With malice toward none, with charity for all. Those words set the tone of Lincoln’s 2nd inauguration, when fewer troops defended Washington than guarded an insecure Joe Biden Wednesday. Perched behind 12-foot-high razor wire, Biden, who promised to unite, asked the rest of us to “see each other as neighbors.” True, and Democrat staff ordered their 25,000 guards to shiver in parking garages, while Biden asked the rest of us to “treat each other with dignity and respect.” R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Democrat calls for “unity” emanate from paranoia. Steve Cohen (D-TN) evoked Anwar Sadat’s death on CNN and mused, “probably 25% of [troops] protecting us voted for Biden…the other 75% are in the class [that] might want to do something.” Really? Not to be out-paranoid, CNN’s Don Lemon theorized, “If you voted for Trump, you voted for the person supported by the Klan, Nazis, and the alt-right. That’s the crowd you’re in.” Sorry, I try NOT to unite with paranoid blowhards.
Lincoln knew “unity” was not a self-evident truth or inalienable right in the Declaration of Independence. He knew the self-evident truth (equality of man) and acted (emancipation). He also knew the Declaration gave men “the right [and] duty to throw off such government [after] a long train of abuses and usurpations.” By grasping the “usurpation” argument behind secession, he could justify negotiations with moderate Confederates to restore the Republic.
Because President Lincoln so revered the ideals of the Declaration, he wrote the perfect “unity” playbook. Engaged in a great war, he still promised the certain losers “no malice” and urged “charity” from the certain winners. In stark contrast, the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson insists “there are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed.” Thank you, comrade Robinson!
The contrast is stark. Lincoln, in spite of 650,000 deaths caused by the secessionists, chose charity to gain unity. Robinson believes millions, who reject critical race theory and question the Paris Accord, require mind-rinsing to, in essence, create a one-party state. The radical Robinson is the true threat to our constitutional republic and, if Joe wants to be “president to all Americans,” he can start by calling out Eugene: c’mon, man!
Madison accepted the clash of “powerful factions and competing interests,” which is why the Constitution created government “for the common good” and not “a single interest.” Biden’s campaign promise (“president to all Americans”) obligates him and his party to now issue executive orders and legislate for the common good. It’s too early to give up on Biden, but he’s off to a bad start.
After Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) questioned the election results, Biden conflated the two senators with the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Democrats now “investigate” the two Republicans for putting party over country, but Biden stays silent. I’m not surprised because, in a Freudian slip Wednesday, Biden said unity seems “like fantasy today.” After the Open-Up protests and George-Floyd riots, who can blame him?
The guess here is Biden is Jimmy Carter redux; the place holder between evil (Nixon) and good (Reagan) GOP leadership. He’s incapable of reining in left-wing absolutists, who want loyalty tests, re-education programs, and one-party control; which, by the way, fall under the Declaration’s “abuses and usurpations” clause. This is why Biden should pivot to the “powerful faction” that cast 74 million votes against him. I doubt Biden will do it, but he could do it.
By all accounts, Joe’s a middle-class guy and political centrist. The foundation is there: a center-right that’s left Trump for dead, and a center-left afraid of The Squad. But, as Reince Priebus noted Friday, Biden’s executive orders “make it instantly easier to draw lines [and] make the Republican versus Democrat dynamic live on.” This was the great fear, right? The President for all Americans is but a puppet for the Left. C’mon, Mr. President, say it ain’t so!