Lincoln, Lightworking Lies, and Brainwashing the Kiddies

Every parent with young kids that is even modestly attuned to the left-wing indoctrination going on within the public school system knows about TFK.  That's Time for Kids. TFK is a major tool of indoctrination that is subtly and not-so-subtly attempting to fill our kids' heads with leftist gibberish.  It's a running joke with me and the ever-ravishing Mrs. Baseball when a new issue of TFK comes home.  'Just how are they going to work in Barack Obama this time?' we ask each other.  The story could be about the endangered Polynesian inch worm (there's alot of PC environmental garbage in TFK) and they'll figure out how to work in multiple references to the Lightworker.

Anyway, so the latest issue comes home and it's about the Gettysburg Address, which, of course, is apropos as the 150th anniversary is coming up.  And what comes to mind for the editors of TFK when contemplating this speech for the ages and Lincoln's greatness?  Well, Barack Obama, of course.  So naturally, there are no less than three references to Dear Leader in the article, as well as a giant sidebar featuring commentary from Jon Favreau, speechwriter to Barack Obama.

And Yet.

Yet, Barack Obama is studiously avoiding the commemorative events, which the White House appears to be giving the same level of official dignity as the swearing in of a new President of Uruguay.  Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Dan Henninger captures the give-a-shit ethos emanating from the administration that so studiously associated itself with Lincoln in the early days.

The White House recently whispered out the back door that President Obama would not appear in Pennsylvania next Tuesday at the ceremonies for the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The political betting had been that this was a big-speech venue whose glow Mr. Obama would not want to miss. The higher-road expectation was that this particular Civil War anniversary required the presence of this particular American president. It's not happening. The administration's official attendee will be Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. 

Henninger hints that this must be hard for a guy who feels the need to speechify at every turn in American life to pass on this chance to yammer at us again.  I disagree.  The nods to Lincoln during the 2008 campaign and throughout his first term were of a piece with all the lies and sundry phoninesses that we were made to swallow.  The moderation, the unity inducing centrism, the world-healing coolness, the economic perspicacity...the constitutional lawyer ala Lincoln. 

Unadulterated bullshit, all of it. 

Now that he's been elected and re-elected, he is free to get off the train, drop the mask, end the charade.  He no more admires Lincoln or reflects his values than a man on the moon.  Henninger again...

Lincoln's phrase, "a new birth of freedom," suggests a radical freedom. The Civil War had shaken the nation out of its unfree state, and Lincoln was asserting that America would now pursue an even higher state of freedom. But what would be the shape and content of this radical American freedom?

The clue may be found in the one word favored in all presidents' speeches—"we." There is general agreement that "we" is shorthand for "We the People" of the U.S. Constitution's Preamble. There is less consensus on what that phrase was intended to mean.

We know what President Obama thinks it means. In every speech given during his presidency, and in virtually every policy direction he has proposed in those speeches, it is clear that when Mr. Obama says "we," he means the federal government acting at its seat of power in Washington, D.C.

For Mr. Obama, and many others, "We the People" means not the Union of sovereign states, the Union for which a civil war was fought, but the single political agency of the national government. Had he decided to show up Tuesday in Gettsyburg, Mr. Obama would have repeated his belief that American freedom flows forward from acts taken by one national government, itself defining and administering the collective will of some inchoate force called "we."

Frankly, it is probably best.  Obama's presence would sully the whole thing for many Americans, myself certainly included.  It's best that the injustice of associating this loathsome man with one of America's greatest presidents cease altogether...at least for us adults who don't have TFK jammed on us.