Posted on 02/04/2003 3:42:54 AM PST by kattracks
Washington (CNSNews.com) - A video presented at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington appears to suggest that former President Abraham Lincoln would have supported modern-day, left-of-center political causes such as homosexual rights, abortion rights and the modern feminist agenda.
One tourist from Wisconsin, who viewed the video in the memorial's Lincoln Legacy Room, called it "awful" and said the "political correctness of it is beyond words." Other visitors to the memorial told CNSNews.com they believe the video clearly implies that Lincoln would have supported left-wing political causes.
A National Park Service spokesman told CNSNews.com he was "reluctant" to comment on the Lincoln video because the whole issue had the "potential to be quite controversial."
The video features an actor who sounds like Lincoln speaking about the Civil War and slavery. He then leads into clips of Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington.
About halfway through the approximately eight-minute video, footage of modern-day marchers is shown over "Lincoln's" booming voice as patriotic music and songs associated with the civil rights movement play.
At this point, the video shows snippets from modern-day marches. A sign reading, "The Lord is my Shepard and Knows I am Gay" kicks off a series of visuals featuring left-wing social causes, while "Lincoln's voice" and patriotic music blare.
The other visuals include signs reading "Gay & Lesbian Sexual Rights," "Council of Churches Lesbian Rights," "National Organization for Woman" (NOW), "Reagan's Wrongs Equal Woman's Rights," "ERA Yes," "Ratify the Era," "I had an illegal abortion in 1967 - Never Again," "Keep Abortion Legal," "I am pro-choice America," a Vietnam-era video clip of a woman asking: "President. Nixon where are our men?" and a sign reading, "Who will Decide NARAL (National Abortion Rights & Reproductive Action League).
The video features the theme song of the civil rights movement, "We Shall Overcome," and continues with visual display of liberal causes, including signs reading "In Opposition to King Richard [Nixon]," "U.S. out Now," "Equal Opportunity for All," "Peace," "Hell No We Won't Go," "No More Lies, Sign the Treaty Now Coalition," and marchers chanting U.S. Out Now" (crowd chanting).
The video also features an excerpt from a Martin Luther King speech and then progresses into a banner reading "Pass the Brady [Gun Control] Bill Now." Pro-life demonstrators appear in the video once, in a brief clip where they are shown clashing with abortion rights activists. No other political causes that could be considered right-of-center appear in the video.
'Beyond Words'
CNSNews.com asked several of the tourists visiting the memorial what they thought of the video and whether they believed it implied Lincoln would support modern-day causes such as homosexual rights and abortion rights.
"I liked it... I think [Lincoln] would have [supported homosexual and abortion rights] because that's how Lincoln was; he was very supportive of the people. He didn't care who you are and what you are, he loved everybody," said Elizabeth Baksi, a high school student from Houma, La., after viewing the video.
Darre Klain of Baltimore, Md., also agreed that Lincoln would have supported today's liberal political causes as implied in the video.
[Lincoln] seemed like a very progressive, forward-thinking man, ahead of his time," Klain said.
But Paul Meisius of Sheboygan, Wis., rejected the video's message as he interpreted it, and he chastised the National Park Service for showcasing it.
"That's awful," Meisius said as he finished watching the video. "The political correctness of it is beyond words. I don't think that's proper. They are giving themselves credit to be able to say whatever they want about Lincoln's political views," Meisius told CNSNews.com.
"Our national monuments are being stripped of their true heritage. They are being uprooted and taken and changed. It's an atrocity that they are rewriting history in the sense that these people have political agendas," Meisius said.
Meisius, who was visiting Washington, D.C., with his wife and five children, believes the video is an attack by revisionist historians.
"The wrongness and incorrectness of this -- this stripping of the true essential biblical aspects of our foundation - are being replaced by political correctness," he said.
Angela Brewer, a program instructor for the Close Up Foundation, a citizenship education organization, denied the Lincoln video implied the former president would have supported modern-day, left-wing social causes.
"[The Lincoln Memorial] has frequently has been used as a backdrop for groups that seem to me to be liberal. I don't know that there is a particular purpose behind [the video]," Brewer said.
Gary Perkins, who coordinates exhibits at the Sweetwater Historical Museum in Green River, Wyo., has written about the difficulty our national museums face when presenting historical materials. Perkins believes that the National Park Service may be guilty of historical overreach with the video in question.
"We do not know what Abraham Lincoln thought of gay rights. We have no clue, he never talked about it," Perkins said after hearing CNSNews.com's description of the Lincoln Memorial video.
"We can't really infer he supported gay rights," Perkins added.
'Quite Controversial'
Bill Line, a spokesman for the National Park Service's National Capital Region, told CNSNews.com that the Discovery Channel produced the video for the Lincoln Memorial.
Asked if the video intentionally makes it appear as though Lincoln would have supported homosexual rights, abortion rights and feminist causes, Line was unequivocal in his initial answer.
"I have seen the video, and I don't know how you can contrive that out of it," Line said.
However, after specific examples of "liberal causes" were pointed out to him, Line backed away from his previous comment.
"I am reluctant, quite frankly, to say much to you because I don't know the whole other premise that you are coming from or the background or the fuller context that the story is being written in, and it has potential to be quite controversial," Line explained.
Finally, Line announced he needed to see the video again before he would have any official comment.
"It's been a while since I reviewed the videotape. Before I can adequately comment and give to you something you can use in your story, I need to go and review that videotape myself," Line said.
