Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest friends and advisors, has repeatedly compared Obama to Lincoln -- and other democrats have been repeating that meme. It's utterly absurd, but it's also symptomatic of a general problem afflicting career democrats: they're required to believe some truly strange things.
Lincoln was a republican, his opponents democrats. After the civil war was won and slavery outlawed throughout the United States, democrats in the southern states passed and enforced the Jim Crow laws to maintain their hatreds for very nearly another century -- and the last avowed segregationists to run for president, to sit in the Congress, or to occupy governor's offices were all democrats.
And yet democrats believe their party is on the side of racial right, while republican views on race are plainly evil.
Lincoln was a republican whose actions enabled the black family to move into the American mainstream -gaining education, owning property, holding real jobs, building families.
Lyndon Johnson was a democrat whose war on poverty had the opposite effect: building the project ghettos, expanding the black underclass, demolishing black education, and breaking up the black family.
Under Ronald Reagan, an old, white, male, republican black unemployment fell by 20% for adults and 16% for teenagers - under Mr. Obama, however, adult black unemployment has risen by more than 40%, and non family, non criminal, teenage employment for blacks has virtually disappeared.
La raza is a frankly racist organization whose agenda is supported by democrats, opposed by republicans - and, given the correlation between ignorance and racism it's no coincidence that Mexico, which had more blacks than the U.S. did at the time of civil war, has few now.
Johnson, a democrat, passed the 1965 immigration reforms whose effects not only led to the present situation, but illustrated the consequences of legalization by inserting a multi-million man demographic wedge between poor blacks and low income whites - reducing wages and opportunities for the former while pushing the latter higher on the economic ladder.
Then, as now, republicans protested on behalf of the black community - but then, as now, democrats, supposedly the party dedicated to racial justice for blacks, ignored them to favor latinoes.
In January of 2009, after eight years under a republican president, 79% of American whites and 63% of blacks agreed that racial relations were good and getting better in the United States. After five years of Obama only 52% of whites and 38% of blacks agree.
And yet democrats believe their party is on the side of racial right, while republican views on race are plainly evil.
Democrats believe in human freedoms, human rights, equality under the law, and opportunity for all - but almost everything banned in American society was banned by democrats, almost every exception or exemption in American civil, tax, and criminal law was placed there by democrats, better than nine out of every ten pages of regulation ever published in the Federal Register were written, authorized, and promulgated by democrats, and today's efforts to control what Americans are taught in the schools, what they eat, what they drive, and what religious expressions they're allowed are all driven by democrats.
And yet democrats believe republicans are the facists?
When you look at presidents whose actions or inactions led Americans into foreign wars you see an endless litany of beloved democrats: Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Obama -- all inviting attacks from the Lusitania and Pearl Harbor to the Beirut barracks and World Trade center, by launching arrogant adventures abroad while simultaneously reducing military expenditures and preaching appeasement at home.
And yet democrats believe republicans are the war mongers?
Lincoln was a Republican - and undertook political costs to champion Jewish equality. He urged Congress, for example, to allow Jewish chaplains in the armies at a time when this was unpopular and unilaterally countermanded Grant's order expelling jews from Northern Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky as unAmerican.
Most American Jews vote democrat, assert their belief in universal human rights, and claim socialist ideals -- and yet, it's a truism of national socialist emotion, from Shawa Japan and Stalinist Russia to today's Obama administration, that if you scratch a leftist, you'll find an anti-Semite.
Israel's American supporters tend to be republican -- people like Nixon, Reagan, and Romney. As a group, democrats, especially those in the media, are not Israel's friends -- instead, they equate democracy in the Gaza strip, in Iran, and now in Egypt with democracy in Israel; consistently picture Israel as the belligerent aggressor; see Palestinian terrorists as victims; and, portray the 11th century despots building nuclear weapons for the express purpose of killing millions of Israelis as bearded beatniks humbly defying Israeli tanks.
And yet democrats believe republicans the enemies of freedom?
