Longest. January. Ever. But it’s also Fred Korematsu Day-Woot!
January 30, 1948 Mohandas K. Gandhi was killed in Delhi by an assassin, a fellow Hindu, who fired three shots from a pistol at a range of three feet. An American reporter who saw it happen
January 30, 1956 As Martin Luther King, Jr. stood at the pulpit, leading a mass meeting during the Montgomery, Alab ama, bus boycott, his home was bombed. King’s wife and 10-week-old baby escaped unharmed. Later in the evening, as thousands of angry African Americans assembled on King’s lawn, he appeared on his front porch, and told them: “If you have weapons, take them home . . . We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence . . . We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us.” Martin Luther King, Jr. and wife Coretta Scott, 1960
January 30, 1968 The Tet (lunar new year) Offensive began as North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched surprise attacks against major cities, provincial and district capitals in South Vietnam. Though an attack had been anticipated, half of the South’s ARVN troops (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) were on leave because of the holiday. There were attacks in Saigon (the South’s capital) on the Independence Palace (the residence of the president), the radio station, the ARVN’s joint General Staff Compound, Tan Son Nhut airfield, and the United States embassy, causing considerable damage and throwing the city into turmoil.
January 30, 1972 In Londonderry (aka Derry), Northern Ireland, unarmed civil rights demonstrators were shot dead by British Army paratroopers in an event that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” The protesters, all Catholics, had been marching in protest of the British policy of internment without trial of suspected Irish nationalists. British authorities had ordered the march banned, and sent troops to confront the demonstrators when it went ahead. The soldiers fired indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters, ultimately killing 14 and wounding 17. By the end of the year 323 civilians and 144 military and paramilitary personnel would be dead. Mural: Bloody Sunday martyrs Eyewitness accounts
January 30, 2010 Thousands of protesters from across Japan marched in central Tokyo to protest the U.S. military presence on Okinawa. Some 47,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan, with more than half on the southern island of Okinawa. Residents have complained for years about noise, pollution and crime around the bases. News about the protest (This link is to the 2016 protest; P&J’s link for the 2010 protest links to Not Found.)
January 30, since 2011Fred Korematsu Day Fred Korematsu Fred Korematsu, was born in Oakland, California, to a Japanese-American family. When World War II broke out Japanese-American citizens were subject to curfews and, following an executive order from Pres. Roosevelt, were sent to internment camps. Fred Korematsu refused to go and was convicted and sent to a camp. He challenged the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066 all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1944 the Supreme court ruled against him. Finally in 1983, a Federal court in San Francisco overturned the original conviction. In 1988 Congress passed legislation apologizing for the internments and awarded each survivor $20,000. The “Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution” is observed every January 30th and in an increasing number of states. “Protest, but not with violence. Don’t be afraid to speak up. One person can make a difference, even if it takes 40 years…” – Fred Korematsu More aboutFred Korematsu
As I have written and posted I love Ethel’s videos. She presents the facts with an easy to listen to rhythm and tone. She uses facts to present the medical studies and medical science for trans people not emotion, feelings, or guess work. She presents the sources she uses and gives the details of how the conclusions were reached and the validity of the studies. Such as to if it is peer reviewed, how large the sample size, and the conclusions of the data match what the person pushing the information is claiming it does. Often Ethel catches bigots simply lying by claiming a study shows negative results when in fact the studies and data present a positive or are completely opposite from what the haters claim.
Plus for those who would rather read than listen she provides a transcript of the videos she does and again as I mentioned she supplies her sources so others can look up the studies / data themselves to show she is telling the truth. That is why you never see videos by trans haters such as the TERFs trying to claim she lied. If you care about the facts and wish to have the information to combat the lies of bigots please check out her other videos supporting trans people and debunking anti-trans lies. Hugs
Today’s video debunks the myth that between 61-98% of all trans youth desist if we take a ‘wait and see’ approach, exposing the linguistic sleight of hand used by those set on undermining gender affirming care as the only ethical approach. #ProtectTransKids
Hi, welcome to Essence of Thought with me, Ethel Thurston, as your host.
tRump is old and … intellectually challenged so he can not understand gender identification. A lot of older people can’t handle the changes in society and the acceptance of new ways to be / live. As far as the religious fanatics pushing the hate against LGBTQ+ people including trans people are cis people who do not feel a disconnect between their sex organs and their feelings of who they are in society. Just as the same religious straight people can not understand the attraction gay people feel. They don’t feel that way themselves, so don’t see being cis and straight being the only acceptable way to live as a problem. Instead they think because they don’t feel that way then no one else does so it must be a choice. Or a mental defect to be cured. They refuse to accept medical science / medical studies and all the evidence that it is real, exists, and normal. We learn as a society and we as we grow in understanding we learn to accept new things. Medical science and medical research tell us that being trans and gay is normal, also that medical care that affirms those feelings is important along with necessary. Just because I don’t like a food or feel like I want to eat it, doesn’t mean no one likes it or don’t want to eat it. But liking a food I don’t doesn’t mean it is a mental illness or makes a person unfit.
saying that the U.S. military has been “afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists” and that “many mental and physical health conditions are incompatible with active duty.”
