Lincoln

On this day:

70
Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, surrounds the Jewish capital with four Roman legions.
1294
Temür, grandson of Kublai, is elected Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty with the reigning titles Oljeitu and Chengzong. I think this is Marlowe's Tamburlaine
1865
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
1912
The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40pm. The ship sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,517 lives.
1986
1 kg hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.
1999
NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees – Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed.
2003
The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.

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If the Democrats came up with a plan for all Americans to jump off a thousand-foot cliff tomorrow, some Republicans would come up with an “alternative’ plan in which we would all jump off a 500-foot cliff next week.*--Sowell

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According to MLB.com’s Jason Mackey, Kelly turned down at least six interviews for managerial roles because he “felt like the best thing for [his family] was to be in Pittsburgh.”

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On this day, Lincoln is shot, and the repercussions continue to this day. And the Titanic finds her iceberg.

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Trump might be the most progressive president since, early in the 20th century, progressivism defined itself with three core tenets:

First, only an energetic executive can make modern government “wieldy” — Woodrow Wilson’s word. (“The president,” said Wilson, “is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.”) 

Second, the separation of powers is a premodern mistake that permits Congress to meddle in government and allows the judiciary to inhibit the executive.
Third, conservatives see modern society’s complexities as reasons to avoid attempting dramatic social engineering, lest unintended consequences overwhelm intended ones. Progressives think conservatives are worrywarts, too timid about wielding government.--Will

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Lincoln

We Americans stupidly recognize April 14 as the day before taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that the conspirators stalked General Grant to his train the same night. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly, it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

Lincoln

On this day, Lincoln is shot, and the repercussions continue to this day. And the Titanic finds her iceberg.

***

Trump might be the most progressive president since, early in the 20th century, progressivism defined itself with three core tenets:

First, only an energetic executive can make modern government “wieldy” — Woodrow Wilson’s word. (“The president,” said Wilson, “is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.”) 

Second, the separation of powers is a premodern mistake that permits Congress to meddle in government and allows the judiciary to inhibit the executive.
Third, conservatives see modern society’s complexities as reasons to avoid attempting dramatic social engineering, lest unintended consequences overwhelm intended ones. Progressives think conservatives are worrywarts too timid about wielding government.--Will

***

Crossing : a memoir by the wonderful Deirdre McCloskey, her book on transitioning, has been removed from the Nimitz Naval Library.

***

Lincoln

We Americans stupidly recognize April 14 as the day before taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly, it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

The Young Men’s Lyceum

 

China controls 40% of the world’s commercial shipbuilding capacity. The US has just 0.5%.

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An Indiana man who was just recently pardoned by President Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 Capitol riot was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop on Sunday.

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More people use Marijuana daily or nearly daily than those who drink alcohol.

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Is it true that the president of Columbia, where the prison system is world famous for its cruelty, objects to the plane trip of Columbia's illegals as inhumane?

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The Young Men’s Lyceum

On this day in 1838, Abraham Lincoln delivered an address to the Young Men’s Lyceum, a debating society in Springfield, Illinois, that had originated in Massachusetts and grown spontaneously over the years as a national forum of discussion and debate on interesting topics. Lincoln's speech--when he was a member of the Illinois House of Representatives but still only 28-- was given in the wake of growing mob violence, including the 1837 killing of abolitionist printer Elijah Lovejoy by a pro-slavery mob.

It remains a staunch support of the rule of law--even in the face of bad law--and the threat that individual passion holds for the stability of the state, particularly when the individual feels estranged from his government.

It also contains a very curious insight into the nature of ambition, in the particular American circumstance. The ambitious men, he says, seeing that the great American democracy has been conceived and established, will seek fame along the only other path available to him: destroying it. "Towering genius distains a beaten path."

Here is an excerpt:

As a subject for the remarks of the evening, the perpetuation of our political institutions, is selected. . . . We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them—they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their’s was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ‘tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader . . . This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it?—At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?—Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!—All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts . . . . Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana . . . . Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country. . . .

But you are, perhaps, ready to ask, “What has this to do with the perpetuation of our political institutions?” . . . When men take it in their heads to day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn someone who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of tomorrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. . . . [A]nd thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded. But all this even, is not the full extent of the evil. By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained. Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed—I mean the attachment of the People. . . .

The question recurs, “how shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;—let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars. . . .

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made.—I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible delay; but, till then, let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. . . .

But, it may be asked, why suppose danger to our political institutions? Have we not preserved them for more than fifty years? And why may we not for fifty times as long? . . .

