"Everybody can be great," he said!

MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 2024

Our blue tribe sometimes isn't: For our money, the inexplicable moral giant of this nation's history is its sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln.

We track that judgment to his second inaugural address. We regard it as the least explicable moral statement in the history of the nation.

We recall reading that address for the very first time, on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial, back in the 1970s. We were there, on a day-long field trip, with a bunch of Baltimore fifth graders. 

They were a bunch of extremely good kids. We recall how astounded we were when we first read, on the wall of that memorial building, among other things, this part of that astounding address, delivered even as the war continued:

"Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!"

If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. 

Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

For the full text, click here.

As a bunch of fifth graders clattered around us, we recall being astounded that day. 

We also committed this woeful offense, Lincoln had told his victorious side. 

We also committed this woeful offense. If we are forced to shed our blood to the same extent the bondsmen did, no one can say that the judgments of the Lord aren't righteous and true altogether.

We were stunned to think that a human being had ever said such a thing in public. We were something like 27 years old, and we'd never read that address.

Lincoln must have come from Mars, we recall thinking that day. We don't think that Dr. King's astounding ministry is as difficult to explain as are the words that president spoke that day.

Abraham Lincoln came from Mars; Dr. King came from the United States, such as it was at the time. As a child, then as a teen, he had seen the ugly workings of Jim Crow right up close and personal. 

According to his later writings, he was already looking for a way to address what he'd seen when he was still a teenager in college. (He entered college at age 15.) 

At a certain point, he was directed to the philosophy of nonviolent resistance. History proceeds from there.

Shortly before he too lost his life, Dr. King offered the words shown below. We first read the homily on post cards which were being offered for sale at the King Center in Atlanta:

Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve.

You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. 

You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. 

You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve...

Before that homily was done, Dr. King drew a further conclusion about the nature of moral greatness. We're going to leave that out today because of the difficult state of our own blue tribe.

You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve, Dr. King had correctly said. 

He knew that he was leading a movement of people who were, in fact, morally great. Beyond that, he knew that they were morally great even though, in most cases, they hadn't been allowed to become "highly educated."

That hadn't been allowed, but the people to whom Dr. King referred were indeed morally great. They were the actual "greatest generation," or they were one of such groups.

Today, the elites of our own blue tribe are often "highly educated." They're also often deeply flawed, and our tribe may be in the process of paying a very high political price for that obvious fact.

The flaws of our tribe are obvious—to everyone but us. There are several reports in today's New York Times which makes those flaws embarrassingly obvious, though they'll be invisible to us.

Our own blue tribe is deeply flawed. Imaginably, the red tribe could be even worse, though we don't recommend such comparisons. 

Had God willed that our own blue tribe must be punished all over again? We don't see the world that way, but if Lincoln were here today, he might be asking that question.

Everybody can be great, Dr. King said. Due to his family's status, he could have lived a long, relatively easy life. He decided to do something more fundamentally astounding, involving what he often described as "the love ethic of Jesus."

He chose to take a more difficult path. On the whole, is it possible that we are perhaps a bit less insightful today?

Inexplicable fact: By most accounts, President Lincoln had roughly one year of formal schooling.