Among the lessons taught by Lincoln was that a statesman finds a way of leading people to talk about the things that are truly central even though people may not wish to talk about them. My concern is that we have produced a truncated discourse on politics in this country, with a strong aversion to talking about those matters of moral consequence that people do in fact care about.
And if we come to settle more firmly into the grooves of that kind of politics, the question is do we become the kind of truncated persons who fit that truncated political world?
The Constitution begins with the powers of the government extending from the consent of "We the People." But that people isn't any group of people. It's not a group of mobsters or thieves. The people of the Constitution -- or a constitutional people -- is one which recognizes the standard for politics is the laws of nature and Nature's God -- or reason and revelation. Lincoln saw that the people in the 1850's had lost their bearing and needed to come back to the principles, virtues, and character that distinguished them as the people of the Constitution. And it is important to note that prior to Lincoln, the issue of slavery was treated by many politicians much like how many "moral" issues of today are treated: it was put on the sidelines (at times slavery was barred from being discussed on the floors of Congress and it was thought that any talk about it would unduly rile the public and incite sectional strife).
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