Misquote and Obfuscate

Before I return to posting about some agrarian project in the works for the day, I can't help but pass on what I found early this morning from the folks at Hands Off Texas!  This comes via the Barking Moonbat Early Warning System.  Please note my comments at the end.

On Wednesday during a speech in Parma, Ohio, President Obama decided to quote a former President to help justify his policy initiatives:

“But in the words of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, I also believe that government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves”.

I assume he was paraphrasing this actual quote from President Lincoln, but unfortunately he left out the most important part:

“The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves in their separate, and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.”

Obama doesn’t get it. And he clearly doesn’t get Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. President, while we’re all encouraged that you look to President Lincoln for guidance, let me share with you some other words of wisdom from our 16th President:

“You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.”

“Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.” 

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” 

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

And, Mr. President, you might want to read The Ten Cannots written in 1916 by William J. H. Boetcker, often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln:

• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

• You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.

• You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

• You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.

• You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

• You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

• You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.

• And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

And while we’re at it, Mr. President, PLEASE share this quote from Abraham Lincoln with Biden:

“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.”

I know that many in this country revere Abraham Lincoln.  I do not.  I read DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln".  Lincoln violated the very things he said he believed in, in several of those quotes above.  He imprisoned congressmen and publishers who criticized him and agreed that the sovereign States of the Union in the South had every right under the Constitution to sever their ties.  And don't even try to say it had anything to do with slavery until well after the war had begun.  If you can read DiLorenzo's meticulously researched and footnoted book and still think that Lincoln was a great president, I feel sorry for you.  Lincoln, more than any other president, did the greatest damage to the Constitution.  For some people, that's a tough pill to swallow, but it's the truth.