Lincoln Day dinner: Would ‘Honest Abe’ be upset by GOP misuse of power?

Tonight (Wednesday), the Jefferson County Republican Party will hold its annual Lincoln Day dinner in the South Wing of the Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center. By tradition, a HazMat team wouldn’t touch the food, but the hunger pangs from the mostly uneaten meal can be dulled by intermittent trips to the wellstocked bars in the lobby. Leading off the post-dinner speeches, your humble columnist has a few words to offer about the guest of honor, Abraham Lincoln, Kentucky’s greatest political and moral leader and a cofounder (in 1854) of the GOP. Herewith are my remarks:

Reverend clergy, United States Senator [Rand] Paul, Attorney General and, we hope, Governor-elect [Daniel] Cameron, Party Chair [Don] Fitzpatrick, and my fellow Republicans:

In 1832, when Chief Black Hawk and his tribe crossed into Northern Illinois, the Governor called out the militia. Abraham Lincoln, who then lived in New Salem, volunteered for duty. He was elected captain of his company, an election he said later gave him more pleasure than any other. One day, while on patrol, Lincoln’s company encountered an old Indian man coming the other way. The troops had signed up to kill Indians and this one looked like a good place to start. But the frightened man held out a paper signed by a government official guaranteeing him safe passage. The men wanted to shoot him anyway. Thus Captain Lincoln faced the first test of his leadership. He could have simply let the men who had elected him have their way or he could have put the Indian’s fate to a vote and appeased his conscience if he was outvoted. But Lincoln had a reputation even then for his sterling character. He informed the company that if they wanted to kill this old man, they would have to kill him first. The men backed down and the Indian went on his way. Abraham Lincoln was 23 years old.

It was said by people who knew Lincoln that he “was a very poor hater.” As president, he manifested this trait many times, particularly when he befriended and met with the leading abolitionist of that time, Frederick Douglass. Lincoln paid no mind to the harsh criticism from some in his own party for conferring with a Black former slave in the White House.

“He was so transparently honest,” Douglass would recall. “He treated me like a man.”

Lincoln, as a masterful trial lawyer, was a shrewd judge of human nature. He often said: “If you want to really test a man’s character, give him power.”

So, as we take stock every year on this glorious occasion, how are we doing as a political party to meet Lincoln’s test for character? Would “Honest Abe” be disappointed to see us misuse our power sometimes to pursue policies that are inconsistent with the noble ideals for which he gave his own life? The Great Emancipator led a civil war to reunite our country and, in the process, to liberate an entire race of enslaved people. He called it exactly what it was, “a new birth of freedom.” He said that America was “the last best hope of Earth.”

Recalling those iconic words, it is impossible to believe that Abraham Lincoln would support any laws that discriminate against gay people in general and transgender children and their families in particular. Surely, he would be distressed to see, as we have recently, parents in some states having to move from where they live because of new laws that forbid their doctors and counselors from caring for their transgender children in ways of their choosing, uprooting and separating these fellow citizens from their families, friends, neighbors, schools, churches, and careers.

Other such laws permit the humiliation of transgender students in the public schools by allowing them to be referred to by false pronouns and restricting their bathroom use. Those measures were passed by elected members of our Republican party. I don’t condemn anyone for this but only ask us to consider whether such legislation honors the legacy of the most extraordinary American who ever lived, Abraham Lincoln, the humble but heroic Kentuckian who exhorted us to “listen to the better angels of our nature,” to “bind up the nation’s wounds,” and to treat one another “with malice toward none, and charity for all?”

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was not invited to give a speech at tonight’s Lincoln Day dinner, but if I had been asked, that is the speech I would have given.

DETROIT FREE PRESS FILE Abraham Lincoln, a masterful trial lawyer, was a shrewd judge of human nature. He often said: “If you want to really test a man’s character, give him power.”