It also takes aim at transgender people in personal terms, accusing them of living in conflict “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” it adds.
Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard soldier who has said that “being transgendered in the military causes complications and differences,”
The above by the drunken wife abuser accused sexual predator Hegseth is wrong. The only complication and differences caused by having transgender people in the military is not the trans people but the fundamentalist religious people / Christians like Hegseth who feel the entire LGBTQ+ is an abomination to his god and so shouldn’t be allowed to exist. Or worse mix with the real children of god, people with good morals like the drunken wife abuser accused sexual predator Hegseth. This issue over transgender people in the military reminds me of when Clinton tried to make it legal for gay people to be out in the military. Senator Sam Nunn went on a Navy ship and said no real service member wanted to be sleeping near, working next to, or using the bathroom facilities with the dreaded gay person, which some churches were desperate to keep from being accepted and live openly in society. The anti-gay people claimed all sorts of horrors if gay people were allowed to service openly from the collapse of the military to mass exit of members. None of that happened, the military stayed the world’s best and there was no mass fleeing from the service.
These same people with the same hater mind set made the same claims about first black people being allowed to serve, and then when the military was desegregated. The same was said of women in combat roles. It always comes from the haters who use their personal bigotry as the metric for how everyone should be and feel. And they never admit when all the horrors they claim will happen if those they are against get equality and inclusion never happen. They just pick a new target and repeat the same attacks and hates. Now it is the trans people’s turn to be accused of all the horrible things that blacks were, the gays were, that never were true. Trans people have served openly for some time, studies show that they do not harm the military or lower the military readiness / effectiveness in any way. Sadly far too many of our general public who know nothing about the military or who never served think they are experts and again feel that everyone has the same bigotries, racist, and misogynistic feelings they do. Being in other countries or even different parts of the US will open closed minds. Harris did not lose by much, she almost won. It is too bad these hateful ignorant people are going to be able to enshrine their hates and bigotries into law and hurt so many people in the next few years. But remember if we can get the House then most of the damage can do with the passing of laws will stop, and if we can regain the Senate we can stop hateful ideolog judges from being installed. It is up to us to get out the vote. Hugs
The executive order took aim at transgender individuals in personal terms, noting that physical and mental health conditions make them “incompatible” with military service.
January 28, 2025 at 12:28 a.m. EST
The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
President Donald Trump on Monday night issued an executive order targeting transgender service members and an array of other people, saying that the U.S. military has been “afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists” and that “many mental and physical health conditions are incompatible with active duty.”
The list of conditions identified couldaffect tens of thousands of people depending on how it is interpreted. It cites diagnoses “that require substantial medication or medical treatment to bipolar and related disorders, eating disorders, suicidality, and prior psychiatric hospitalization.”
The order calls for the Pentagon to adopt updated policies on the medical standards required for military service. It also takes aim at transgender people in personal terms, accusing them of living in conflict “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” it adds.
The order builds on a previous directive, issued hours after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, overturning a 2021 Biden administration measure that permitted transgender troops to serve openly, which reversed an earlier ban from Trump’s first term in office. The new executive order does not immediately ban transgender individuals from serving, but it directs the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, to revise medical standards and submit a report to the president outlining steps to comply with the directive.
While the Defense Department does not keep track of the number of transgender personnel across the force, the latest shiftin the long-running policy back-and-forth could impact thousands of service members. It also represents one aspect of a far-reaching Trump administration effort to roll back diversity initiatives across the government.
Trump signed the new transgender order along with others calling for the reinstatement of troops who were discharged during the Biden administration for refusing coronavirus vaccines; the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion offices in the Defense Department; and the creation of an “Iron Dome for America,” Trump’s vision for expanded missile defense.
Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard soldier who hassaid that “being transgendered in the military causes complications and differences,” promised in his first remarks to reporters at the Pentagon on Monday that he would ensure implementation of Trump’s priorities, which also include ordering the military to guard the southern border.
“This is happening quickly,” he said. “Our job is lethality and readiness and warfighting.”
In a November podcast, Hegseth said personnel receiving medication related to gender transitions would be unable to serve effectively.
