Obama's Intelligence, Part 2

2009-2-3 03:34:00

Another intelligent choice Obama has made was to pick Lincoln as a role model. Most historians see Lincoln as our greatest president, even above George Washington, but in recent years his image has been subtly attacked through our educational system. The first line of attack is to minimize his place in history by ignoring his accomplishments as much as possible. Some high school history books are reported to only have a page or so on the man. Then in college history, where he cannot be ignored, he is diminished by giving the slant that he only wanted to save the Union and it was almost an accident that the slaves were freed. Then sometimes the distortion is presented that certain abolitionists were more responsible for freeing the slaves than Lincoln and his Union soldiers.

To Obama's credit he seems to not make any effort to diminish Lincoln's role in history.

He seems to identify with his various correspondences to Lincoln. He originated in fairly humble beginnings in the state of Illinois, as did Lincoln. I think he is impressed with Lincoln's place in history as "The Great Emancipator" and would like to stake out a similar place for himself. Lincoln was a white man who freed the blacks, and now as a black man he would like to free the whites from their dependence on capitalism and big business.

What he doesn't seem to understand is that most of us see capitalism and the free market as liberating and that we are not enslaved as were the blacks in Lincoln's time.

It would be ironical if Obama's mark in history was to bring an enslaving socialism to the white race winding up as a corresponding opposite to Lincoln's effect. The scary thing is sometimes the Law of Correspondences works out as an opposite rather than a similarity.

It would be interesting to know how familiar Obama is with Lincoln's life. He did say recently that he was reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book on Lincoln called "Team of Rivals." I've read this myself and the theme of the book was around the repercussions of Lincoln's selection of numerous cabinet members who were former rivals. Lincoln picked what he thought were the best men for the job rather than a cabinet of "yes men."

Obama has indicated that Lincoln inspired him to reach out to former rivals such as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and some picks that are further right than he is to make a diverse inner circle of the best people rather than partisan hacks.

He would have to go some to match Lincoln's picks as some of them despised him. Stanton, for instance, called him a "long armed ape," Chase and others felt Lincoln was an inferior man. On the other hand, both Biden and Clinton gave Obama a lot of praise even as they were running against him.

Picking Hillary may have corresponded somewhat to Lincoln picking Seward but he would have had to pick Senator Joe Lieberman or maybe even Governor Sarah Palin to match some of Lincoln's rivals.

I don't think Lincoln went about consciously picking a cabinet composed of rivals, instead, he just couldn't find the talent he needed among those who were in harmony with him. In fact, he was such a unique individual with such an unusual approach almost anyone he would have picked would have thought his thinking was amiss until he rubbed off on them.

As long as Obama wants to learn from Lincoln here are a few suggestions I wish he's take to heart:

Lincoln was a big believer in the freedom of the human spirit and left a legacy of bringing freedom to millions. So far Obama is heading toward adding trillions in debt to be paid by our children and less freedom through socialism, regulations and various other restrictions.

If he wants to be like Lincoln, he needs to reverse course away from enslavement toward greater freedom.

Lincoln was a big believer in free enterprise, represented big business and greatly increased land ownership through the Homestead Act. Obama then should be more friendly toward free enterprise.
Most of the legislation Lincoln passed has been good for America and helped her prosper. Would that Obama would put the good of America before his party's interests. His "stimulus package" makes us believe otherwise.
If you look at how Lincoln handled traitors and prisoners of war you'd see that he would not close Guantanamo Bay and release the prisoners into the legal system as Obama indicates he will do.
Obama is going to borrow trillions of dollars and our children will be forced to pay interest on the money -- much of it to potential enemies. If he followed in Lincoln's footsteps he would print up "Greenbacks" which would incur no interest to be passed on to our children.
To Lincoln honesty was paramount and his word was his bond.

Obama has broken a number of promises already. The most serious was the "no pork" and "no earmarks" pledges. The stimulus bill has billions and billions of "pork and earmarks." And the spending review promises he made are not being applied.

I guess it is an emergency and we must suspend reason and honor.