He was assassinated just after Lee’s surrender, which is not quite the same thing. And if there’s a reference besides you for this quote:
“I am President of the United States. I have full overall power and never forget it, because I will exercise it.”
…I have yet to find it. Source?
Moe Lane
PS: Like Hot Air, I agree: stop smoking crack on the upcoming military dictatorship thing, Gore Vidal. You too, John Perry.
PPS: Seriously, I can’t find it at all.
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Barack Obama’s new way socialism is really just as no way as it’s always been. But, regardless of the central American spirit that Obamaism attempts to defeat, it is proclaimed that he is only interested in fixing America. So, because he is only here to help, Obama is deemed a savior by his acolytes.
Another of Obama’s false fronts is his claim to be “just like” Abraham Lincoln, a facade he wears with relish. The claim is, after all, a perfect cover for his essentially anti-American agenda. What could be more American than the fulfillment of Lincoln’s efforts to free the slaves but a black man being elected to the presidency? The mere fact of his election seems to affirm the better angels of our nature.
But, here I’d like to report a quote that tends to show that Lincoln would not have approved of a president Barack Obama. Not because Obama is a black man, but because he is a socialist.
The other day I wrote about Abraham Lincoln’s idea of what makes the United States great. His determination was that in this country “every man can make himself.” For that reason, we were and remain, in Lincoln’s words, “the wonder and admiration of the whole world.”
As Barack Obama’s approval rating dips, the Republican Party’s approval rating is still in the gutter. We have no compelling counter message to what Obama is doing. True, right now we really don’t need one. People will soon forget it. But as he continues down the path toward socialism, we need to prepare our countervailing narrative.
That every man should be able to make himself seems to me to be the right idea.
It was 1856. Fifty-five months before the civil war ripped the nation apart. Abraham Lincoln was on stage speaking to Republicans in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Ten thousand people showed up to hear the lanky lawyer from Illinois.
Lincoln was a gifted speaker, but he was awkward. He stood out in a crowd. Lincoln opened his mouth. His speech was no Gettysburg address. But a nation already grappling with the idea of a manifest destiny understood his message.
“We are eighty years old,” he started. “We stand at once the wonder and admiration of the whole world, and we must enquire what it is that has given us so much prosperity. This cause is that every man can make himself.”
Every man can make himself.