Advocates for transgender people have said that there may be as many as 15,000 in the U.S. military. A 2016 Defense Department survey found that about 9,000 identified as such. Both figures represent less than 1 percent of the 2 million people who serve in the active-duty, reserve or National Guard components of the military.
For decades, the military considered transgender people to be sexual deviants whowere unfit for service.But in 2016, after a year-long policy review, the Obama administration repealed a ban on transgender service, citing the value of ensuring that all qualified individuals were able to serve their country in uniform.
“We have to have access to 100 percent of America’s population for our all-volunteer forces to be able to recruit from among them the most highly qualified — and to retain them,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at the time.
The repeal followed the Obama administration in 2011 overturning the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which prohibited gay service members from serving openly, and the 2015 repeal of a ban on women serving in a wide array of jobs in ground combat units.
After taking office in 2017, Trump announced a ban on transgender military service in a series of tweets, without notifying key defense officials. The move triggered a scramble in the Pentagon, with then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordering another policy review.
In 2018, Mattis adopted a new policy with Trump’s tacit support that softened the full ban, effectively prohibiting new transgender service members from joining the military but allowing those already in uniform to stay on.
Snippets from my this week’s newsletter, with links.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is published in The Evening Mirror.
In January 1845, the greatest goth in literary history published what would swiftly become his most famous poem: “The Raven.”
Poe first sold the poem (for $9, the equivalent of about $375 today) to the American Review, where it would appear—under the pen name “Quarles”—in the February 1845 issue. It was published concurrently in the January 29 edition of The Evening Mirror, prefaced by a note from editor Nathaniel Parker Willis, who called it “the most effective single example of ‘fugitive poetry’ ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and ‘pokerishness.’” Well, sure.
“The Raven,” if for some reason you don’t know it, is a narrative poem about a young scholar who, sitting alone on a bleak December night, mourning his lost love Lenore, is visited by a raven, who torments him by speaking, over and over again, a single word. Poe later wrote that he knew he wanted this word—“nevermore”—to be repeated throughout the poem, but finding the idea of a person uttering it too implausible, he struck upon “the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech; and, very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven, as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone.”
Well, it worked pretty well, you might say. The poem, writes Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn, “made an impression probably not surpassed by that of any single piece of American poetry. It was widely copied, parodied, and one humorist even took over a page of the Mirror to suggest five alternatives as to the relation of Lenore to the poet.”
One-hundred-eighty years later, it may be still unsurpassed, though contenders abound. Either way, as you have probably noticed, the parodies and tributes have neverstopped. We shall be quoting it forevermore.
YEP, STILL SLAPS Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.” –EDGAR ALLAN POE, “THE RAVEN”
In other (old)news this week Benjamin Franklin writes a letter to his daughter, pooh-poohing the bald eagle as the symbol of America, and instead championing the great and noble turkey (January 26, 1784) • John Millington Synge’s play The Playboy of the Western World premieres at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin and causes a riot (January 26, 1907) • The first part of Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw is published in Collier’s Weekly magazine (January 27, 1898) • Franz Kafka begins work on his novel The Castle at the mountain resort of Spindermühle (January 27, 1922) • Jane Austen’sPride and Prejudice is published anonymously in London (January 28, 1813) • Thomas Jefferson sells his library to the government after the Library of Congress burns down (January 30, 1815) • Anton Chekhov’sThe Three Sisters premieres at the Moscow Art Theater (January 31, 1901) • The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is published (February 1, 1884) • Great American Iconoclast Ken Kesey’sOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is published (February 1, 1962) • David Foster Wallace’seerily prescientInfinite Jest is published (February 1, 1996). (snip-More)
I hope you enjoyed it! These newsletters are free, and are great for brain/heart health breaks.
January 28, 1992 Nuclear production at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Arsenal – a complex used for both power plants and nuclear weapon munition manufacture – was permanently closed after repeated revelations of environmental contamination in the surrounding land and water supply, 25 miles northwest of Denver. Following closure, the facilities were completely dismantled and the site cleared. The principal product of Rocky Flats was the fissionable plutonium trigger or “pit” at the core of every nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal. Since its construction in 1951 it was managed at different times by Dow Chemical, Rockwell International and EG&G. Dow and Rockwell paid fines in the tens of millions of dollars and were ordered to pay damages in the hundreds of millions to local residents for the environmental damage. Despite the residual plutonium contamination on the 6500-acre site, it has been transferred by the Department of Energy to the Fish and Wildlife Service (Interior) as the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge. Rocky Flats Right to Know
January 28, 1995 Soldiers’ Mothers Committee members Over 100 members of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia went to a Red Army training camp to reclaim their sons. Since its founding in 1989 the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee had worked to expose human rights violations within the Russian military and has consistently supported a true alternative service option for conscientious objectors. The Mothers Committee earned the 1996 Right Livelihood Award This link takes us to the Right Livelihood Award main page. Apparently 1996 is too far back, or I didn’t search it correctly. P&J’s link goes to an error page on the site.-A.
