...runs through the veins of any American who pulls the lever for a good Republican.
Lincoln (if ever there was an American archetype, it is he) was onced faced with a similar chorus of doom and defeat as today's Republicans are bombarded with, a mere eleven days prior to the 2008 election. And as always, The Great Emancipator provides us with guidance in our darkest moment...as in 1839, as in today:
On December 26, 1839, responding to the confident prediction of one of his political opponents "that every State in the Union will vote for Mr. Van Buren at the next Presidential election" and that Lincoln's opposition to the Van Buren forces was therefore bound to be in vain, Lincoln responded:
"Address that argument to cowards and to knaves; with the free and the brave it will effect nothing. It may be true; if it must, let it...The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just...Let none falter, who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if after all, we shall fail, be it so."
As it happens, the Whig ticket Lincoln supported won that 1840 election. So might the party of Lincoln again.
I will not let Honest Abe down on Election Day 2008. If indeed it comes to defeat, I will know at least I honored his memory, I will have defied the "cowards and knaves", and I have done what was Right.
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