That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed, and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all, to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.—Then, all that sought celebrity and fame, and distinction, expected to find them in the success of that experiment. . . . If they succeeded, they were to be immortalized . . . . If they failed, they were to be called knaves and fools, and fanatics for a fleeting hour; then to sink and be forgotten. They succeeded. The experiment is successful; and thousands have won their deathless names in making it so. But the game is caught; and I believe it is true, that with the catching, end the pleasures of the chase. This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?—Never! Towering genius distains a beaten path. . . . Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down. . . .

Another reason which once was; but which, to the same extent, is now no more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus far. I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. . . .

I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. . . .

They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.—Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Wills and Obama

Half the protein in your body comes from artificially created nitrogen, a process invented a hundred years ago by Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch. This process combines nitrogen from the air with hydrogen to make ammonia, which is used in fertilizer. In the past century, the Haber-Bosch process improved crop yields, saving the lives of 2.7 billion people who would have otherwise starved to death.

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In Iceland, it was legal to kill Basque people until 2015.

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Twice as many women get tattoos as men: 39% of women and 21% of men have tattoos. The ratio is the same for hidden tattoos, too: 30.2% of women have a hidden tattoo, compared to 16.7% of men.

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Wills and Obama

Garry Wills wrote on Lincoln at Gettysburg, a book that reshaped the relationship between the Constitution, the Civil War, and Lincoln.

Sam Tanenhaus has an article in Prospect on Garry Wills, whom he says "has written better than anybody else about modern America."

An author, historian, and anti-clerical Catholic, Wills has written significant analysis of America and American culture, the most famous work on the Gettysburg Address and its pivotal place in Lincoln's--and America's--history. He is tough, opinionated, and argumentative, a proud mid-westerner, a sports fan, and the husband of a stewardess. But, as Tanenhaus says, "For Wills to argue is not to quarrel, accuse, or even opine. It is to state a hypothesis and then work through it with Euclidean rigor and arcane examples."

"It was Wills who saw, long before it became accepted dogma, that Richard Nixon, the bête noire of American liberals, was himself the “last liberal,” ferociously clinging to the national myth of “the self-made man.” It was Wills who cleared away the nostalgic mist surrounding John F Kennedy and exposed him as the originator of the modern “insurgency presidency,” addicted to reckless “covert actions” that paralleled his illicit bedroom adventures." Wills told Clinton to resign the presidency over Lewinsky the same week Clinton awarded him the National Humanities Medal.

In June 2009. Obama, newly in office and acutely aware of his place in history, wanted to hear what experts had to say. Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose Team of Rivals Obama drew on when he assembled his cabinet (the book also inspired Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln), arranged for eight historians to join Obama and a few staffers for dinner in the White House. The guest list included, among others, Robert Caro (the legendary biographer of President Lyndon Johnson), Robert Dallek (biographies of Kennedy and Johnson), and inevitably, Garry Wills. “It’s a strange thing,” one of the group told Wills afterwards. “You imagine you have a lot to tell the president. But as soon as you’re with him, all you can think to do is tell him how great he is.” Wills argued that Afghanistan was a mistake and would harm him.

The following year the group was invited back--except for Wills. The lesson seems to be that, for politicians, admiration is more important than good advice.

Lincoln

 

Lincoln 

We Americans stupidly recognize April 14 as the day before taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly, it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

Marx and Lincoln

It sounds as if the government and the Department of Justice are bowing to public pressure and seem to be ready to indict Hunter Biden. That's a good thing, right? That's how justice works, right?

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The heart of a mother is a deep abyss, at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. -Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)

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Casual restaurant chains, like Olive Garden and Applebee’s, have the largest positive impact on cross-class encounters through both scale and their diversity of visitors. Dollar stores and local pharmacies like CVS deepen isolation. Among publicly-funded spaces, libraries and parks are more redistributive than museums and historical sites. And, despite prominent restrictions on chain stores in some large US cities, chains are more class-diverse than independent stores. The mix of establishments in a neighborhood is strongly associated with cross-class Facebook friendships (Chetty et al., 2022).

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Marx and Lincoln

Marx is having another zombie resurrection, staggering around campuses, feeding on the young. It is accompanied by some false history, to modify how horrible the ideas are. One is a supposed relationship Marx had with Lincoln. But it's hard to get a successful graft onto the dead.

From Magness:

In the past several years, a number of academics and journalists on the political left have advanced various claims of an intellectual kinship between Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. Some versions of this story – including a widely-circulated article in the Washington Post – allege similarities between Marx and Lincoln’s respective writings about the relationship between labor and capital. Others claim that Lincoln regularly read Marx’s journalism in the New York Tribune, and point to an exchange of letters in 1864 after Marx wrote to congratulate Lincoln on his reelection. Politics usually motivates these historical claims as well. By depicting Marx and Lincoln as 19th century pen-pals, they seek to legitimize the platforms of modern-day “Democratic Socialist” politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If Lincoln truly maintained a transatlantic friendship with Marx, then Democratic Socialism must be as American as the Gettysburg Address!