Lincoln, a republican, undertook a civil war to enforce the Christian ideals of equal rights and equal opportunities written into the American constitution by the Founders -- but democrats equate Christian values with creationism and see nothing wrong with using American money, and American influence, to help dictatorships like that of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (where teaching evolution is illegal, and the mainly Arab nomenclature owns an estimated 600,000 black slaves) take their rightful places on U.N. human rights bodies.
Democrats avow deep commitments to women's rights and profess horror that republicans don't want the public to pay for Sandra Flake's birth control -- but have nothing but praise for Islamic countries where more than half a billion women are held as property.
Democrats profess deep commitments to the sanctity of human life and human rights -- but consider abortion a merely political issue and reject republican horror at the death of an American fetus roughly every twenty-six seconds as vile and unspeakable.
And yet democrats believe republicans are the bigots?
Lincoln, a republican, founded the National Academy of Science, formed the Department of Agriculture to develop and teach agricultural science, and signed the Land Grant College Act into law. At each dedication he both spoke of and demonstrated his commitment to the application of science and education to the betterment of mankind.
Since then Republican leaders including Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and both Presidents Bush have pushed funding for advanced research, for the military and commercial engineering efforts needed to turn that research into products, for ambitious national projects pushing the boundaries of the possible -- and democrats from FDR to Obama have fought them tooth and nail on everything from interstates to ABMs and genetically enhanced foods.
And yet, the party whose policies have legitimized the illiterate high school graduate while encouraging tens of thousands of smart kids to waste years of youth in pursuit of doctorates in subjects like "political science," philosophy, or "women's studies", considers itself the party of science -- and pictures republicans as willfully ignorant luddites.
As Lincoln, a republican, knew well, science progresses because science abandons ideas that don't work -- but that's not what democrats do: they double down on failure. After the second round of his new deal stimulus produced the Roosevelt recession in 1937, FDR doubled down on a third round -- and saw the recovery start when his program was brought to a stand still by republicans and moderates after the 1938 mid-terms. Today, seven years after the Pelosi democrats got control of the house and five years after Obama took over the Presidency, everything they've tried in both foreign and domestic policy, every policy they profess to believe in, has failed to produce its predicted result -- and, in every case, the democrat response hasn't been to abandon what doesn't work, but to double down on it.
Did the war on poverty produce more poverty? Double down: abandon work for welfare, more mega-projects, less rigor in education, more abortions, easier drugs. Do increased government efforts to control civilian weapons correlate strongly, worldwide, with increased civilian violence? Double down: impose stronger controls, push more taxes and punitive actions on non criminals, confiscate. Did the stimulus extend the recession into depression? Double down: spend more, borrow more, force another round. Does government debt threaten the American standard of living? Double down: print a few trillion dollar coins and borrow against them. Did weaknesses and anti-Israeli rhetoric empower the Muslim brotherhood to take Egypt back a thousand years? Double down: send troops into Libya, destabilize Pakistan, weaken the Saudis, open talks with Iran. Did abandoning Poland strengthen Russian and Chinese ambitions? Double down: abandon Taiwan and the Baltic republics, insult England, give Argentina interest free loans to develop Falklands oil.
In science, if the predictions don't pan out, the theory is assumed to be wrong. Lincoln, a republican who was seven during the year with no summer and at the peak of his powers during the noachian deluge, would never have thought global warming a bad thing -- but democrats, the party of science, ignore the reality that every warmist prediction to date has proven wrong, absolutely refuse to acknowledge the positive consequences of a process they imagine happening, and categorically reject the obvious: that their alarm has neither theoretical support nor observational reality. Instead they want to double down: thus the party of science, the party of liberal civil rights and human freedoms, wants to jail dissenters, enforce their ideas through the regulatory system, and compel the appearance of agreement through the tax system.
Now, obviously, I can't channel Lincoln's ghost, but I think I can guess what he'd say about Obama taking the oath of office on the Lincoln Bible, about Jarrett's inane sycopancy, about the beleifs democrats are required to accept today; but then, so, I think, can you.
Questions? Comments? Suggested fixes? murph at winface com, please