“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Abraham Lincoln, 2nd inaugural address
Making war hardly seems to be something that needs to be learned among the sons of men, except to do it well I suppose. As surely as Winter follows Fall, peace ever fades to war; there is always an outbreak somewhere in the globe, and more often than not, several somewheres. Kingdom against kingdom, nation against nation; and within nations, party against party; and within parties, group against group. Across the country, we have warring between races, warring between classes, warring between political persuasions… we have none of Mr. Lincoln’s “peace among ourselves”, how can we expect to have it “with all nations”?
We are not by nature peaceful creatures. Our families, our Churches, even those we love most are not immune to the strife that comes so naturally, how much less those we hold in lower regard. We envision a master plan for our Universe, and woe be to the man or woman that interferes with us, or holds a differing point of view. It is not enough that we get our way, we interpret dissent as an insult to our brilliance, and dissenters as fools and devils fit only to be ostracized and crushed.
It is not I imagine a coincidence that the subject matter of this blog so often reverts to the virtue of humility. It is in humility that we do not suppose ourselves to be superior to our neighbor, even when we are right and they are wrong. In humility we understand that there have been and will be times where the opposite is true, and being right on a matter is not the final measure of goodness. Disagreements are unavoidable, in marriages, families, groups and nations, and argument or healthy debate is how you present your case; but when honor, respect, and love are laid aside, then argument turns to war. Argument seeks to convince, war seeks to destroy. In war, souls are crushed, it is no longer a matter of who was right, but who will win… and who will die.
And so we have come to a place where we have a house divided. The political parties no longer just try to sell their agenda, they want to crush each other, and that right well and forever. The battle is no longer one of ideas, it is of power, and the ideas are secondary and expendable. Within parties the same battle rages, especially in the GOP. What started as an honest difference of opinion about the direction the nation should go, is now a political death match where survival and vanquishing the opponent is paramount, and principles and policy positions are important only so far as they endear candidates to major voting blocks. Educating the voter has morphed into appeasing the voter, and honest debate and persuasion has fallen to the power of propaganda. Truth about issues like Benghazi and the IRS controversy is radioactive; spin and outright lying are the preferred tactics to defending your honor or owning up to a mistake. After all, the other side is hardly prone to forgive and forget; those aren’t rubber bullets they are firing.
IMHO: It is a sad fact of our nation’s history that the nobility of the Revolution and the establishment of the Republic was soon eclipsed by the catastrophe of the Civil War. State fought against state, American against American, brother against brother. It was, no doubt, a necessary evil… but oh, it was evil! How do you return from such a rift, such an abomination? What road will restore you to the Union after so great a division? President Lincoln pointed the way… “With malice toward none”. He spoke of healing, not crushing. There was no touchdown celebration, no mention of “We won, get over it”, no demeaning criticism of the south. Presidents were different back then. No, he reached out a hand of brotherhood to those who had borne the battle, on both sides, and to their widows and orphans, and there were many. He honored his vanquished foe as his brother and his equal. “With charity for all.” With these words Lincoln raised a beacon to show the way back. Some men can not be pulled from their darkness even by as bright a light as Lincoln, and just a few weeks after his gracious words Booth shot him dead. But the path forward had been set, and Lincoln’s vision did not perish with him. There will always be those like Booth, dark souls who see destruction and death as the answer, who place victory above honor. Let us hope and fervently pray that we may also find those like Lincoln in our time of need. Men who will fight, but who will also make peace. Men who will seek to convince their foes and not to crush them. Men who will preserve their honor in both victory and defeat, and look for goodness where it may be found, not demonizing their opponents, but respecting them as misguided brethren in need of a course correction. Men who place principle above propaganda, honor above victory, charity above power. Let us hope for such men. Let us be such men.
