Recent tragedies in Connecticut and elsewhere, in which large numbers of innocent people were killed by deranged gunmen, have led to a flurry finger-pointing, as polticians of every stripe try to convince voters that they can solve the problems of gun violence in America, while looking for scapegoats to blame.
Predictably, some blame the gun lobby for its tone-deaf intransigience about setting rules and limits on guns; some blame the video-game industry for encouraging a culture of violence. Some blame our existing gun restrictions, for preventing law-abiding citizens from coming to the rescue with guns blazing whenever there's trouble. Some even blame our Constitution for elevating the "right to bear arms" to the level of a constitutional right --- or heap the blame on our Supreme Court, for recognizing in the text of the Second Amendment a personal right to bear arms for our own self-defense.
On this last score, some gun control advocates point to the pre-existing case law --- effectively acknowledging that the Second Amendment precluded only Congress from enacting limits on the right to bear arms --- to argue that the current court has made the "activist" decision to rewrite the Second Amendment, and pointing to the Supreme Court decision in McDonald v Chicago as Exhibit A. The reason we had "a body of law" through the 1970s that has been revisited today is not because of "judicial activists" on the bench today, but because of the judicial activists of the 1960s.
From our founding until the middle of the 20th Century, the US Supreme Court had routinely held that the Bill of Rights applied only to restrict the power of the Federal government over its citizens...and had no application against the state. States, through their own laws and constitutions, were largely free to organize themselves, and to write whatever laws and rules their citizens saw fit to impose upon themselves. In this context, the Federal Government could impose no rules respecting weapons in the possession of its citizens of any kind --- with the possible exception of those being transported in across state lines, in interstate commerce. Any such rules and regulations were left to the states, which were free to impose any rules they wished.
Building upon various threads of developing legal thought, and beginning in earnest with the 1960 Supreme Court decision in Mapp v Ohio, the Supreme Court effectively rewrote our Constitution, extending protections designed to prevent tyranny at the Federal level by applying them to the states. Though largely intended at the start to rectify obvious injustices being visited on black defendants in the Deep South, this morphed into what is known as the "incorporation doctrine"...by which language in the Fourteenth Amendment --- which read that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" --- transformed the Bill of Rights into general limits on state power, a bit of legal alchemy that had somehow escaped the attention of jurists until the middle of the 20th Century. Though most modern liberals insist that it only applies to those "privileges or immunities" that they approve of --- such as the right to counsel, or the protection against unreasonable search and seizure (all of which were generally granted in one way or another in the various state constitutions) --- inexorable logic, as well as the law of unintended consequences, made it inevitable that the same "incorporation doctrine" would someday come to apply to the Second Amendment as well as the rest.
Today, rather than a system in which Washington is prohibited from disarming its citizens but States are free to regulate weapons as they see fit, we now have a system in which the same limit on Federal power relating to weapons is being applied against the states...with the result that what seemed a good idea to the "Perpetual Committee on Constitutional Revision" that the Supreme Court became in the 1960s is running into the reality that the Founders tried hard to accommodate in 1787: ie, the fact that a "one-size-fits-all" government is a recipe for disaster, and that liberty is better preserved by placing strict limits on Federal power, and letting the People govern themselves as much as possible at the state and local levels. In the context of trying to control gun violence in our society, this means that local communities across the country have to abide by the same constitutionally mandated limitations --- even though farmers in rural Montana and neighborhood watch volunteers in Detroit may face different local problems, requiring different local solutions.
If we are going to decry "judicial activists," we should probably begin by studying how the Constitution changed in the 1960s. We are still grappling with the consequences, but at least you'd have a sense of the nature of the problem...and why it's proving so hard to get things right: judges are terrible at crafting the kinds of political compromises we need to govern ourselves intelligently, and make most people happy with the result; and once they assumed the power to rewrite the Constitution, they became a third political branch of Government, rather than simply serving as the referees. And so therefore, in the context of our current debate on gun control, rather than being able to rule simply that "the Second Amendment does not apply to the States; therefore, the State of (fill in the blank) is free to regulate firearms in whatever manner its citizens seem fit," it now has to craft constitutional rules relating to firearms that apply across the board to everyone, everwhere in the country...and determining which state laws and regulations can pass muster with five members of the Supreme Court. Multiply that by the number of issues now deemed to involve someone's "constitutional rights," and you have a recipe for the chaos and dysfunction we see everywhere in this country, at all levels of government.
