Over the weekend a prominent Twitter account asked whether we should be placing as much importance on Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, that we do.
"Do you ever feel we, as a nation, put Abraham Lincoln 'on a pedestal'?" they tweeted.
"What do you think might be a more useful, more complex, or more realistic way to think about or memorialize the 16th president?"
In this era of toppling statues, rewriting history, and banning anything reminding us of the Confederacy, this may not sound out of the norm.
But unlike Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, Lincoln didn’t fight for the South — he led the Union.
Unlike some of the Founders, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln never owned any slaves — he freed the slaves.
But what was more puzzling was the Twitter account that questioned Lincoln’s prominence in history — it was the National Park Service, a federal agency.
What’s even more baffling is that it was a national historic site maintained by the Park Service. Specifically, it was Ford’s Theatre — the site where actor, Confederate sympathizer, and spy John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln during the first months of his second term as president.
Townhall political editor Guy Benson asked, "Did John Wilkes Booth tweet this?"
He closed with "#SicSemperTyrannis," Latin for "thus always to tyrants," which Booth shouted after shooting Lincoln.
If you want to destroy a society, you only have to chip away at its foundations, its principles, those things that make it work and prosper, and denounce those things making it unique.
The most unique character of any society is its history — that which distinguishes it from all others — those things that are a source of pride, as well as its warts.
We might expect some college freshman to want to rewrite history, but a federal agency?
An agency that’s supposed to be dedicated to preserving history?
But this shouldn’t come as a surprise — government has supported erasing history by removing statues and renaming schools and public buildings.
Government has also been actively destroying the family unit — the very fabric of society — by replacing the family unit with the state.
State and local governments have used the COVID-19 outbreak to enact mask and vaccine mandates for school-age children — without parental permission.
Minor children in some jurisdictions can also acquire birth control or even abortions without parental consent.
Jurisdictions have infringed upon fundamental human rights like the free exercise of religion, freedom of expression, and the right to keep and bear arms.
The American flag has been called "racist" in some quarters, and the Constitution has been referred to as archaic, discriminatory. and non-inclusive, despite its first three words — "We the people."
What can be more inclusive than that?
The public education system in many areas is being destroyed by emphasizing LGBT studies and critical race theory over areas of study that can actually help student succeed in the real world.
The left has also been hard at work destroying capitalism — the economic system that is responsible for lifting more people from poverty to prosperity than any other system.
As for Lincoln himself, the country needs heroes — especially in an age of doubt, deceit and turmoil. And one would be hard-pressed to find one better than "Honest Abe."
He’s perhaps the most written-about president in history, and to answer Ford’s Theatre’s question — do we place him "on a pedestal"? — he’s literally been placed on pedestals at town squares in communities large and small throughout the country.
His memory should be cherished and preserved, as well as the memory of all American heroes and villains alike, as well as our symbols and traditions.
They’re uniquely ours and should be preserved, so that our "government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.