A
particularly well-placed and insightful person close to the powerful of
Washington contributed the following observation of disparate views
regarding the president:
One might consider that the author of this elevated and impressively-written commentary is an insider referring to President Trump; one would be wrong.
The author is Edward L. Pierce, secretary to Charles Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts before, during, and after the Civil War. The subject of his analysis could well be President Trump, but it is Abraham Lincoln.
The modern reader is struck by the similarity of criticism and the truth of the author's conclusion; that while the elites, the establishment, and certainly his enemies hate him, the people love Trump and rally behind him just as they did for Lincoln.
They do this because they are aware of the gravity of the moment -- another revolutionary challenge presented to the country by the Democratic party and its utopian, globalist, communist leaders and fellow travelers. That most Democrats would deny that they are engaged in revolution is not relevant.
History is not only linear; it is also cyclical. In each of the three or four revolutionary moments in our history (post founding) the opposition’s rhetoric was more insidious than during times of political and societal calm. Today’s common vicious criticism of the president by fake Republicans, fake journalists, and ignorant/revolutionary Democrats is reminiscent of the same made against Jackson, Lincoln, and Reagan.
The heightened rhetoric and the grotesque misuse of the impeachment process to engender a coup d'etat against the president and overturn the election of 2016 is further evidence that we are once again in a revolutionary moment.
In a speech delivered at Boston on July 4, 1863, in the midst of national dissolution and civil war, Oliver Wendell Holmes, (father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., justice of the Supreme Court), said:
Any nation conceived as a consequence of revolution will forever retain a revolutionary seed; it is part of our heritage and our national character. While this is generally understood and known it places the responsibility upon the living generation to remain vigilant against revolutionary forces and concepts that would overturn our dearly bought freedoms and rights.
Now, we are engaged in a great national crisis, driven once again by the forces of moral and ethical corruption and the deathless contagion that is utopianism and ignorance. This challenge is not new and is a recurrent cycle in our history; just as it threatens the nation today similar will be seen again most assuredly by future Americans.
As the impeachment façade continues apace and fundamentally anti-American, anti-sovereignty concepts such as globalism and communism are legitimized and championed by deluded political mediocrities and their fake journalist helpers, it is clear that much is at stake.
In a January 21, 1830 letter to Daniel Webster written during Andrew Jackson’s presidency, former Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court James Kent wrote that “all theories of government that suppose the mass of people virtuous and able to act virtuously are purely Utopian.”
While Jackson’s challenges were not quite the same as those facing the current president, the similar odious specter of those who prefer wealth and power and false political ideologies to country and constitution are essentially identical. They are identical because they are modern incarnations of timeless failures.
As Jackson’s first presidential term approached and the vicious criticism of the opposition press continued unabated, Jackson’s friend (later Secretary of War) John Henry Eaton wrote to Jackson that, “Nothing now to be said of you can… [work] the least injury. The Press has overthrown its own power through repeated falsehoods.”
Fake news happens every time the members of the 4th Estate are overwhelmed with ignorance and partisanship and forget the obligation to truth that is fundamental to their profession. Their special constitutionally recognized role (and obligations) as guardians of democracy and of the nation recedes to but a memory.
The grotesque and dangerous collapse of the press is an old story that began with Washington’s second term and was noted with alarm by his successor, John Adams, and the third president, Jefferson. (In an attempt to correct the press, Jefferson surreptitiously caused one opposition editor to be tried for libel, see: People v. Croswell, 1804).
That these challenges to the country have happened before and that history is both linear and cyclical are curious truths. For us, the living generation, it is now nothing less than an existential challenge to us similar in nature to those faced by Americans during previous revolutionary times.
One month before his death, Robert E. Lee wrote this to a friend and former Army of Northern Virginia staff officer:
We are met amidst this our great crisis -- as the advancing wave of ignorance and revolutionism begins to crest. It is for us to save the country, acknowledge the truth, and expose those revolutionists and the corrupt whose purposes are so well known and so unpleasantly familiar.
And we are not to lose hope.
"Visitors to Washington... were struck with the want of personal loyalty to him. They found few senators and representatives who would maintain cordially and positively that he combined the qualifications of a leader in the great crisis; and the larger number of them, as the national election approached, were dissatisfied with his candidacy. An indifference towards him was noted in the commercial centers and among the most intelligent of the loyal people. . . He was thought to be wanting in the style, in the gravity of manner and conversation, which are becoming the chief of the nation. His habit of interrupting the consideration of grave matters with stories was attributed to levity, and offended sober-minded men who sought him on public business… and the objection in general was, that in capacity and temperament he was inadequate to the responsibilities of the head of a nation at such a momentous period. This estimate was honestly held by many clear-headed and patriotic men; nor can their sincerity be questioned...
