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Why Obama Is Right to Use Abe's Bible
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UPDATE: The Presidential Inaugural Committee announced on Tuesday, "President-elect Barack Obama will take the oath of office using the same Bible upon which President Lincoln was sworn in at his first inauguration." Obama will be the first president to use the bible since Lincoln did in 1861.
Rumors are circulating that Barack Obama will take the Presidential oath on January 20 with one hand on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible. Although the Library of Congress, which houses the Bible, would not confirm this, they did say that the Obama team has expressed interest in it. “It’s been discussed, it’s in the air,” a Library of Congress Rare Books spokesperson said.
The Bible itself, an 1853 Oxford Edition, is covered in worn red velvet and sealed with a metal clasp. It is small in size, not much bigger than a man’s hand. The Lincoln Bible was not a family heirloom—he came to Washington without one—but is thought to have come from the Supreme Court’s holdings. A historian in the Library of Congress’ Rare Books Division said he was not aware that the book had been used to inaugurate any other president.
While Bush related to Lincoln as an unpopular wartime President, Obama identifies with him as a unifier.
Were Obama to choose Lincoln’s Bible, the spokesperson said, it would be escorted from the Library of Congress to the Capitol by a security detail and a member of the Library’s Rare Books Division.
The president elect has drawn steadily on Lincoln throughout his campaign, highlighting commonalities with the 16th President and portraying himself as Lincoln’s spiritual heir. He observed in a 2005 Time article, “… As Lincoln called once upon the better angels of our nature, I believe that he is calling still, across the ages, to summon some measure of that character, the American character, in each of us today.”
According to Henry Louis Gates Jr., the W.E.B DuBois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University who is currently writing a book on Lincoln, “Barack Obama is wrapping himself in the myth of Lincoln, but a particular myth that he’s interpreting in his own way. Lincoln’s image is so capacious that all of us can find ourselves in it somewhere. All subsequent presidents have been able to find themselves reflected in Lincoln through the myth that each generation concocts.” Gates explains that while George W. Bush related to Lincoln as an unpopular wartime President, Obama identifies with him as a unifier.
When Lincoln was sworn in by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney on March 4, 1861 (two weeks after Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated as President of the Confederacy) he took control of a nation divided. Obama, similarly, is inheriting a country at crisis and a constituency torn over controversial issues.
After taking his oath of office, Lincoln ended one of his greatest speeches by dedicating himself to unifying the splintering country: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” Nearly a century and a half later, if Obama places his hand on Lincoln’s Bible, he will undoubtedly be hoping some of that magnanimity will rub off on him.
Isabel Wilkinson is a recent graduate of Princeton University, where she majored in Art and Archaeology. She was also editor of 'Street,' the arts and culture section of the Daily Princetonian. Isabel is originally from New York City and has interned at Women's Wear Daily and the Council on Foreign Relations. She is now pursuing a Masters degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and freelances for New York Magazine and The Villager.
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I hope PE Obama does use the Lincoln Bible maybe just maybe it would put to rest this dumb notion that he is a Muslim!!!!!
While this will please (yeah right) the idiots who still think he's a Muslim, you'd think they would've borrowed a Bible from one of our non-Athiest presidents?
I don't think it's a coincidence that our two most intellectual presidents (him and Jefferson) had seriously doubts about the belief of a God.
Calm down Obama!!! I love you, I voted for you, I worked my tail off to get you in the White House but let's let history make the Lincoln comparisons
This poser will put on any cloak that serves political advantage.
Do I sound cynical and disappointed?
Manipulating vote voiding: fundamentalist homophobic preachers asking God's guidance at his inauguration.
There's less real commitment here than even Bill Clinton had and that wasn't much.
The nation is in for another round of finger-in-the-wind, political sail trimming, expeditious seeking posturing.
If I sound cynical it is because I think what leaders do should be their measure, not the nice words they use to obstruficate what they do.
Ms. Wilkinson might want to review her American history. President Lincoln was sworn in by Supreme Court Chief Justice ROGER Brooke Taney, not Robert B. Taney.