In reality, Lincoln did not have the slightest clue who Karl Marx was, and certainly did not draw from the socialist philosopher for his economic theories. Lincoln’s writings on capital and labor arose primarily from his reading of other 19th century economic works, most notably Francis Wayland and John Stuart Mill. He never encountered Marx’s Capital, which was not even published until two years after Lincoln’s assassination. Marx’s writings for the New York Tribune consisted of second-hand news summaries from the European continent, and the vast majority were published anonymously. If Lincoln encountered them by chance while reading the Tribune, it is extremely unlikely he would have recognized the author or picked up any ideas about economic theory from Marx’s journalistic contributions.

Indeed, Lincoln’s economic assessments of socialism were highly critical. In 1864, the President wrote a letter to a New York City labor organization after the left-leaning group granted him an honorary membership. While Lincoln thanked the organization for the recognition, he strongly disputed their economic doctrines. As Lincoln wrote:

'Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor –property is desirable — is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.'

What about the exchange of letters between Marx and Lincoln? It is true that Marx drafted a letter to Lincoln, congratulating him on his 1864 election victory. The letter was not presented under Marx’s name though. It came from the London-based International Workingmen’s Association, and was delivered under the name of the organization’s secretary, W. Randal Cremer. The response, also addressed to Cremer, did not even come from Lincoln’s desk. Charles Francis Adams, Lincoln’s diplomat to the United Kingdom, issued the letter from the American legation in London. It is little more than a 19th century form letter, a courtesy statement acknowledging that Cremer’s congratulatory note had been received and forwarded to Lincoln through the State Department along with thousands of other notes from well-wishers after the election.

Lincoln

 

Lincoln, Complicated by Holy Week

We Americans stupidly recognize April 14 as the day before taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

Lincoln

                                    Lincoln


We Americans stupidly recognize this day as the day before taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

Lincoln

Man In Critical Condition After Hearing Slightly Differing Viewpoint--Babylon Bee

Well, the Pens just got beat. And I do not see what they can do. Trotz is impressive.
Tiger Woods winning the Masters is unbelievable.
I watched GoT all weekend. Even Mom watched the start last night.
Chris gets fixed tomorrow.

Trump has become a metaphor for our politicians and our system. This is what Gillibrand, a woman who thinks herself a presidential candidate, said in an interview: "When you say you want to develop low-yield nuclear weapons that are tactile, what you’re saying is you want to use them." Tactile nuclear weapons? Touchie feelie? These people want to lead us?

So Trump's crazy Trade War may have slowed down the world economy so much the Fed may not have to raise rates? May not be able to? So he's taken over the economy from the Fed? Is this genius or are we watching random behavior?

European banks are trading at 5 -6 PE ratio.

Domestic update:  Overdosing on drugs has now become the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50.

According to the United Nations Population Fund, 40 percent of all births in the U.S. now happen outside of marriage. But if you go back to 1970, that figure was  just 10 percent. At this point, approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.

Don sent an article that is shocking. We suffer in this country when a church is vandalized but in 2018 in France there were 1063 attacks on Christian churches or symbols, over two church attacks a day. Unlike anti-Antisemitism, which seems to be a persistent and unaided European phenomenon, this anti-Christian behavior seems to be "migrant," i.e. Islam. This behavior growing in Germany as well. One or two is a lunatic; two a day is an atmosphere.

A gay guy I have some regard for had this quote he got off an article somewhere (but did not credit): "An estimated 14,700 troops identify as transgender." Now, national stats are that 1 out of 30,000 adult male and 1 out of 100,000 females seek sex change surgery. So....

Given its mostly liberal audience, there was an implicit financial reward for the Times in running lots of Trump stories, almost all of them negative: they drove big traffic numbers and, despite the blip of cancellations after the election, inflated subscription orders to levels no one anticipated.”--Jill Abramson, former NYT editor, in her “Merchants of Truth.” Abramson described a generational split at the Times, with younger staffers, many of them in digital jobs, favoring an unrestrained assault on the presidency. There is the belief that the paper actually became an anti-trump brand that drove readership. The NYT saw digital subscriptions during Trump's first six months in office jump by 600,000, to more than 2 million.

The National Taxpayer Advocate estimated that American taxpayers and businesses spend 6.1 billion hours every year complying with the income tax code, based on IRS estimates of how much time taxpayers (both individual and businesses) spend collecting data for, and filling out their tax forms. In addition, Americans will spend an estimated $10 billion for the services of tax preparation firms and $2 billion on tax-preparation software programs like TurboTax that still require many hours of time. The amount of time spent for income tax compliance – 6.1 billion hours – would be the equivalent of more than 3 million Americans working full-time, year-round (or 2% of total US payrolls of 150 million). By way of comparison, the federal government currently employs 2.8 million full-time workers, and Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer, currently employs 2.2 million workers worldwide and 1.3 million workers in the US (both full-time and part-time). At the current average hourly wage of $27.70 an hour, the dollar value of the opportunity cost associated with tax filing would be $169 billion, which exceeds the GDP of 19 US states.

