America has lost the “Art of Leadership.” We no longer develop men and women with integrity and courage. Instead of Statesmen, we have political hacks only concerned with getting reelected. Instead of people with a backbone and the guts to stand up against injustice, we have a Congress of sycophants willing to do whatever they are told to do regardless of how unethical or immoral it may be. We have thousands of lawyers who do not uphold justice but find arguments to support an amorality that meets the letter of the law but ignores the significance of decency, goodness, honesty, conscience and fairness.
In my next blogs, I want to write about 41 insights regarding leadership from one of the greatest American leaders and Presidents of all time. I found a compilation of these insights in an old collectors edition of “Civil War Times” published in Winter, 2013. I would like for you to hear the words of Abraham Lincoln and what he had to say about leadership. I will include some of my own experiences from my years of working with senior management in over 32 organizations. Some of the men and women I worked with were incredible leaders. Most of them wanted to be better leaders and that is where I brought the teachings and thoughts of W. E. Deming to my consulting practice. Dr. Deming achieved extraordinary results in business by tapping the knowledge, skills and abilities of ordinary people. Senator Hubert Humphrey famously said that “Democracy is a system that achieves extraordinary results with ordinary people.”
I should issue one caveat before I begin this series. There are some who disparage “Honest Abe” as not really caring about slavery. They argue, Lincoln only fought the war to save the Union and not to free the slaves. My readings and knowledge of Lincoln shows that nothing, I repeat NOTHING could be further from the truth. Lincoln was appalled at slavery from the time he was a young child until he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The idea that Abe did not care about slavery is a lie fostered by a bitter Confederacy that wanted to hide their heinous practice behind the cloak of states rights.
Lincoln said, “I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.” –August 22, 1862, Letter to Horace Greeley
Lincoln also said, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it.” —August 22, 1862, Letter to Horace Greeley
Two very different goals. Two very different thoughts. What are we to make of Lincoln’s motivations? The Confederacy pushed the latter because it justified their defense of States rights to choose slavery as a viable economic system. Several of the constitutions of the new Confederate states proclaimed their rights to practice slavery.
In its statement for seceding from the Union, the state of Georgia wrote the following:
“The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose.”
Alexander H. Stephens, the Confederate vice president said the following:
“Our new government is founded upon . . . its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition.”
Lincoln was always against slavery. Long before he became president he argued about the evil and immorality of slavery. He modified this position to include saving the Union at the beginning of the war as a political expedient to gain support for the war. As it became clear that the North would win and thereby have the power to free the slaves and abolish slavery, that became his main objective. There can be no doubt that he did both. There can be no doubt that in doing so, he signed his death certificate. Like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and many other civil rights martyrs, the cause of equal rights for all has always been a precarious position to assume.
Lincoln said that “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Martin Luther King in his famous “I have a Dream” speech said that this promise was an uncashed check. It is now “Eight Score” years from the date of the Emancipation Proclamation and we are once again engaged in a battle between racism and equality, between prejudice and tolerance and between fascism and democracy. We have begun a new “Uncivil War” which has divided the hearts, minds and loyalties of Americans from the East Coast to the West Coast every bit as deeply as did our first Civil War.
Today we face a battle between those who believe that America should be a White Supremacist Christian nation ruled by rich oligarchs and those who believe in the concepts of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. One half of America wants to create a country that believes in the concepts of White exceptionalism, America First and Evangelical Christianity above all over religions. This half praises individual rights above individual responsibilities. The rights of the individual are more important than the rights of society.
The other half of America wants to create a country where racism, sexism, exclusivity and prejudice does not exist. This half believes that responsibilities are just as important as rights. That the rights of others in society must be protected from those who would trample on them. This group believes in democracy over oligarchy. These Americans believe that we all have the right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” as long as we take responsibility to insure that everyone in our nation shares these rights.
The war between these two sides of America has now entered a new phase. The first phase started many years ago. The second phase has started on January 21, 2025. I want to help us to remember the ideas and insights of Abraham Lincoln as we move into this second phase.
