In these times of turmoil, some words from the past

When Wednesday’s insurrection at the Capitol was breaking out, I was having a cup of coffee and reading Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years by Carl Sandburg. Ironically, Wednesday was Sandburg’s birthday, and the American people were uncomfortable.

As a young reporter, fond of socialism, he believed that progress in America was impossible without chaos, disruption and violence. As an older man, by then cherished as “the people’s poet”, he evolved to believe American democracy was uniquely capable of getting us, eventually, where we needed to go. I wondered, what do his words from the past have to say to us today? So I’ve been busy, reading his wisdom with today’s eyes. And boy, is he talking. If you’ll indulge me, I think he has messages for many of us:

For me: “Be careful with your words, once they are said they can only be forgiven, not forgotten.”

For Donald Trump: “A liar goes in fine clothes, a liar goes in rags, a liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes. A liar is a liar and lives in the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.”

For Trump’s legal team: “I understood it, until you explained it to me.”

For Mitch McConnell: “For the man who was rode out of town on a rail, if it wasn’t for the honor of it, he’d just as soon walk.”

For the House of Representatives: “Enough small empty boxes thrown into a big empty box fill it full.”

For senators: “I’ve often wondered what it is an old building can do to you when you happen to know a little about things that went on long ago in that building.”

For MAGA voters: “History says, if it pleases, Excuse me, I beg your pardon, it will never happen again if I can help it.”

For America’s adversaries: “The single clinched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other.”

For Republicans: “Have I, have you, been too silent? Is there an easy crime of silence?”

For Democrats: “There’s a lot of cerebral leadership these days. It’s leadership with nothing of the blood in it. It’s pathetic. It’s all data and diagrams. Where’s the soul and the heart?”

For the U.S. Supreme Court: “I’ve cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.”

For Joe Biden: “And the Sphinx broke its long silence: ‘Don’t expect too much’.”

For Kamala Harris: “I am! I have come through! I belong! I am myself the achievement.”

For the media: “My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.”

For Black Lives Matter: “Let the gentle bush dig it’s root deep and spread up to split the Boulder.”

For anti-maskers: “It is the business of little minds to shrink.”

For the mob: “Revolt and terror pay a price. Order and law have a cost.”

For people of faith: “Among ancient and modern architects there is a proverb: The arch never sleeps. When the arch holds, all else holds. Love stands and hangs by an arch. The rainbow is an arch. Hate and pride break arches. Love and understanding build unbreakable arches.”

For 366,000 American casualties of COVID: “The dead hold in their hands only what they have given away.”

For the American people: “I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision.”

Oh, and in the end there’s something for us all to ponder: “The people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold. The people...where to, what next?”

This story was originally published January 10, 2021 at 8:28 PM.