Is This Any Way To Celebrate Lincoln's Birthday?

This morning, I awoke early, read my Bible and prayed, showered and shaved, got dressed, ate breakfast while blogging a post, and drove half-way to work before I realized it is Lincoln's birthday.

Now I'm facing a conference call at 8 that will get over just in time for a meeting at 10, which I'll leave early to get to an all-day meeting that started at 9. Then I'll race out to the next county over for a meeting this evening.

Is this anyway to celebrate the birthday of one of our greatest presidents? I'm tempted to put the company on a retro schedule of taking Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays off and working on the awful substitute holiday, President's day. But look at that schedule! How can we do that?

In any case, it is President Lincoln's birthday today, so I leave you with this quote from Lincoln, from an 1864 speech at a fair in Baltimore, courtesy of Bill Bennett's Morning in America.

"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, bur incomparable things, called by the called by two different and incompatible names-liberty and tyranny.

“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.”

Lincoln was speaking of slavery -- the sheep, he explained in a portion of the quote I was unable to find on-line, was black.

We speak of liberating Iraq and giving the people freedom. The left speaks of occupying Iraq and taking away freedom.

I'm tempted to say we've learned nothing since Lincoln's day, but it's clear we have: Some of the people are fooled all of the time.

Related Tags: Lincoln, Liberty, Slavery, Iraq