Team of Rivals

It is 1:00 a.m. and I have just finished a marathon reading session, bringing me to the end of a difficult -- but engrossing -- book. Team of Rivals does an exceptional job of telling an exceptional story about Abraham LIncoln. Everyone who is interested in politics and the human condition should read this book. I cried when I read the Gettysburg Address, and I cried when I finished the book.

I think about the ghastly conditions of so many Unionists and Confederates 150 years ago, and the mind and spirit of a President who willed a different future into place for them. As Seward said when Lincoln died: "He belongs to the ages." The question is, why haven't we taken his will, and his character, and his habits, and made them manifest? Why, 150 years later, do so many people, in so many democracies, feel that not only they but democracy itself is abused, betrayed, and sold into slavery?

The time for a new emanicpation proclamation is now. "It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work... that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." (A. Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863)