"Instead of seeing trade as a cooperative process of mutual benefit, politicians and businessmen came to regard it as a struggle with winners and losers. Germany’s leaders, instead of seeing Russia’s rapid growth after 1890 as an opportunity and blessing, agonized over it as a terrible threat. Their response was the idea of “MittelEuropa,” a customs union including Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Balkans, which would supply Germany with raw materials while providing a captive market. The leaders also advocated colonies outside Europe and a “blue water” navy. This provoked a similar and hostile response from other powers, especially from Russia. The result was a clash of imperialisms in the Balkans, and in July 1914 the German elite took the (insanely foolish) decision to fight a war with Russia and France. Had they seen the world differently this would not have happened." This is from an assessment of the causes of World War I, an interesting misunderstanding of trade which is based in agreement, not competition. So "trade war" is an oxymoron.

Today Lincoln died. And Titanic sank.

                                           Lincoln 

We Americans stupidly recognize this day as the day taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

Kansas, Nebraska and Majorities

The States Rights of Kansas and Nebraska in 1854


In the recent debates, some very good observations have emerged and, because they are not written in caps, likely have been ignored. One observation appeared in a Will editorial and is worth reiterating. The subject was The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854. 

The Kansas Nebraska Act empowered the residents of those territories to decide for themselves whether or not to have slavery legal in those geographic areas. The freedom to choose. The rights of the majority.
Slavery supporters and abolitionists poured into the areas to add votes to the debate. Small wars broke out--John Brown fought there and several of his sons were killed there. The Act  destroyed the Whig Party, created the Republican Party, and helped to provoke civil war in Kansas, which eventually led to the Civil War.


But the Act was more basic to the country than even these staggering events. The Act crystallized a struggle essential to the nation: What could the majority do with impunity? Were votes enough? This was a formative moment in the mind of a transcendent giant in human history, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln recognized that the creation of the nation was based upon certain assumptions of Man which could not be legislated away, even by overwhelming majority vote. Life. Liberty. The Pursuit of Happiness. These were all inviolable. They were, if you will excuse me, Trump Cards.

As Justice Robert Jackson was later to write: "The very purpose of a bill of rights is to withdraw certain subjects from...political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities."

The Kansas Nebraska Act raised this very debate on an intense national scale, pitting self evident human rights against majority challenge, testing whether a Nation so conceived and so dedicated could long endure.

Sunday/Lincoln

We Americans stupidly recognize this day as the day taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

Reverie/Lincoln

We Americans stupidly recognize this day as the day taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.
Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.
“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.
“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.
“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

April 15

We Americans stupidly recognize this day as the day taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”
 

April 15th

We Americans stupidly recognize this day as the day taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”
(repeat)

April 15, 2013, the Anniversary of Lincoln's Death

We Americans stupidly recognize this day as the day taxes are due. So we emphasize money and materialism over greatness of mind and soul, greatness that was both a product of and an influence upon the nation. Taxes are trivial compared to what happened on this day in 1865. President Lincoln was shot by Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 and died the next morning. Secretary of State Seward was brutally assaulted as was his son. There is good evidence that General Grant was stalked to his train the same night by the conspirators. This occurred 5 days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and doomed the South to a reconciliation with the North shepherded by the usual political wolves. More importantly it deprived the nation and politics of the high standard of mind and spirit Lincoln embodied.

Tolstoy on Lincoln:
“.... how largely the name of Lincoln is worshiped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

Lincoln

Today is Abraham Lincoln's birthday. There is something transcendent about his life--all of his life--his background, the death of his child, his strange marriage and wife, his appearance and leadership at the time of rupture in the American history, his weighty mind, his death. There is something chilling about the photo of his second inauguration, the first inauguration photo ever, where Booth, his future assassin, is so uniquely and prominently seen. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Second_Lincoln_Inaugural.JPG

There is a reassessment of Lincoln now, particularly from the libertarian camp. They say he violated the founding notions of liberty in his use of the federal power against the recalcitrant states. I was going to discuss this accusation today but instead have excerpted a wonderful scene from Goodwin's book Team of Rivals:

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief “living far away from civilized life in the mountains.”

Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon.

When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock…His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.”

“I looked at them,” Tolstoy recalled, “and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend.” He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s “home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength.” When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with “a wonderful Arabian horse.”

The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend’s house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. “I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend,” recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man’s hand trembled as he took it. “He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears.”

Tolstoy went on to observe, “This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”