a wasteland if they get their way. Mr. Boyles should use his program to obtain pledges from his devoted listeners to bring in the harvest next year. They can all traipse down to Alamosa and put their deltoids where their mouths are.

Trashing Obama

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the Fire Eaters down South - to inflame their white trash acolytes - excoriated the abolitionists up North, accusing them of implementing a plot to "miscegenate the races." This strategy worked like a charm. Nothing inflamed white trash, north and south of the Mason-Dixon line, like the fear of mixing their pure white blood with primitive African blood. Abolitionists were persecuted, even murdered, at the instigation of such oratory.

Meanwhile, Down South, in the shadows, slave masters were performing the dark acts they accused the abolitionists of perpetrating. Some historical demographers estimate that 1/3 of all births in the United States between 1840 and 1860 were mulattoes. The slave masters were extremely eager miscegenators.

Today, the spiritual descendants of the Fire Eaters - the right wing loonies - are mobilizing against Barack Obama. I received an e-mail condemning Obama for attending an all black, racist church. The sender, no doubt, attends one of those all white suburban mega-churches. The most segregated hour in America is the Sunday morning sermon. If that fact exposes some hypocrisy in American spiritual life, the sender herself is a participant. Yet, she feels patriotically compelled to trash Obama for something which she excuses in herself. The reservoir of poison slaking the thirst of the right wing loonies is bottomless.

Dr. Paul second guesses President Lincoln

I am a registered Libertarian. If Ron Paul gets his name on the Presidential ballot, I will vote for him - despite two stunningly ill-informed statements on Meet the Press.

Mr. Paul had the temerity to second-guess Abraham Lincoln's inability to head off the Civil War - the irrepressible conflict. Dr. Paul criticized President Lincoln's failure to compromise with the secessionists. The truth is, of course, that President Lincoln was willing to compromise on every issue, save one. He would not budge on the extension of slavery into the Federal Territories. His party had pledged itself on that issue. The Southern political elite insisted they must have the right to take "this species of property" wherever they wanted. They insisted on this despite the fact that the plantation system could never pay west of the 97th Parallel. Essentially, they insisted that the Northern people bless Slavery as a positive good, not just tolerate it as a necessary evil.

Dr. Paul went on to say that slavery would have withered away. Perhaps. But, I doubt it. Slavery had already reached the point where it made scant sense economically. Yet, Southerners grew more attached to the peculiar institution as the 19th Century wore on. Perhaps this was due to its peculiarites? The Northern male, feeling a bit randy, had to comfort himself with self-abuse - or go out on the open market to purchase relief. The slavemaster, prompted by the same urge, could instruct his property to spread her legs and submit. And nine months later, of course, his net worth might increase with the birth of a slave child - a child which he could sell at the most opportune moment. A child he could exploit for himself - economically or sexually. A system like that, so riddled with the deepest, darkest vices, is hard to give up. Especially when the local divines bless it all as virtuous Christianity. Such peculiarities might not conveniently wither away.

In fact, Slavery was replaced with a pseudo-slavery - Jim Crow and the sharecropper system. Dr. Paul blandly asserts that the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 were not necessary. He correctly points out that Barry Goldwater, hardly a racist, opposed it because it imposed on property rights. This, of course, is true. But the Civil Rights Acts, relying upon the commerce clause, were constitutional. And such construction of the commerce clause was no expedient innovation of the Johnson Administration. The precedent was set in an 1821 decision by a South Carolina judge in Elkison v. Deliesseline.

As wrong as Dr. Paul is on these historical questions of Civil Rights, he is dead right on the biggest issue before us today - the state of the Empire. We have created a monster which is consuming us. The question Dr. Paul asks, we should all ask ourselves. Why wait for a financial crisis to take the necessary actions to tame the Imperial Beast?