A person of any intellectual sophistication at all recognizes that the grueling process whereby persons are elected to office in this country requires a certain amount of chameleon efforts. The higher the office, the more of this chameleon is perforce displayed. It matters not if a candidate wishes this to be true - it IS true. Nobody who has been elected to office in the last seventy-five years has told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The question about Obama. it isn't whether he has been less than transparent. It isn't whether he has made enormous promises that simply cannot be kept by any human agency. It isn't whether he is a Christian or a Muslim. It isn't whether he attempts to take onto himself the mythos of a legendary past president. There are just two simple questions about any president or political office-holder: 1) Does he believe that the ends always justify the means? and 2.) How far will he go to get what he wants done accomplished?
There was an historical political party that believed that the elimination of poverty, disease, crime and ignorance was a noble end, that it would uplift the human race. They believed that these noble ends justified any means. From that, they created concentration camps and gas chambers. I am pointing out that Nazis are the most powerful example of people who believe that the ends justify ANY means at their disposal. I have no doubt that many people who first joined that political party had no intention of compromising everything they held dear to achieve those ends, but it happened.
So what does this have to do with Barrack Obama? Am I calling him a Nazi? NOT IN THIS LIFETIME!
The point is this: A politician who tells the entire truth will not be elected in this country, not to the office of president. The candidates are told that the 'people' want the truth, but that is a lie. The people want an opiate. "Tell me what I want to hear, promise me what I need, don't scare me with too much truth, and I will vote for you". Don't complain when the guy who does that best gets elected. Obama cannot possibly keep even the intent of the promises he made while running for office. No human could. The judgement of his presidency will not lie in how many promises he kept or how closely he aligns himself with Lincoln. Much of this judgement will have to await decades to see what fruit his decisions will bear. In the light of history, many presidents have been judged differently than they were by their contemporaries. So it will be with Obama. What he says today, what he does today, won't mean much for years to come. What will matter is how he makes those decisions, and whether he too becomes a president who believes that the noble ends justify any despicable means. Let's give the man a chance. He has a tall order to fill.
I'm a left-leaning, agnostic, secular humanist with a deeply cynical streak.
But the very notion of Barack Obama laying his hand to that particular Bible--the same one Lincoln touched--on Inauguration Day moves me deeply.
What a JOKE!!
Obama hasn't spent one day in office yet & he is being compared to America's greatest Presidents!
Issywise:
What we are in for is not another President, whose hold on the English language is tenuous, at best.
Obstruficate?
What is that? The melding of obstruct and obfuscate?
Hey - the great part of English is it can be so flexible in the hands of a dextrous user. However, if you are going to pick up the scalpel from Lewis Carroll, you must be sure to beware the Jabberwock, my son.
Once again the Pretender-Elect tries to wrap history around his fraudulent candidacy. The worst part of it all is that so many people are willing participants in the destruction of our Republic.
Will Obama ever lay his hand on his real birth certificate? maybe he burned it in the crematory with average white granny.
I am waiting for a president who will forgo the Bible and "affirm" rather than "swear on a Bible", an alternative that a 21st century president will certainly do at some point in our history. I did see that Obama's grandmother's memorial service was held at a Unitarian Church, which is a good start in the direction of the eventual triumph of reason over superstition.
If Obama wants to be considered justified in using Lincoln's bible, maybe he should consider the fact that the initial start of the Civil War was about trade tariffs placed on the south from the north and Lincoln was blocked in to war by British soldiers in Canada and French soldiers in Mexico. Lincoln made several speeches to this effect, even stating if he could maintain the Union without ending slavery, he would do so willingly.
Also fair to mention, would be the role Lincoln's attempt at borrowing money from The Bank of England, a private bank
just like the Federal Reserve, would play in Congress printing money at 0% interest to fund the war for the North.
If anyone here touts to really understand history, then they have to confirm that ALL wars are monetary in function, device and character. It never has to do with, "liberation" or "democracy" (side note: we live in a "republic")
you all should do yourselves a favor and check what I type, here are some valid sites that substantiate what I say;
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936
http://www.classicreader.com/book/3237/23/
http://american_almanac.tripod.com/lincoln3.htm
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11600
Thank you.
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