Personally, I think the Founders gave us a much better system; it's too bad we had to muck it up.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the Guardians of Peace-tm science fiction adventure series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
The Right to be Fools
Overprotective parents who insist on making all the decisions for their children merely ensure that their kids are unprepared for making wise decisions as adults.
Similarly, a nation that infantilizes its population, by having its Government start making all of the "hard" decisions for its people to keep them from making unwise choices, only ensures that within a generation or two it will be populated largely by nitwits --- of the same caliber as those who will thereafter be making all of the Government's decisions.
In a free society, it's not the Government's job to run our lives, determine how much money we should have, or to determine what kind of culture we have. In a free society, if the citizens insist on being fools --- or choose to value greed over civic-mindedness, selfishness over cooperation, or trivialities over substance --- there's nothing the Government can or should do to stop them. Liberty gives us the right to be foolish as well as wise...and in a free society, learning to tell the difference is part of what gives life its meaning.
On the other hand, if we want to see what it looks like to have a Government in charge of determining income levels --- or making people who "have too much" give their excess away --- or deciding how its citizens should run their own lives --- we saw quite a lot of that in the 20th Century. As I recall, it didn't turn out too well.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the Guardians of Peace-tm science fiction adventure series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Similarly, a nation that infantilizes its population, by having its Government start making all of the "hard" decisions for its people to keep them from making unwise choices, only ensures that within a generation or two it will be populated largely by nitwits --- of the same caliber as those who will thereafter be making all of the Government's decisions.
In a free society, it's not the Government's job to run our lives, determine how much money we should have, or to determine what kind of culture we have. In a free society, if the citizens insist on being fools --- or choose to value greed over civic-mindedness, selfishness over cooperation, or trivialities over substance --- there's nothing the Government can or should do to stop them. Liberty gives us the right to be foolish as well as wise...and in a free society, learning to tell the difference is part of what gives life its meaning.
On the other hand, if we want to see what it looks like to have a Government in charge of determining income levels --- or making people who "have too much" give their excess away --- or deciding how its citizens should run their own lives --- we saw quite a lot of that in the 20th Century. As I recall, it didn't turn out too well.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the Guardians of Peace-tm science fiction adventure series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Monday, May 28, 2012
In Flanders Fields
We often take what we have for granted, overlooking the miracles that make our modern lives possible. Some of these miracles --- technology, for instance --- appear everywhere we look, from our cell phones, to our iPods, to our big-screen televisions and latest computers. Others call for reflection and remembrance, two things that modern life seems to be pushing out of more and more corners of our lives.
One miracle we rarely notice is the human capacity for sacrifice, whether it comes in the form of parents working quietly so that their children can have a better life, or of people dedicating their lives or careers in the service of others. And though for one day each year --- on Memorial Day --- we offer our thanks, most of us are more concerned about the fun we’ve planned for the three-day weekend than we are about the miracle that has given us our freedom. For it is truly a miracle that so many of us have been willing to offer up our own lives in order that others might enjoy the blessings of liberty. Nowhere is that sacrifice, and the folly that requires so much of it, revealed more starkly than on the battlefield, where young men have suffered and died defending their country, and those they love. And nowhere is the voice of the fallen presented more poignantly than in a short poem, written almost a century ago, by a man grieving over the death of a friend.
In the human nightmare we know as World War I, soldiers were routinely sacrificed by their commanders on the altar of outmoded tactics. One of the bloodiest battles of the war occurred in the Spring of 1915. Known as the Second Battle of Ypres, the battle marked the first use of poison gas on enemy soldiers by the Germans, and continued from late April until late May. It also marked the first time that the forces of a former European colony (Canada) ever defeated a European power (the German Empire) on European soil, in a portion of the battle fought near the Flemish town of St. Julien.
One of the Canadian soldiers in the battle was a physican from Guelph, Ontario named John McCrae. Though eligible for service behind the lines as part of the Medical Corps, he volunteered to serve on the front lines as a gunner and medical officer. During the fighting, which he described in letters home as a nightmare, with constant gunfire, surrounded by the dead and the dying, and filled with terror at the thought that the enemy might break through their lines. One of those killed in the battle was a close friend of his, named Alexis Helmer, whose death affected him greatly. Having developed an interest in poetry from a young age, and finding no other way to express his grief, he composed a poem the following day while sitting in an ambulance, having noticed the profusion of poppies that seemed to spring up around the graves of the dead.
