Word: abe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Given this record of double-dealing, why do Americans admire Lincoln? He is not admirable because he was "Honest Abe" but because he was devious. He knew there were only minimal gains that could be made at each stage of his course in checking and then reversing the slave power. He knew that he could not accomplish even his initially restricted goals if he supported high-minded but unachievable aims. He proclaimed himself agnostic on the subject of blacks' intellectual inferiority and opposed to their social equality with whites. He knew that he had to avoid abolitionists and welcome Know...
Dishonest Abe: Garry Wills on Lincoln's methods...
...this, today's Republicans should be far more grateful than they are. Abe Lincoln, the patriarch of their party, did not, according to his law partner of 22 years, believe in a personal God, and refused to join a church, stating "When you show me a church based on the Golden Rule as its only creed, then I will unite with it." Ulysses S. Grant, another Republican, exhorted his countrymen to "Keep the church and state forever separate" and strongly opposed the use of any public money to support parochial schools -- as proposed in the 1992 Republican platform...
Biography in the service of politics is not new to America. It goes all the way back to Abe Lincoln and the log cabin and beyond. But as the Democratic Convention demonstrated, American politics is now seized -- obsessed -- with the politics of autobiography. The acceptance speeches of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, orgies of self-revelation, mark the full Oprahtization of American politics...
...came "Brian!" who spoke with a determined look, his hands holding an imaginary gun and machine-gun fire coming from his lips. And "Abe!," who would typically say his name, clutch his heart and drop to the ground as if felled by an arrow. At least he got up by the end of the four-count...