Learning from Lincoln
Ventura Star, February 13, 2006

By Terry Paulson, PhD

Lincoln is often rated as America's favorite and most respected President. His ability to learn from and persevere in the face of failure, his resolve through sustained conflict, and his breadth of insight about leadership and life are still relevant to America. Here are my favorite Lincoln quotes and my thoughts on how he speaks to us today.

"Government should do for people that which they cannot possibly do for themselves--and leave otherwise alone!"

Lincoln believed in limiting the roles that government should play. He cared enough to challenge people to take responsibility for their own future. There would have been no war on poverty in Lincoln's administration. There was encouragement and support, but there was no room for an entitlement mentality.

"I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war on capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else."

Lincoln championed free-market capitalism. It provides the greatest opportunity possible for every person to make his way in the world, and even to prosper. Lincoln understood that there's no war between capital and labor. Capital and labor are the same people at different stages of their lives. Workers can work to save, then to invest and ultimately to become owners of capital.

"I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side."

Lincoln knew man's limitations and felt the grace and guidance of God in his life. He was not known for church attendance, but he increasingly included references to faith and God as he faced the challenges as President of a nation at war. Instead of seeking revenge, he used references to faith to call citizens to the importance of forgiveness and charity.

"If I were to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for business. I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right will make no difference."

Few realize how unpopular Lincoln was during this trying period in our history. Respect does not always mean high approval polls. Great leaders lead and let history leave the lasting tribute.

"I do not like that man. I must get to know him better."

Lincoln did not avoid his difficult people; he found a way to bridge to them by keeping them close. He put his most threatening enemies in his own party into his cabinet so he could win them over. When he came out of his first cabinet meeting, he said to his aide, "Well, we took a vote in the Cabinet and it was eight to one-but I was the one."

"Laughter is the joyous universal evergreen of life....Were it not for my little jokes, I could not bear the burdens of this office...With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die."

Lincoln knew the value of taking his role and mission seriously, but himself lightly. Humor was the tonic that helped him cope with the stress of his office. Finally, the enemy and the location of the war may be different, but when Lincoln took his notes out to address those gathered in Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, his comforting and challenging words could just as easily been delivered to us today.

"Four Score and Seven Years ago, our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. … We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here. It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Dr. Terry Paulson is a psychologist, speaker and author of The Dinner: The Political Conversation Your Mother Told You Never to Have. Share your comments at his PoliticalTalk Blog or contact him at Terry@TerryPaulson.com.

—May we never forget how truly blessed we are!