Unsatisfied with his efforts, or perhaps consumed with grief, McCrae threw the poem away, only to have his fellow soldiers rescue the crumpled manuscript from when he had tossed it, and begged him to try to have it published. Rejected at first, it was finally released to the public in December 1915 by the British magazine Punch, a well-known publication that normally focused on satire and humor. An immediate sensation, the poem stands as a stark reminder that all men are mortal, and that behind any romantic talk of the glory and honor of combat lie death, and the horrors of war. Though the poem is often dismissed by academics as patriotic propaganda it has been translated widely, and is loved for the honesty of its emotion, the understated beauty of its imagery, and the ghostly shadows of the fallen, pleading not to be forgotten.
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
—Lt.Col. John McCrae
Though his words have left an enduring legacy of bravery and remembrance, McCrae never lived to see the end of the war. He died of pneumonia in January 1918, ironically while commanding a field hospital well to the rear of the fighting, an assignment he resented. His birthplace in Guelph is now a museum, memorial dedicated to his life and the War
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure series, The Guardians of Peace, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
RIP, JoePa
It's impossible to live in this world without experiencing sadness, or seeing tragedies unfolding before your eyes. In the case of Joe Paterno, his end came not with the adulation he richly deserved, but with a closing act marred by his ousting from the job he loved for dealing with the reported the crimes of another in a way that others rightly deemed legal but "inappropriate" --- and which he, himself, would have handled differently as a fifty-year old in command of all his faculties, instead of the aging giant he was when he he was confronted with the scandal.
At the end of my life I'd rather be judged and remembered for my accomplishments when I was in my prime, rather than for my failures as I reached my end. Forgotten in the search for scapegoats in this case was the fact that the real villain in the story of Paterno's Fall was the child molester, not the old man who actually followed the law, but lacked the mental acuity to follow through by himself.
The same can't be said for the assistant coach, and perhaps not for the whole rest of the PSU athletic establishment. But if the final ledger for Joe Paterno is the number of kids he helped, set against his failures, I think the net result is better than most fallible human beings ever manage, including those who were most vocal in calling for his scalp. And we would be better people to remember him as the living legend who inspired generations of athletes and students, rather than the fading old man he was at the end.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
The Path of Great Nations
Our ongoing debt crisis is raising tempers throughout our political chattering class. Hidden away, however, are several underlying trends that are threatening to crack our political fault lines in ways that should send shudders through our collective consciousness. Instead, it will likely lead to boredom within a matter of weeks, as most people return to their own lives in hopes that the Future will take care of itself. Unfortunately, the cliff we occasionally sense ourselves approaching isn't terribly far away, and we're still heading toward it.
A friend of mine recently commented that Capitalism was, in many ways, an extreme form of economics in that only the financially strong survive. He is, of course, right in many ways, though his prescription (a more socialistic economy and political structure) strikes me as completely wrong.
Cruel as it is, Capitalism seems to reflect the Darwinian world in which we live, where the strongest, most adaptable survive. Socialism, on the other hand, recalls to mind Churchill's observation to the effect that Capitalism was the unequal sharing of prosperity, while Communism was the equal sharing of misery. Hoping to split the difference, Socialism seems to prevent prosperity, while being unable to escape the misery that comes from trying to maintain a perpetual state of equality in an inherently imperfect world.
Equally depressing are Alexander Tyler's observations on the ebb and flow of human forms of government:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
"From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
If I had to place America in the early 21st Century, it would be somewhere in Tyler's Stage 5: Abundance, heading toward Complacency (though an argument could be made that we've shot past Companency and are rushing headlong toward Apathy...possibly due to the proliferation of video games in modern times). From that point, I think Rome took about 400 years to fall; though I'm enough of a hopeless romantic to think we might be the first civilization to escape their fate, I'm not sure we'll last as long.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
A friend of mine recently commented that Capitalism was, in many ways, an extreme form of economics in that only the financially strong survive. He is, of course, right in many ways, though his prescription (a more socialistic economy and political structure) strikes me as completely wrong.
Cruel as it is, Capitalism seems to reflect the Darwinian world in which we live, where the strongest, most adaptable survive. Socialism, on the other hand, recalls to mind Churchill's observation to the effect that Capitalism was the unequal sharing of prosperity, while Communism was the equal sharing of misery. Hoping to split the difference, Socialism seems to prevent prosperity, while being unable to escape the misery that comes from trying to maintain a perpetual state of equality in an inherently imperfect world.
