Well obviously Lincoln’s screed was lamenting the loss of what was trying to walk out on it. If such a land ends up occupying a phone booth, is that squat?
Granted, many of the territorial wars do not mean nearly as much in hindsight as they did “when.” It would have been far better if McCarthy’s folks had kept their stuff up than for the US to get into the Vietnam War. Because the war of memes in the end is what mattered the most.
A lament it was, but we shouldn’t ignore the faulty logic because of the genuine emotion behind it. Because speeches like that are intended to create new emotions wand though it didn’t name much if a difference then its importance for our collective historical understanding is difficult to underestimate. Though the average citizen will be hard pressed to delineate the causes leafing up to the war—besides a flat assertion of “slavery”—nor how the war was fought, nor what came after, they can probably quote a few words at least from the Address. Those people might be tricked into believing representative democratic republicanism, or whatever you call our system of government, was in danger. Which is a lie.
Sorry for all the typos.
I agree about McCarthy. Our hindsight view of his downfall has been a more perfect victory by libs than any of Alexander the Great’s battles. The book title “Blacklisted By History” captures it perfectly. Perhaps this was unavoidable, given the ideological disposition of the MSM, Washington, academia, etc. There wasn’t even any Bill O’Reilly back then—not that I want to give Baxter any credit, let alone Rush or the Internet. Perhaps it was inevitable that McCarthy would end up a raving, drunken, Stalin wannabe and Whittaker Chambers a crazy pumpkin farming Lewinsky forerunner (for holding onto things, not for being a slut).
Then again, there were more important fights than how many spies were in the state dept.