During the 1988 Vice Presidential debate, Democrat Senator Lloyd Bentsen gave one of the most memorable lines in American political history when he stunned Republican Senator Dan Quayle by stating, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
Watching the inauguration of President Barack Obama, it was impossible not to think back on those words. To the point of tackiness, Obama attempted to cast himself as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln: from taking the train tour into Washington, lifting a line from the Gettysburg Address for the title of his own speech, swearing in on the frail pages of Lincoln’s personal Bible, to bizarrely dining on the same food as Lincoln’s inaugural feast.
Unfortunately for Mr. Obama – and more depressingly for America – the similarities come to a crashing halt right there. In fact, the two men couldn’t be more dissimilar.
In Lincoln’s day, the slave owning south was denying thousands of Americans their most basic, fundamental human rights. To justify their immorality, the slave owners relied on a tragic Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford that declared slaves to be rightful property of their owners, not viable human beings entitled to protection under the law. As a result, countless Americans suffered brutal and inhuman treatment, even losing their lives.
When Lincoln rose to power, he did not equivocate on this travesty. In the acceptabce speech he gave in his 1858 Senate race, Lincoln boldly and courageously declared: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure half slave and half free. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” In short, Lincoln was willing to go to war to preserve the eternal moral principles America had been founded upon. That’s courage. And without this fortitude, it is highly unlikely we would have seen a man the ethnicity of Barack Obama take the oath of office this year.
It is with a sickening irony then, that America is forced to admit that its first black president represents the ideological and moral positions not of Lincoln, but rather the slave-owning south.
For in the age of Obama there is a nearly identical moral crisis crying out to be rectified. The similarities are chilling: the pro-abortion movement in this country continues depriving the most defenseless Americans of their basic, fundamental human rights. To justify their immorality, they rely on a tragically flawed Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade that declared small humans in the womb to be the property of their mothers, not viable human beings entitled to protection under the law. As a result, millions of Americans have been and continue to be brutally and inhumanly slaughtered.
Yet when given the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of the Great Emancipator, Barack Obama showed how small of a man he really is, embarrassingly stating that the issue was “above his pay grade.” Of course that answer, revealing and pathetic as it is, was merely the deception that is all too common in our politics. Obama knows exactly where he stands on the issue, having never once voted for a measure to protect the most defenseless among us.
“Good people can disagree on this issue,” Obama says, and then he directs his new administration to foster more policies expanding abortion. Imagine if Lincoln had said those same words regarding the issue of slavery: “Good people can disagree on this issue…but the freedom of slave owners to do with their slaves as they wish can’t be taken away from them. In fact, it must be expanded.” It is not a stretch to say that if Abe had taken such an approach he would not be regarded as a great man, which is precisely why Barack Obama is not.
As a black man who has ascended to the presidency because honorable individuals like Lincoln took a stand defending the unalienable rights of all Americans, it would have been incredibly moving for Obama to have stood on his predecessor’s shoulders and declared that its time we put this revolting chapter of abortion in America behind us. But he didn’t do that, and has instead sought to expand its heinous consequences.
What a pity that at a time when our country desperately needs a leader with the moral clarity and ethical backbone of Abraham Lincoln, they have elected the complete opposite.
You may eat the same food, ride the same railways, put your hand on the same Bible, and live in the same mansion…but Mr. Obama, you are no Abe Lincoln.
Peter W. Heck