Equally depressing are Alexander Tyler's observations on the ebb and flow of human forms of government:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
"From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
If I had to place America in the early 21st Century, it would be somewhere in Tyler's Stage 5: Abundance, heading toward Complacency (though an argument could be made that we've shot past Companency and are rushing headlong toward Apathy...possibly due to the proliferation of video games in modern times). From that point, I think Rome took about 400 years to fall; though I'm enough of a hopeless romantic to think we might be the first civilization to escape their fate, I'm not sure we'll last as long.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Another Moment of Truth, or Paying the Piper
In a democracy, by and large the people tend to get the government they deserve. And throughout history, a democracy's moment of truth comes when its citizens discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. Since that discovery, about 50 years ago, we've tended to vote for whoever promised us the most goodies, and have largely ignored the Cassandras in our midst who were warning that nothing in this world is free, and that a day of reckoning would come one day when we'd have to start paying our bills.
The spectacle we're watching this week in Washington on raising the debt ceiling is our modern heritage, and our penance for wanting everything, and expecting others to pay for it all. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid the fiscal and financial pain that is in our future; and listening to those who are promising quick or easy fixes --- whether calling for "taxing the rich" to pay for everything, or cutting spending (except for any that happens to benefit us) --- are simply trying to advance their careers at their country's expense.
It's often said that the first step in getting yourself out of a hole is to stop digging; let's just hope we haven't already sold the ladder to the Chinese.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
The spectacle we're watching this week in Washington on raising the debt ceiling is our modern heritage, and our penance for wanting everything, and expecting others to pay for it all. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid the fiscal and financial pain that is in our future; and listening to those who are promising quick or easy fixes --- whether calling for "taxing the rich" to pay for everything, or cutting spending (except for any that happens to benefit us) --- are simply trying to advance their careers at their country's expense.
It's often said that the first step in getting yourself out of a hole is to stop digging; let's just hope we haven't already sold the ladder to the Chinese.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
The Better Angels of our Nature
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War, one of the defining moments in the history of the greatest republic the world has known. So far, it seems to be marked the public largely by apathy and inattention. For nerds like myself, however, with an abiding interest in history and the human condition, it is a time for reflection on any number of things --- from the follies of Mankind to the extraordinary good fortune that has blessed this country from its inception.
My current book is Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her Pulitzer Prize winning study of the unique and self-made genius of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, illustrates the subtle and often-happenstance differences that mark the difference between good men and great ones. Lincoln, blessed with a gifted mind but suffering the handicap of little formal education, shared the same drive toward accomplishment that propels many talented people to make something of their lives. But his kindly, gentle disposition --- and the struggles he had to endure to overcome an impoverished upbringing, hardships that would have crippled most lesser men --- gave him advantages that let him transcend much of the petty partisan bickering that afflicted his era, as well as our own.
Often derided as ignorant and unfit for office by those who did not know him, Lincoln emerges as a forceful and visionary leader with an impeccable sense of timing --- or blessed with incredible luck, which may be another way of saying the same thing. Sweet-tempered and considerate to those around him, he nevertheless possessed an iron will and drive to make himself into someone worthy of the esteem of his countrymen. And it was a profound blessing upon his country that he emerged, virtually from nowhere, at precisely the moment his country needed a hero.
His kindness and magnanimity still shines through the ages, and he was loved by all who came to know him well, including those who felt cheated and betrayed by his nomination: his rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860, whom he wisely invited into his Cabinet. Sensing the the country needed the strongest leaders he could find, his matchless ability to juggle conflicting egos, emotions, and ideologies among the various pro-Union factions held the country together, and brought out the very best in those strong personalities whose help he needed to save our still-young Republic.
Lincoln was roundly criticized by virtually everyone during his day, for failing to adhere to their own prescribed agendas for the country. His election resulted in the South's seccession, but at the same time he was viewed as vacillating and soft by the radicals for his cautious approach to the issue that was tearing the country apart: slavery. Those who knew him, though, saw this caution for what it was --- an unwillingness to push a fractured country further than it was ready to go, even as he struggled to keep the Nation together. A lesser man, or one of more ideological rigidity, may well have pushed the country over the cliff by racing to abolish what was recognized as the American Curse. And as he maneuvered to keep Europe --- whose mills needed Southern cotton rendered unavailable by the Northern blockade of Southern ports --- from intervening in the conflict on the side of the Confederacy Yet he always pressed in the direction of freedom and equality for all, and when he sensed that the shift in public sentiment had matured sufficiently to set the Nation on the course of freedom for all its citizens, he was resolute in his actions, and determined to keep the country he loved from sliding back.
With all the Herculean challenges and sorrows Lincoln had to confront, what comes through most clearly is his humanity and elemental goodness. His sense of humor was legendary, and his generosity, sweetness of temper, and kind-heartedness inspired love and devotion in everyone who came to know him well. He was able to be magnanimous in defeat as well as victory, and seemed unable to hold a grudge, even against people who meant him harm --- traits as sorely lacking in the politicians of today as they were in Lincoln’s time. The difference appears to have been the character and temperament of Lincoln himself.