Rare because I rarely post such. Pastor Bolz-Weber says all this so well, and it is what I learned when I was young and growing up; what I work to apply in my own (and in no one else’s) life. I’m not proselytizing or trying to “draw anyone in.” This helps to explain why and how I feel as I do about justice and peace, and love and understanding and all that, including hope and light. Enjoy with a mind that can absorb without feeling there’s gonna be a “come forward” moment, because there’s not one. (Other than to Christians who feel as we do, but wonder about Zionism and Nationalism being as bad as they are.)
This morning I had a quick breakfast with another Lutheran pastor. This of course is not terribly remarkable in the scheme of things, except for the fact that the breakfast took place in the Kingdom of Jordan, a few feet away from the Dead Sea and my colleague had to cut the breakfast short so he could return home to his family, but he was anxious about all the military check point between here and there.
“How far of a drive is it” I asked.
“If I had a car and could drive straight there, about an hour. But my hope is that it will only take 8 hours.” He accepted that he may in fact not even make it home at all tonight.
Munther Isaac is a Palestinian Lutheran Pastor who lives and serves a church in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. Christians have been here since the day the Spirit blew through them on the day of Pentecost, so Munther and my other Palestinian Christian friends can get slightly annoyed when well meaning Christians from the West ask “when did your family convert?”.
Um, over 2,000 years ago?
Munther and I are in Jordan right now for a conference – 60 academics and church leaders from 17 countries gathered over the last several days for a consultation on Christian Zionism (belief that Jewish people have a “divine right” to the land here – using a few verses in a 4,000 year old text to have authority over foreign policy and global political realities of today), and the impact of that on Christians in the Middle East; a few days together in a majority Muslim country, across the Dead Sea from the State of Israel to talk about Christian folks’ business: how do the theological beliefs of one group of Christians impact the lives of another group of Christians halfway across the planet?
Many of us grew up with some form of Christian Zionism, I know I did. Perhaps it stemmed from a desire to be faithful to what we have been told, or a desire to help usher in the second coming of Christ (ala The Late Great Planet Earth) so he can come back and destroy the world and take us up to heaven (described this week as science fiction theology), or a desire to assuage the guilt left over from the unspeakable atrocities and genocide of the holocaust.
It will take me time to metabolize what I heard over the last few days. Christian Zionism is widespread, and far reaching in it’s impact, and I am committed to try and maintain the humility it takes as a US citizen and a Christian to consider people like Munther and my friend Mitri Raheb as reliable narrators of the impact on the ground in Palestine.
Palestinian Christians should be listened to by us, their siblings in Christ.
Munther Isaac appeared in ‘Til Kingdom Come (2020), an Israeli documentary about American Christian support for Israel.[20] In the film he explains his view to pastor William Bingham that Christian Zionism contributes to the oppression of Palestinians. After their conversation, Bingham calls Isaac an anti-semite and says that Palestinians do not exist. – Wikipedia
This morning before Munther left to make his way home, he told me a story of a family in his church. For over 150 years they have rightfully owned and inhabited their land outside Bethlehem – a beautiful parcel dotted with olive trees, often hundreds of years old themselves.
Israeli settlers (whose actions are deemed illegal by the UN Security Council) who for years have been attempting to take this family’s land, confronted them at their gate recently, demanding the family leave. The family showed them their ownership documents – dating back from Ottoman rule, then Jordanian rule through to Israeli rule. The settlers angrily lifted up their Bible and said “We have documents too. God gave us this land!”
As I mentioned, I am overwhelmed by all I heard this week and will try and write more later for those who are interested, but for now I wanted to report how one word stood out for me in a particular way during the conference, and that word is: heresy.
19th century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher defined heresy as, “that which preserves the appearance of Christianity, and yet contradicts its essence“
So perhaps that is the correct word for when, with all the trappings of Christianity behind us, we who seek to justify or maintain our dominance over another group of people use the Bible to prove that our domination`is not actually an abuse of power at the expense of others, but is, indeed, part of “God’s plan”. Because there you have the appearance of Christianity (Bible verses and God-talk) contradicting its essence (love God, and love your neighbor, blessed are the meek, etc…).
