Of the People

From poor means, (4.00 / 2)

Abe nonetheless certainly picked up his classical rhetoric somewhere.

The three-limbed structure, or tricolon, is a key way to get people to remember things. Here you have a micro-sized one, but it contains two typical elements of a good tricolon.

1) Variation in the first word, here a switch-up of prepositions.  Not exactly the same as polyptoton, which is the variation of the same word in different case endings (which you really can't do much in English), but close.

2) Sound/word repetition at the end, or homoioteleuton. In English this most often means "rhyme," but the classical term is broader and can include things like word repeitiion.

It's impossible to tell from hints in Classical rhetoric whether the initial word should be stressed, or the final.  But I agree that word stress in sentences is something that flies well under the radar of even the most careful critics and readers, and can make the difference, sometimes profoundly, in meaning.  (theatre directors, of course, know this as a matter of course; but do speechwriters?)

birch, finch, beech

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by: Dean Barker @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 04:37:20 AM CST

And it's Darwin's b-day day today too. (0.00 / 0)

That's just so mind-blowing a coincidence to me.

birch, finch, beech

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by: Dean Barker @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 05:20:13 AM CST

The world will little note, nor long remember (4.00 / 1)

So wrong (about that).

Thanks for the link, Elwood. I look forward to checking that out.

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by: JimC @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 05:28:23 AM CST

The Real Lincoln (0.00 / 0)

No one can doubt Lincoln's tremendous skill as president. But he chose an unnecessary war, with the horrible deaths of 620,000 young Americans. The emancipation proclamation was purely and simply a military tactic used to destroy the economy of the Confederacy. In fact it freed no one. It was not a civil war, as the South had no intention to take over the central government. Lincoln changed America from a voluntary association of states to a powerful centralized government. These are the facts underneath the myth. Tune in to Portside a week after Lincoln's birthday, Thursday 2/19 as I talk with Thomas DiLorenzo author of The Real Lincoln. Noon to one at wscafm.org

No'm Sayn?

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by: BurtCohen @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 08:29:29 AM CST

"It was not a civil war (4.00 / 1)

as the South had no intention to take over the central government."

This is an odd definition of "civil war." In my reading a military secession effort is also considered a civil war.

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by: elwood @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 09:04:47 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Uh, no (0.00 / 0)

Burt, the Civil War started when eleven states seceded from the United States. The first shots were fired by the secessionists at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

So, no, Abraham Lincoln did not choose an unnecessary war; he defended the United States of America from dissolution by a bunch of states that were afraid of giving up slavery.

If you want to defend the states which seceded for insisting on separating from the United States because their economy depended on slavery, and want to buy into the notion that the Civil War was a war of northern agression, well, that certainly is your perogative - but it is as nutty an idea as the nullification resolution introduced in the NH House.  

And, if you don't believe the South seceded over slavery, and you don't want to believe that the Southeern secessionists just used "states rights" as a bankrupt, perverted argument to justify seceding to protect slavery, read this section of a speech made by the Vice President of the Confederate States, Alexander Stephens, in 1861 - and then tell us again that it was an unnecessary war?

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery - subordination to the superior race - is his natural and normal condition.

Unbelievable.

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 09:43:31 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Burt, Do Your Research (0.00 / 0)

DiLorenzo is a bit of a whack job:

DiLorenzo is not a historian. With a doctorate from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, he has been since 1992 an economics professor at Baltimore's Loyola College. And most of his work has not been about history, focusing instead on libertarian and antigovernment themes.

His 10 books include Official Lies: How Washington Misleads Us, and, with writer James T. Bennett, The Food and Drink Police: America's Nannies, Busybodies and Petty Tyrants (attacking organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and Unhealthy Charities: Hazardous to Your Health and Wealth and Cancer Scam: Diversion of Federal Cancer Funds to Politics (both of which accuse nonprofits like the American Cancer Society of using public money to fund leftist "political machines").

DiLorenzo is also a senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a hard-right libertarian foundation in Alabama, and teaches at the League of the South Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History, a South Carolina school established by the League of the South to teach its unusual views of history (see also Little Men).

http://www.splcenter.org/intel...

Also see: http://www.claremont.org/publi...

He also is one of those fellows who doesn't believe FDR did much to end the depression - and thinks Obama is following his lead just to buy votes - in DiLorenzo's own words:

Despite employing over 10 million people in various government make-work jobs from 1933 to 1940, the unemployment rate remained at 14.6 percent that year, almost five times higher than the rate of unemployment in 1929, the year of the stock market crash. The biggest beneficiary of this Mother of All Rube Goldberg Machines was FDR himself, for New Deal spending was used masterfully as a means of buying votes where he needed them the most - in states where he had the smallest electoral margins in 1932. It had nothing to do with "stimulating" the economy and everything to do with consolidating the political power base of FDR and the Democratic Party. This is also what President-elect Obama's promised "stimulus package" is designed to accomplish.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dil...

Burt, I don't think you want to take history lessons from this guy.  
 



"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 10:18:43 AM CST

[ Parent ]

ouch n/t (0.00 / 0)

Have you written a letter to the editor today? Have you donated today? Have you put up signs? Have you made calls? Have you talked to your neighbors?