This also is to be said, that whatever those who came near him thought, the popular instinct was with him; and plain men -- the masses of the people -- did not admit the limitations apparent to those who were present at the seat of government. Indeed, the very qualities and ways which repelled public men brought the President near to the people."
One might consider that the author of this elevated and impressively-written commentary is an insider referring to President Trump; one would be wrong.
The author is Edward L. Pierce, secretary to Charles Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts before, during, and after the Civil War. The subject of his analysis could well be President Trump, but it is Abraham Lincoln.
The modern reader is struck by the similarity of criticism and the truth of the author's conclusion; that while the elites, the establishment, and certainly his enemies hate him, the people love Trump and rally behind him just as they did for Lincoln.
They do this because they are aware of the gravity of the moment -- another revolutionary challenge presented to the country by the Democratic party and its utopian, globalist, communist leaders and fellow travelers. That most Democrats would deny that they are engaged in revolution is not relevant.
History is not only linear; it is also cyclical. In each of the three or four revolutionary moments in our history (post founding) the opposition’s rhetoric was more insidious than during times of political and societal calm. Today’s common vicious criticism of the president by fake Republicans, fake journalists, and ignorant/revolutionary Democrats is reminiscent of the same made against Jackson, Lincoln, and Reagan.
The heightened rhetoric and the grotesque misuse of the impeachment process to engender a coup d'etat against the president and overturn the election of 2016 is further evidence that we are once again in a revolutionary moment.
In a speech delivered at Boston on July 4, 1863, in the midst of national dissolution and civil war, Oliver Wendell Holmes, (father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., justice of the Supreme Court), said:
"We know pretty nearly how much sincerity there is in the fears so clamorously expressed, and how far they are found in company with uncompromising hostility to the armed enemies of the Nation. We have learned to put a true value on the services of the watch-dog who bays the moon but does not bite the thief!"
Any nation conceived as a consequence of revolution will forever retain a revolutionary seed; it is part of our heritage and our national character. While this is generally understood and known it places the responsibility upon the living generation to remain vigilant against revolutionary forces and concepts that would overturn our dearly bought freedoms and rights.
Now, we are engaged in a great national crisis, driven once again by the forces of moral and ethical corruption and the deathless contagion that is utopianism and ignorance. This challenge is not new and is a recurrent cycle in our history; just as it threatens the nation today similar will be seen again most assuredly by future Americans.
As the impeachment façade continues apace and fundamentally anti-American, anti-sovereignty concepts such as globalism and communism are legitimized and championed by deluded political mediocrities and their fake journalist helpers, it is clear that much is at stake.
In a January 21, 1830 letter to Daniel Webster written during Andrew Jackson’s presidency, former Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court James Kent wrote that “all theories of government that suppose the mass of people virtuous and able to act virtuously are purely Utopian.”
While Jackson’s challenges were not quite the same as those facing the current president, the similar odious specter of those who prefer wealth and power and false political ideologies to country and constitution are essentially identical. They are identical because they are modern incarnations of timeless failures.
As Jackson’s first presidential term approached and the vicious criticism of the opposition press continued unabated, Jackson’s friend (later Secretary of War) John Henry Eaton wrote to Jackson that, “Nothing now to be said of you can… [work] the least injury. The Press has overthrown its own power through repeated falsehoods.”
Fake news happens every time the members of the 4th Estate are overwhelmed with ignorance and partisanship and forget the obligation to truth that is fundamental to their profession. Their special constitutionally recognized role (and obligations) as guardians of democracy and of the nation recedes to but a memory.
The grotesque and dangerous collapse of the press is an old story that began with Washington’s second term and was noted with alarm by his successor, John Adams, and the third president, Jefferson. (In an attempt to correct the press, Jefferson surreptitiously caused one opposition editor to be tried for libel, see: People v. Croswell, 1804).
That these challenges to the country have happened before and that history is both linear and cyclical are curious truths. For us, the living generation, it is now nothing less than an existential challenge to us similar in nature to those faced by Americans during previous revolutionary times.
One month before his death, Robert E. Lee wrote this to a friend and former Army of Northern Virginia staff officer:
“My experience of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them nor indisposed me to serve them; nor, in spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or of the present aspect of affairs, do I despair of the future. The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.”
We are met amidst this our great crisis -- as the advancing wave of ignorance and revolutionism begins to crest. It is for us to save the country, acknowledge the truth, and expose those revolutionists and the corrupt whose purposes are so well known and so unpleasantly familiar.
And we are not to lose hope.