Insight # 1
Fight the Good Fight: The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. — Springfield, Illinois, 12/20/1839
Lincoln was thirty years old when he said these words. They reflect the words of Frederic Douglas who said, “ If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”
The words of Patrick Henry also come to my mind,
“If we wish to be free– if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending–if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained–we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!
I keep these words and thoughts in my mind as our “Uncivil War” commences the next four years to preserve and protect what we call our democracy. I have no doubt that many people have struggled throughout American history to save things that they believed in. There has been times when African Americans, Latinos, Women, Indigenous People, Asian Americans and LGBTQ people have all been persecuted and where life must have seemed totally unjust and not worth living. Many of us woke up on November 6th with similar feelings. I cringed when I saw people walking around town waving Trump flags and others proclaiming that they voted for Trump. I consoled myself with “hoping they would get what they deserved.” Then I realized that “hope” was not enough. We must fight for what we believe in.
How do we fight an “Uncivil War”? Insight # 2 from Old Abe has some valuable thoughts to help us in this struggle. I will share these in my next blog.
The “Good Old Boys” of modern country music started in the seventies telling us that rural people were good people. That real life took place in rural areas. Cities were evil. Rural people were God fearing and patriotic. City people were heathens and atheists.
Donald Trump’s anthem was a song by Lee Greenwood called “God Bless the USA.” Under more normal circumstances, I would applaud this song. Greenwood won the Country Music Association’s award for Male Vocalist of the Year in 1983 and 1984, and his “God Bless the USA” had been awarded the CMA’s Song of the Year honors in 1985. However, when welded by Trump and his supporters it evokes overtones of racism and xenophobia. What else can you think when you see people marching around with Swastikas and Confederate Flags singing “God Bless the USA?”
“This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend public happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace. Few errors and few faults of government, can justify an appeal to the rabble, who ought not to judge of what they cannot understand, and whose opinions are not propagated by reason, but caught by contagion.” — The Patriot, by S. Johnson, 1774.
It’s not about racism or privilege but everyone should have a right to say who they have to live with and go to school with or church with. I am all for equal rights for everyone and that includes my right to stick to my own kind. Does that make me a racist because I like one group of people more than another? We all have our baseball and football team preferences. That is what makes sports so much fun. I don’t have to like your team and you don’t have to like my team. Teams stick together and play with their own kind. You don’t see football players playing against baseball players or lacrosse players playing against rugby players.
That is why I am not a racist because I believe in the beauty of all colors. I don’t think one color is more beautiful than another. I prefer blue while I think my wife likes pink or green more. I just think you don’t want to mix the colors too much or you lose the beauty. It is also easier to clean a paint brush when you just use it for the same colors. Have you ever tried to clean a paint brush that has been used on too many different colors?
Now I suppose some of you will still say that I am a racist or prejudiced and that nothing I can say will change your minds. But I don’t dislike those kind of people, I just want to live with my kind of people and those kind of people can live with their own kind of people.
The internet has made the problem even worse. We are deluged with a tsunami of viewpoints every day. From right, left, central, religious, agnostic, scientific, spiritual, communal, familial and hundreds of other perspectives our viewpoints of the world are bombarded by messages that challenge our thinking and our very reason for being. Whose shoes should I stand in? Whose perspective should I try to take?
One year at a Martin Luther King memorial service on the University of Minnesota campus at Northrup Auditorium, the keynote speaker was Dave Moore, a well-known news and television personality. Karen and I attended many of the MLK day celebrations over the years. I had never seen a White keynote speaker. I was somewhat surprised and wondered what he could say about Martin Luther King or any other issue dealing with racism. It turned out to be quite an interesting talk.
Now we get back to the difficult if not impossible people to understand. How do we put ourselves in the shoes of a rapist or pedophile? There are many that would think I am crazy for asking this question. I believe we will never eliminate these problems if we do not understand the causes. We cannot cure the problem simply by locking up all the pedophiles and rapists in the world. I do not believe that these are inherited characteristics. There have been times and places in the world where practices bordering on rape and pedophilia have actually been legal and condoned.
Aging Capriciously 