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by: Ray Buckley @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 11:54:14 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Guess you didn't see the Book Review (0.00 / 0)

Take a look at the NYTimes Book review this week, with Lincoln on the cover. You really might want to check out the facts.
It was not about slavery it was about northern domination. The npr show pointed out unambiguously that the proclamation was purely a military tactic to destroy the southern economy and freed not one person. A war was not the only option to end the profound evil of slavery.

Always a pleasure to stir it up with you Kathy!

No'm Sayn?

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by: BurtCohen @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 14:12:18 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I did; not sure you did (0.00 / 0)

On Lincoln, Safire said in the Times piece, well, nothing about "northern domination".  

Safire did say:

Through the nation's most agonizing crisis, he kept the Union indivisible. He held fast to the majority rule that affirmed the ideal of popular government, which he believed must also lead to the end of human bondage. From examining his shrewd move in molding public sentiment at the approach of hostilities to appreciating his close attention to the weight of each word in his inaugural addresses, we teach ourselves and his successors the hard lessons of political power and moral leadership.

But if you want to buy into the rants of a delusional radical right wing re-inventor of history, be my guest. It is your credibility. But before you do, you may want to read more of DiLorenzo's rants - like this one about Obama and the stimulus package:

This is exactly how President-elect Obama's proposed "stimulus package" should be viewed: It is part payoff to the urban political machines, labor unions, and other special interests that helped get him elected, and part vote-buying (with federal tax dollars) scheme as the first step in his 2012 re-election campaign.

 

Or how he described the President this way:

He's a male Hillary Clinton, and I expect him to immediately attempt to pay off his hard-left political base with one socialistic scheme after another.

 



"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 14:53:28 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Arrggh, Burt, really. (0.00 / 0)

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I'd never have dreamt that you had, and were satisfied with, so little knowledge of such great matters.

A brief conversation with a real historian would confirm many of the specific narrow facts you seem to have picked up, and, by adding context and a large number of critically intertwined facts that seem to have eluded you, disabuse you of the utterly bogus conclusions that they appear to have led you to.

A NY Times Book Review?  One NPR show?  On the basis of such a depth of research you make this stand?

I admire your willingness to hoist a rebel flag and fire on Fort Sullivan -- and may possibly have been known to do the same myself from time to time -- but I would suggest that you follow my rule for such things, and do so only in situations where A) you know what you're talking about, and B) she is wrong.  In the current situation, neither criterion has been met.

If this were a movie, it'd be set in an Irish bar in Boston, and Matt Damon would be refuting and mocking your scholarship.

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by: Tim C. @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 16:24:44 PM CST

[ Parent ]

National health care? (0.00 / 0)

In 1948 polls showed 75% of Americans supported national health care. The only thing that stopped it was the southern senators out of fear that racial blood would be mixed in hospitals!! Thanks a lot southerners! And how do you think FDR felt about those same senators who stymied his New Deal?
We seceded from England, they sought to continue the process.  Shoulda let'em go. It was not about slavery; they are a different culture, still.  

No'm Sayn?

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by: BurtCohen @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 14:58:07 PM CST

[ Parent ]

The south seceded over slavery (0.00 / 0)

Burt, if you want to go off and join the radical right and sing the praises of a strict states rights view of the world, do it. But don't expect anyone to accept the claim the south did not secede over slavery, but because they were a "different culture". They were slave owners who did not want to give their slaves. They lost the 1860 election and did not want to accept the results.  




"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 15:22:33 PM CST

[ Parent ]

You're mistaken here, Kathy. (0.00 / 0)

But don't expect anyone to accept the claim the south did not secede over slavery, but because they were a "different culture".

The south did secede because it was a "different culture", and out of resentment of northern encroachments on that culture.

Specifically, it was a culture that wanted to continue to enjoy the benefits of slavery, and resented northern attempts to encroach on its unlimited perpetuation.

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by: Tim C. @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 15:50:35 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I was responding to this (0.00 / 0)

From Burt:

It was not about slavery; they are a different culture, still.

I think slavery drove the culture. Burt's comment makes it sound like they were seceding over the North's failure to appreciate the color of the curtains at Tara.  



"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 16:08:26 PM CST

[ Parent ]

OK, so Lincoln thought it necessary to use three propositions to make the point (0.00 / 0)

that government belongs to the people.  I'm good with that.

And it actually goes with a thought I had just today concerning the meaning of public and private.  I think we usually equate public with a large number of people or group, while we associate private with an individual's property or rights.  But, that's not the proper distinction.

In the context of the private corporation it's clear that "private" relates to a small group, whose membership is select and which has little, if any, interest in respecting individual rights.  Indeed, individual rights are more likely to be respected in the context of the public realm.  So, the public is the guarantor of the individual.  

Which seems ironic but also throws a different light on the constant clamor to promote or leave things to "the private sector"--i.e. it's a recipe for continuing the transition of public assets (natural and man-made resources) into private wealth.

That throws a rather different light on such projects as the selling of the ports to Dubay and turning some of our highways into turnpikes.  Or, actually, it reveals that the same pattern, which saw the transfer of our public hospitals and clinics to private interests for pennies on the dollar, is still operative.  It also suggests that there's method in cutting tax revenues to local communities, if it forces a changeover to a reliance on bonds and recurring fees, a portion of which the financial sector can claim for itself.

The captains of finance used to be referred to as the leisure class.  Seems like an appropriate term.

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by: hannah @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 09:52:12 AM CST

The NPR audio link is totally worth it n/t (4.00 / 1)

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by: JimC @ Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 11:19:17 AM CST