Spending your taxes: "Video Implies Lincoln Would Have Supported Liberal Causes"

[cuchulainn]

I happen to support one or two of the causes mentioned, but this is an impropoper use of my tax money for propaganda.


http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\200302\CUL20030204a.html

Video Implies Lincoln Would Have Supported Liberal Causes
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
February 04, 2003

Washington (CNSNews.com) - A video presented at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington appears to suggest that former President Abraham Lincoln would have supported modern-day, left-of-center political causes such as homosexual rights, abortion rights and the modern feminist agenda.

One tourist from Wisconsin, who viewed the video in the memorial's Lincoln Legacy Room, called it "awful" and said the "political correctness of it is beyond words." Other visitors to the memorial told CNSNews.com they believe the video clearly implies that Lincoln would have supported left-wing political causes.

A National Park Service spokesman told CNSNews.com he was "reluctant" to comment on the Lincoln video because the whole issue had the "potential to be quite controversial."

The video features an actor who sounds like Lincoln speaking about the Civil War and slavery. He then leads into clips of Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington.

About halfway through the approximately eight-minute video, footage of modern-day marchers is shown over "Lincoln's" booming voice as patriotic music and songs associated with the civil rights movement play.

At this point, the video shows snippets from modern-day marches. A sign reading, "The Lord is my Shepard and Knows I am Gay" kicks off a series of visuals featuring left-wing social causes, while "Lincoln's voice" and patriotic music blare.

The other visuals include signs reading "Gay & Lesbian Sexual Rights," "Council of Churches Lesbian Rights," "National Organization for Woman" (NOW), "Reagan's Wrongs Equal Woman's Rights," "ERA Yes," "Ratify the Era," "I had an illegal abortion in 1967 - Never Again," "Keep Abortion Legal," "I am pro-choice America," a Vietnam-era video clip of a woman asking: "President. Nixon where are our men?" and a sign reading, "Who will Decide NARAL (National Abortion Rights & Reproductive Action League).

The video features the theme song of the civil rights movement, "We Shall Overcome," and continues with visual display of liberal causes, including signs reading "In Opposition to King Richard [Nixon]," "U.S. out Now," "Equal Opportunity for All," "Peace," "Hell No We Won't Go," "No More Lies, Sign the Treaty Now Coalition," and marchers chanting U.S. Out Now" (crowd chanting).

The video also features an excerpt from a Martin Luther King speech and then progresses into a banner reading "Pass the Brady [Gun Control] Bill Now." Pro-life demonstrators appear in the video once, in a brief clip where they are shown clashing with abortion rights activists. No other political causes that could be considered right-of-center appear in the video.

<snip>
long article ... rest is at the link above

 

[Don Gwinn]

Gun control? Probably, if he could have gotten away with it. This is a guy who shut down state legislatures by force.
Gay rights and abortion? Probably not, if only because of his prejudices. He was a man of his times. Had he grown up today, who knows? But you're right. Using a supposed history lesson at a national monument to force a dead President to support even a popular modern-day political cause is stupid. Lincoln himself always said that he was a racist who would never have supported making blacks legally equal to whites. He came pretty close to trying to ship every American negro over to Liberia and be done with it. Not exactly the picture of universal brotherhood between the races. He liked black people fine from a distance of about two thousand miles.

He was definitely a controller in action. I wonder how much of that was his nature, and how much was his reluctant reaction to the rebellion and destruction of the union.

 

[MrAcheson]

Lincoln is on of those people is only a shining beacon from a distance. Once you actually learn more about him, his life is pretty gray. I can see why Booth called him a tyrant, yet because of his "tyranny" and strong presidency the Union won the war. Thats not just my opinion it was also the opinion of Jefferson Davis who continually felt that the weak Confederate presidential office was hamstringing the Confederacy.

Would Lincoln have supported gay rights and abortion? Almost certainly not, Lincoln was in his generation's version of the Christian Coalition. A case could be made for Lincoln supporting womens rights and some racial issues along the same lines as MLKs "judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." But gay rights and abortion? Thats laughable.

 

[labgrade]

cuchulainn,

Since this thread will likely go right down the rat hole, what are those coupla themes expoused you could support? - gotta get a feel of our brethern, ya know. Might as well go way off-topic toot sweet. Why wait!?

IMNSHO, Lincoln was deserving of the Wilkes Treatment.

The War of Nothern Agression was exactly that & had exactly zero to do with "freeing the slaves."

'Course, your history books will have a different take on the subject.

 

[Greg L]

The video features an actor who sounds like Lincoln speaking about the Civil War and slavery

How do we know what he sounded like? Edison wasn't even born by the time he was shot was he?

The video itself does sound bad. Certainly produced by someone with at least a subconcious agenda.

Greg

 

[hankrearden2000]

I'll have to agree with the video. Lincoln wouldn't be a member of the Christian coalition, he would have been a member of the religious left, in addition to being the statist he was.

 

[cuchulainn]

Labgrade,

I merely recognize a few legitimate points within the cacophony of the left's radical fringe. For example, as both a Roman Catholic and a Libertarian, I'm conflicted on a number of issues like abortion. For me it comes down to this: making abortion illegal would be about as effective and economical as the War on Drugs or the Canadian Gun Registry. I’m more in the camp of “leave them alone†than in supporting them.

And speaking of gun control and my position above, I think we could deflate some of our opponents who do not believe in the RKBA but recognize the high-cost-with-little-return futility of gun controls, be they bans or registration. Divide and conquer – split the hardliners from those who recognize the futility of government action. There are many people who might abhor guns in principle but recognize that they are an "evil" that has to be lived with. We need to talk them into leaving us alone if we cannot talk them into supporting us.

 

[Joe Gunns]

Harry J. Turledove (recognizing Lincoln's liberal bent) in his alternative history of the "Second" Civil War, a circa 1880's conflict which follows a Southern victory in the "First" Civil War, has Lincoln, disgraced former president, as an itinerant socialist agitator and labor organizer in the Union states. (I think the title is HOW FEW REMAIN, but I might be suffering an old-timer's processing glitch.)

Speculation on any historical figure's views at some hypothetical future time is a shaky proposition. Any figure from 50 or more years ago time-transfered to the present would most likely be stunned by the social and political conditions, regardless of how "liberal" they were in their own time. And many of their own attitudes would be political death today (TR's views on race suicide, for example).

Seems to me that trying to speculate on what Lincoln, or any past leader, would have believed on a given issue had he been raised in our own times is an exercise in pure imagination since totally different life experiences would have instilled different basic beliefs.

 

[CZ-75]

Like this is anything new. I think Lincoln was co-opted by commies in the 30s.

Think Lincoln Brigade of the spanish civil war, comprised of left to very far left American volunteers, for starters. Moscow funded, in part, too.

 

[labgrade]

Can we all at least agree that Jesus would not have driven an SUV?