The Disunited States: Was Abe Lincoln Wrong?

The Disunited States: Was Abe Lincoln Wrong?

Congratulations to South Sudan for its brave attempt to eliminate racism and atrocities by becoming independent. 

I can't help questioning what would have happened if Lincoln had failed in his efforts to preserve the union 150 years ago. Two countries would have emerged, true to political orientation, liberal versus conservative, slave versus free states, as the situation persists to this day, though the slave population is no longer racially exclusive.

Moral outrage would have eventually outlawed African American slavery--witness how short-lived was the essence of the Emancipation Proclamation anyway. Jim Crow followed hard on its heels. Blacks would have migrated North in larger numbers.

We might have avoided both world wars.   Who knows how politics would have fared? In that partisan ideologies have so diverged, Obama might honor his campaign promises far better by proposing the sort of divide that Sudan has just accomplished. Then he'd make history for reasons other than his race.

Radical versus radical, this era might become, instead of moderation when it serves the wealthy far more than the poor.

We might never have become the world's greatest power, with all the corruption and deceit that status has given us, all the money we blow on WMD and war that has bred the massive deficit.

The wealthy we will always have among us, I've said before, paraphrasing Jesus Christ. Would their patterns of greed have proliferated in a Disunited States the way they have plagued us for so much of our history? 

Granted, many of the greedy capitalists reside in New York City, not the South.

We might strike a deal to allow them to continue their sinful path if they move South. Geography does have its advantages, though globalization would work against them these days and seemingly forever.

Why not acknowledge things as they are? Instead of groveling toward the right and handing over even more of our economy to the top one percent, Obama would move in the right direction, left. He has tried to call time, and force a compromise out of his foes. You should have seen a photo taken of him and Boehner yesterday--how disgusted they looked after their recent one-on-one encounter (I hesitate to use the term "meeting," which might imply "meeting of the minds.)" They practically had their backs to each other.

Let's face it, our nation as it is becomes less "of the people, by the people, and for the people" every day. As such, if it doesn't perish from the earth, most of us will be poorer than Job's turkey before long, if we're not already--poorer than the people of South Sudan, our hypothetical role model.

What would Lincoln say were he to return? That prototype of rags-to- riches so mirrored by John Boehner's life experience?

Granted, Lincoln was a pragmatist, as much of his correspondence betrays, rather than an idealist.

Was Lincoln actually wrong in preserving the Union? Is history proving that?

In a Disunited States, we won't perish from the earth as such; merely evolve as we need to. The term "American" is used too loosely anyway. Canadians rarely refer to themselves as Americans.

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