Is it not heresy when slavery is established as “God’s will”; when the subordination of women is established as “God’s will”; when discrimination against queer folks is established as “God’s will”, when the taking of one people’s land by another people is established as “God’s will” (hello, manifest destiny), when the executive VP of the National Rifle Association claims that the right to buy an assault rifle is “not bestowed by man, but granted by God”? When a self-justifying message is heretically delivered in God’s name it brings with it a poison that infects the deepest parts of us and when the poison spreads, so does the violence.
When you can say that God Almighty is co-signing on your dominance over another group of God’s children, then every means is justified, right to the end. Every inch of land stolen, every suicide bombing enacted, every act of violence committed, every weapon used, every checkpoint and illegal detention, every child who dies, every tower that falls to the ground – all of it covered under some sort of bullshit spiritual umbrella policy. There are no means that need justifying if we claim God as our patron and guide.
And I imagine God is just about sick to death of it.
As I claimed in my book about sexual shame and religion, we should never be more loyal to a doctrine or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming people we re-think those teachings. Amen?
Speaking up for Palestinians often comes at a cost. Those of you who have done it know. I also know, but am frankly too tired to care right now. So, if based on my recounting of the stories of my friends and colleagues, anyone is moved to called me anti-semitic, please open up the notes app on your phone and feel free to write it there but I will delete your unfounded accusations if you leave them here.
My apologies for the edge in my writing voice. We are all exhausted and as my friend Jodi just texted me, “this month has been two years long already.”
Thank you for reading. I am genuinely sending my love. Please pray this ceasefire holds. And for those waiting on the side of a road right now to return to the rubble of their homes. And for the hostages and prisoners who were released yesterday. I cannot imagine the trauma.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) wants to make ballot initiatives impossible.FL already requires 60% support to pass—abortion rights & legal weed failed despite 56-57% support in 2024.Last decade, voters passed amendments to end gerrymandering & restore voting rights, which DeSantis also undermined
Several other intelligence agencies continue to favor the natural-origin theory, and there is no evidence SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic, was in any laboratory before the outbreak.
The conspiracy nut jobs are in power now, who needs evidence and facts for something to be true.
All that valuable oceanfront property. Much too nice for those dirty people. The Israeli military has already done a good job of demolition. We need to rebuild for people who will appreciate the beauty of the place and be willing to pay to maintain it. /s
On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln rose before the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, to make a speech. Just 28 years old, Lincoln had begun to practice law and had political ambitions. But he was worried that his generation might not preserve the republic that the founders had handed to it for transmission to yet another generation. He took as his topic for that January evening, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.”
Lincoln saw trouble coming, but not from a foreign power, as other countries feared. The destruction of the United States, he warned, could come only from within. “If destruction be our lot,” he said, “we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
The trouble Lincoln perceived stemmed from the growing lawlessness in the country as men ignored the rule of law and acted on their passions, imposing their will on their neighbors through violence. He pointed specifically to two recent events: the 1836 lynching of free Black man Francis McIntosh in St. Louis, Missouri, and the 1837 murder of white abolitionist editor Elijah P. Lovejoy by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois.
But the problem of lawlessness was not limited to individual instances, he said. A public practice of ignoring the law eventually broke down all the guardrails designed to protect individuals, while lawbreakers, going unpunished, became convinced they were entitled to act without restraint. “Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane,” Lincoln said, “they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation.”
The only way to guard against such destruction, Lincoln said, was to protect the rule of law on which the country was founded. “As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor…. Let reverence for the laws…become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.”
Lincoln was quick to clarify that he was not saying all laws were good. Indeed, he said, bad laws should be challenged and repealed. But the underlying structure of the rule of law, based in the Constitution, could not be abandoned without losing democracy.
Lincoln didn’t stop there. He warned that the very success of the American republic threatened its continuation. “[M]en of ambition and talents” could no longer make their name by building the nation—that glory had already been won. Their ambition could not be served simply by preserving what those before them had created, so they would achieve distinction through destruction.
For such a man, Lincoln said, “Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.” With no dangerous foreign power to turn people’s passions against, people would turn from the project of “establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty” and would instead turn against each other.
Lincoln reminded his audience that the torch of American democracy had been passed to them. The Founders had used their passions to create a system of laws, but the time for passion had passed, lest it tear the nation apart. The next generation must support democracy through “sober reason,” he said. He called for Americans to exercise “general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws.”
“Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’”
What became known as the Lyceum Address is one of the earliest speeches of Lincoln’s to have been preserved, and at the time it established him as a rising politician and political thinker. But his recognition, in a time of religious fervor and moral crusades, that the law must prevail over individual passions reverberates far beyond the specific crises of the 1830s.
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