Eight score and seven years ago, Abraham Lincoln gave his famous “house divided” speech to close out the 1858 Illinois Republican State Convention. He began with a candid appeal to understanding the current situation that they faced:
“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.”
Today, America’s own house trembles under the weight of escalating polemics, political violence, and a profound decline in civic integrity. Just last year, a bullet whizzed past President Donald Trump at a rally. More recently, a deranged assassin took the lives of a sitting state representative and her husband in cold blood.
In many ways, our current situation is a repudiation of Lincoln’s warnings. However, what is most interesting is the way that Lincoln’s critique of his opponent, Stephen Douglas, maps perfectly to the current state of Democratic leadership. Missing from the equation is any appeal to principle and moral courage.
Take Governor Tim Walz’s response to the Minnesota tragedy, for example: “It’s not about hatred, it’s not about mean tweets, it’s not about demeaning someone, it’s leading with grace and compassion and vision and compromise and decency,” he said tepidly.
Lincoln, however, was cut from profoundly different cloth. He acknowledged his opponent’s political wit and skill, but anchored his entire argument to a fundamental disagreement on principle. Then, he rallied his nascent party with a resonant declaration on coalition building:
“Of strange, discordant, and even, hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy.”
They rallied, of course, under the noble goal of ending slavery. What, then, is the grand uniting principle of today’s Democratic Party? Lincoln goes on:
“Did we brave all then to falter now? – now – when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent?”
To many Democrats, President Donald Trump epitomizes this enemy – a populist, even an aspiring king. Yet, if they are truly fighting the good fight against such a perceived threat, why have they failed to effectively mobilize against him and his men? Why haven’t they gathered ‘the four winds’ of all those genuinely opposed to the supposed breach of what they claim is good and democratic?
For the common voter, it appears Democrats desperately need leadership that can transcend the quagmire of microaggressions and identity politics. Publius, in Federalist 51, observed that justice forms a foundational pillar for a large republican consensus. Yet, the current Democratic coalition—comprising institutional liberals, far-left activists, and identity-obsessed youth—struggles even to agree on the very definition of justice, let alone its concrete application.
Especially in a period where Trump’s actions are far from unilaterally popular on the right, it is a huge missed opportunity to generate any national momentum behind the Democratic cause.
Public discourse would be healthier if Democratic leaders adopted a principled and dignified stance against the “existential” threats they so frequently decry, rather than merely tolerating disorganized demonstrations often populated by the docile or the madmen. This would mean unequivocally rejecting all political violence, condemning extremism from any quarter, and staunchly defending democratic processes above partisan gain
WALZ SAYS ‘NOT ABOUT MEAN TWEETS’ IN REMARKS AFTER ARREST OF ASSASSINATION SUSPECT
The Constitution’s framers understood that robust disagreement was a fundamental ingredient to republican life. The current reliance on selective outrage is fundamentally incongruent with principle.
Both major parties grapple with the problem of definition, in the end, but Democrats stand disproportionately more to lose in the race to 2028.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