As of press time, Line had not contacted CNSNews.com with further comment on the video.
'Left-wing gestapo'
Cultural critic David Horowitz was not surprised by the description of the video that CNSNews.com provided. Horowitz believes that left-wing political perspectives are the dominant philosophy of the curators of the U.S.'s national monuments. Horowitz, a former 1960s radical, is co-founder of the Los Angeles-based Center for the Study of the Popular Culture.
"The whole museum field has been taken over by the left wing Gestapo," Horowitz said.
"People have to wake up. This is the America hating left. It is in charge of our national monuments. It's a disgrace and testament to how the academic history profession is totally dominated by the political left," Horowitz said.
E-mail a news tip to Marc Morano.
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Actually, yes. Down here we use it in somewhat the same fashion as the Ithaca dollar is used. And when we rise again, what we have accumulated will come in handy.
After you and NS got creamed today by GOP, this is about what I would of expected.
Maybe you should start a thread that Bill Clinton was our first black president or something. Strange how you liberals forgot to bestow that honor on Linclon.
Your speculative excuse ignores the fact that the issue of black suffrage was already existant, and that in his very last speech Lincoln deliberately separated himself from those who wanted full rights for blacks. Contrary to what some revisionist lies imply, Lincoln did not invent the issue.
Instead he was assassinated and black sufferage for all was severely restricted by the southern state governments for another 100 years.
First, as you pointed out earlier, suffrage was not an executive decision, and Lincoln could not give blacks the vote anyway.
Second, your entire point is a non-sequitur, as it was Lincoln's political opponents within his own party who were the true advocates of black suffrage. If anything, it was easier for them to achieve black suffrage with him dead and not there to interfere with the rest of Congress by promoting his exclusionary and conditional alternatives to full rights.
Third, let us not forget the North. It was the Northern States that invented black codes and 'Jim Crow' type laws.
Not according to his letter dated December 16, 1860. In that letter Seward accredits his proposal to a suggestion from The Lincoln conveyed to him by Thurlow Weed, who had met with The Lincoln a few days earlier.
The invasion of Texas and seizing of the cotton was its purpose. It was the same purpose as the Red River campaign, which attempted to invade through the north.
At best the blockade runners going to Texas could barely keep Kirby Smith supplied.
It's better than nothing, and all indications from 1864-65 indicate that the runners in Galveston were among the most successful of the war. The estimation TAMU gives is a successful run almost once a week.
Pure conjecture on your part. Maybe it did and maybe it didn't, we'll never know for sure.
No conjecture. It is simple fact - The red river campaign would not have been needed had they succeeded earlier. You are correct that we cannot know for sure the specifics of what might have happened otherwise had Sabine Pass not stopped the invasion force, but that one contingency is known. Banks tried to invade from the north because his previous attempts to do the same from the gulf had failed. Had those previous attempts succeeded, he would not have tried from the north.
Exactly what do you think was being traded out of Galveston? The cotton. As I stated earlier, his purpose was twofold. He wanted control of the cotton and he wanted to stop the confederates from running it through the blockade.
One would think that if it had all been about cotton he would have invaded earlier.
He tried several times. Every one of them was repulsed or dissolved after landing.
You're trying to put Mansfield and Sabine Pass on the same footing as Shiloh, Gettysburg, Antietam and the other decisive battles of the war.
That's about as cracked as anything else you say. It's all nonsense.
The rebels had no major success outside of Virginia excepting Chickamauga throughout the whole war. They held Nashville less than a year.
Walt
Correction: Yes, I am still using it, but not by chance.
My wife's grandmother supposedly has quite a bit tucked away, that her grandfather left her. You never know.
I did not say Gettysburg or Antietam, nor would I. If you notice my previous post, I described the scale of the participants involved at Mansfield as equal to any but the largest of the land battles in the east. That would presumably include battles such as Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville etc.
The rebels had no major success outside of Virginia excepting Chickamauga throughout the whole war.
Mansfield and Sabine Pass say otherwise.
In the same speech he added: "Anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the Negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse.", And "free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We cannot, then, make them equals."
I am certain that you are familiar with these quotes, but would like to pretend you aren't. Well, here they are again.
Saul Sigelschiffer, The American Conscience: The Drama of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (New York: Horizon, 1973) p. 281.
Not in any of the southern states it wasn't, and not in many of the Northern states as well.
If anything, it was easier for them to achieve black suffrage with him dead and not there to interfere with the rest of Congress by promoting his exclusionary and conditional alternatives to full rights.
Your opinion only. President Lincoln might well have become a strong proponent of universal black sufferage since he was already a supporter of the concept of sufferage to begin with. As a stronger leader than Johnson, he may have been able to block the worst aspects of Reconstruction from the Congress, and talk the southern states out of the worst of their black laws.
Third, let us not forget the North. It was the Northern States that invented black codes and 'Jim Crow' type laws.
You've been reading DiLorenzo again, haven't you? It was the southern states who perfected them long before the rebellion, and who perpetuated them into the last half of the 20th century.
What do you base this on, just out of curiosity?
It's better than nothing, and all indications from 1864-65 indicate that the runners in Galveston were among the most successful of the war.
Relatively speaking, perhaps. Texas at no time came close to the traffic of Charleston or Wilmington or Mobile.
Funny, I don't feel creamed. What was the final score?
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