***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The battle over the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States has been an ugly and a divisive one, a terrible little chapter in the history of our nation. \u00a0It will certainly not fade away soon, and will probably never altogether do so during the lives of those who are now adults.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I know this ugliness personally. \u00a0I\u2019ve tried to avoid contributing to it myself. \u00a0Still, insignificant as I am in this matter, I\u2019ve received some exceedingly nasty comments and have been harshly maligned for my stance on the matter at various places on the Web. \u00a0I receive vicious anonymous emails on most days for my religious views, and,\u00a0for my defense of the Restoration, am demonized on more websites than I can count. \u00a0But some of the recent attacks have been politically motivated.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fortunately, I have a thick skin. \u00a0Or, if you prefer, I lack empathy, am impervious to reason, and am past feeling. \u00a0Some of those who write to me \u2014 and some who have written to me several times each week for many years now \u2014 would, I think, be both shocked and deeply disappointed to realize how little their attempts to wound me actually hurt. \u00a0On the whole, I simply find them very, very odd.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some such folks are, probably, pretty much beyond fixing. \u00a0I can\u2019t imagine what sort of curious personality defects would motivate a person to email anonymous obscene insults to somebody else for the better part of a decade. \u00a0It just seems unfathomably weird to me, and, frankly, not very interesting.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how \u2014 the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what\u2019s said against me won\u2019t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House<\/em>\u00a0by Francis B. Carpenter (Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 258-259.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
But normal, decent people must now work hard to prevent our society from sinking deeper still into the horrifying kind of political discourse \u2014 if we dare call it that \u2014 that has engulfed Washington DC during the Kavanaugh hearings.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Abraham Lincoln led this nation through a crisis that was considerably worse than that occasioned by the Brett Kavanaugh nomination.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0 Lincoln\u2019s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
That is what he said. \u00a0That is what Abraham Lincoln said.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Park City, Utah<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I have not often been an enthusiastic fan of Susan Collins (R-ME). \u00a0But I am today: \u00a0 \u201cKavanaugh fight: Susan Collins stands up to Democratic bullies and becomes a profile in courage\u201d \u00a0 If you have the time and the interest, listen to her speech on the floor of the Senate. \u00a0It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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