Lincoln’s fatalism and American faith

A retired US Marine officer with whom I corresponded asked, “What type of crisis do you think will cause the intellectual right to form a critical mass – if that is even possible?” I wrote back, “Lincoln’s Second Inaugural is chiseled on the wall of his monument, and he said all that needs to be said. If they won’t take it from Lincoln, why would they take it from us?” But it’s Lincoln’s birthday, and it’s time for another try.

Abraham Lincoln is America’s least popular president. It seems odd to say this given the near-deification of a man who was born in a log cabin but whose image resides in a mock-up of the Temple of Zeus at Olympus. But Americans remain horrified at what he actually said, namely that we do not control our own destinies, but are subject to a providence that is “just and righteous altogether”, even if it makes terrible demands upon us.

We Americans in general do not want to be an “almost chosen people”, as Lincoln characterized us. We would rather believe that we are exceptional in the same way that the Greeks or British think they are exceptional, in Barack Obama’s notorious putdown, or that our exceptionalism can be freeze-dried and exported through nation-building.
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