Context.
We all know how important context is when trying to understand history. Or The Bible. Or the Constitution. Or NCAA rules. Or the instructions your father gave you of what he expected you to do in exchange for certain privileges.
We all know of cases where people pull a verse of the Bible out because it sounds like it supports their particular point of view, but when you read the chapter or book the verse was pulled from, you realize it didn't mean what they said it means after all.
Monday in President Obama's State of the Union, he quoted President Lincoln as a way to throw a bone to the Republican Party (which, oddly enough, has done more for minorities - see Emancipation Proclamation and Civil Rights) and yet continue to make his point for big brother-style government.
Obama quoted Lincoln this way: "I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more."
Except the closest I can find (and other historians who have researched the quote seem to agree) is a quote from Lincoln that actually says: "The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities."
That, to me, is just different enough from the point President Obama was trying to make so as to change the context of the quote. Given what the government, over time, has convinced the American public are "entitlements," Obama seems to argue that Lincoln agreed Government should only do for citizens what they cannot do better by themselves.
I read Lincoln's actual quote as saying Government should do what people need to have done but "cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves ..." "
Now, maybe I'm just being picky, but I see a difference there.
Particularly when you go on to read the rest of Lincoln's speech, entitled "The Nature and Object of Government, with Special Reference to Slavery.”
I read Lincoln's actual quote as saying Government should do what people need to have done but "cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves ..." "
Now, maybe I'm just being picky, but I see a difference there.
Particularly when you go on to read the rest of Lincoln's speech, entitled "The Nature and Object of Government, with Special Reference to Slavery.”
And in it, Lincoln also said:
"Equality in society alike beats inequality, whether the latter be of the British aristocratic sort or of the domestic slavery sort. We know Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers among us. How little they know whereof they speak!
"Equality in society alike beats inequality, whether the latter be of the British aristocratic sort or of the domestic slavery sort. We know Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers among us. How little they know whereof they speak!
There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday labors on his own account to-day, and will hire others to labor for him to-morrow. Advancement—improvement in condition—is the order of things in a society of equals. As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race."
Unfortunately, government - and this began way before President Obama - has created a class that has to decide whether it's better to 'labor' or just continue to live off the rest of us.
One of the things we hear regarding illegal immigrants is that "those people" do the jobs Americans refuse to do, and without them who would do those hardest or dirtiest or lowest paying of jobs?
That's ridiculous.
The free market dictates that if those jobs need to be done, employers will pay whatever it takes to hire people to do them. So by not having illegals to bully into working for next to nothing, it might actually help the economy by raising wages!
That is, unless what is offered in wage is still less than what the government pays people not to work, to forget that "labor is the common burden of our race" but that some continue to try to "shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others."
President Obama is hardly the first president or politician or congressman or preacher or teacher or parent or neighbor to take something out of context in hopes of making a point.
Certainly he won't be the last.
That's why it's important for you and me and the rest of us to educate ourselves, to make our own decisions, to debate in the public square as to the way we believe is best for all of us to live together in peace.
That's why it's important for you and me and the rest of us to educate ourselves, to make our own decisions, to debate in the public square as to the way we believe is best for all of us to live together in peace.
And remember that a little context can make a big difference.
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