Oddly enough, one of the things that resonates most about Goodwin’s portrait of the Lincoln Administration is how closely the small and petty minds of his day resemble those of our own. Fortunately for the country, an unknown candidate appeared from nowhere just when his country needed him, with the intellectual gifts and sense of vision that proved to be exactly what was needed to rescue American from its own follies. In our own day --- with follies abounding, and narrow-minded pettiness all but a job requirement for political office --- it is hard to see how a modern Lincoln can ever emerge. Yet though perhaps not as daunting as the challenges facing the country as it confronted the American curse of slavery, those we face today threaten our financial and cultural future in ways we are only now beginning to realize. And if we have really sunk to the level of being unable to produce a leader equal to the challenges that confront us, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
My current book is Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her Pulitzer Prize winning study of the unique and self-made genius of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, illustrates the subtle and often-happenstance differences that mark the difference between good men and great ones. Lincoln, blessed with a gifted mind but suffering the handicap of little formal education, shared the same drive toward accomplishment that propels many talented people to make something of their lives. But his kindly, gentle disposition --- and the struggles he had to endure to overcome an impoverished upbringing, hardships that would have crippled most lesser men --- gave him advantages that let him transcend much of the petty partisan bickering that afflicted his era, as well as our own.
Often derided as ignorant and unfit for office by those who did not know him, Lincoln emerges as a forceful and visionary leader with an impeccable sense of timing --- or blessed with incredible luck, which may be another way of saying the same thing. Sweet-tempered and considerate to those around him, he nevertheless possessed an iron will and drive to make himself into someone worthy of the esteem of his countrymen. And it was a profound blessing upon his country that he emerged, virtually from nowhere, at precisely the moment his country needed a hero.
His kindness and magnanimity still shines through the ages, and he was loved by all who came to know him well, including those who felt cheated and betrayed by his nomination: his rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860, whom he wisely invited into his Cabinet. Sensing the the country needed the strongest leaders he could find, his matchless ability to juggle conflicting egos, emotions, and ideologies among the various pro-Union factions held the country together, and brought out the very best in those strong personalities whose help he needed to save our still-young Republic.
Lincoln was roundly criticized by virtually everyone during his day, for failing to adhere to their own prescribed agendas for the country. His election resulted in the South's seccession, but at the same time he was viewed as vacillating and soft by the radicals for his cautious approach to the issue that was tearing the country apart: slavery. Those who knew him, though, saw this caution for what it was --- an unwillingness to push a fractured country further than it was ready to go, even as he struggled to keep the Nation together. A lesser man, or one of more ideological rigidity, may well have pushed the country over the cliff by racing to abolish what was recognized as the American Curse. And as he maneuvered to keep Europe --- whose mills needed Southern cotton rendered unavailable by the Northern blockade of Southern ports --- from intervening in the conflict on the side of the Confederacy Yet he always pressed in the direction of freedom and equality for all, and when he sensed that the shift in public sentiment had matured sufficiently to set the Nation on the course of freedom for all its citizens, he was resolute in his actions, and determined to keep the country he loved from sliding back.
With all the Herculean challenges and sorrows Lincoln had to confront, what comes through most clearly is his humanity and elemental goodness. His sense of humor was legendary, and his generosity, sweetness of temper, and kind-heartedness inspired love and devotion in everyone who came to know him well. He was able to be magnanimous in defeat as well as victory, and seemed unable to hold a grudge, even against people who meant him harm --- traits as sorely lacking in the politicians of today as they were in Lincoln’s time. The difference appears to have been the character and temperament of Lincoln himself.
Oddly enough, one of the things that resonates most about Goodwin’s portrait of the Lincoln Administration is how closely the small and petty minds of his day resemble those of our own. Fortunately for the country, an unknown candidate appeared from nowhere just when his country needed him, with the intellectual gifts and sense of vision that proved to be exactly what was needed to rescue American from its own follies. In our own day --- with follies abounding, and narrow-minded pettiness all but a job requirement for political office --- it is hard to see how a modern Lincoln can ever emerge. Yet though perhaps not as daunting as the challenges facing the country as it confronted the American curse of slavery, those we face today threaten our financial and cultural future in ways we are only now beginning to realize. And if we have really sunk to the level of being unable to produce a leader equal to the challenges that confront us, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel Clouds of Darkness, the compelling third volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
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