Old quotes

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy.”

I think the first time I heard that quote I was sitting in my living room with my father listening to music. My dad had a record of Aaron Copeland’s ‘Lincoln Portrait’ —If I recall correctly it was the RCA Radio Orchestra conducted by the composer himself. What I am sure of is that the narrator for the spoken word portion of the piece was the actor Melvyn Douglas. I’ve never heard a better reading. The libretto is Carl Sandburg’s work but it is mostly the word of Abraham Lincoln directly quoted.

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master…”

I remember turning that formulation over in my mind and on my tongue. What struck me the first time I heard it and what carries its power for me to this day is the fact that it is so much akin, in logic and spirit, to the Golden Rule —Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. Lincoln simply takes that core moral truth and translates it into civic terms —takes it to the body politic. How we govern and are governed has a plain ethical dimension, a moral dimension. There is such a thing as right and there is such a thing as wrong.

Lincoln, of course, was the very first Republican president. Even today some refer to the Republican party as “the party of Lincoln” —which feels a little strange about now. The current Republican president, the senate leader, and a goodly number of the party cohort have announced they intend to expeditiously advance a replacement justice to the Supreme Court, to fill the seat vacated by Ruth Bader Ginsburg who passed away this past Friday about six weeks before the 2020 election. Doing so directly contradicts the argument these same people made in 2016, when nine months before the election Antonin Scalia’s seat became vacant and President Obama moved to fill it. In 2016 the claim was that refusing to fill the court seat —blocking the president from doing so— was a matter of democratic principle, the people should decide in an election year. Today that pretense has been discarded. The argument being advanced to reconcile the cognitive dissonance essentially amounts to —now that we have the power the inconvenient principle does not apply.

Just as I went to publish this piece another GOP Senator, Romney of Utah, came forward to announce he would support an expeditious vote on the Supreme Court nominee, explaining that “fairness —like beauty—is in the eye of the beholder.”

Prior statements as to democratic principle need to be understood as situational ploys within the context of a rugged game about one thing, power — about getting your hands on it and holding on by any means necessary.

“…and when you’re a star they let you do it!” as the current Republican president once so famously opined. Perhaps one day they’ll carve that one in stone, maybe try to set it to music.