Psycho-BabbleBobo

Rising Hegemon blasts holes--big enough for freight trains to run through--intoDavid Brooks's latest drivel in the New York Times.

Brooks:
On Sept. 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln gathered his cabinet to tell them he was going to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He said he had made a solemn vow to the Almighty that if God gave him victory at Antietam, Lincoln would issue the decree.

Lincoln's colleagues were stunned. They were not used to his basing policy on promises made to the Lord. They asked him to repeat what he'd just said. Lincoln conceded that "this might seem strange," but "God had decided the question in favor of the slaves."

I like to think about this episode when I hear militant secularists argue that faith should be kept out of politics...

Attaturk:
I wouldn't mind this little snippet so much, if it wasn't complete unmitigated bullshit.

Lincoln had discussed the Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet months before, beginning with a conversation with Secretary of State Seward and Secretary of the Navy Welles in mid-July 1862; they were stunned because until then Lincoln had opposed such a matter (apparently by Brooks logic "God" was telling Lincoln to keep slavery until then). Others, NOT GOD, had been encouraging Lincoln to issue a decree of emancipation for months, and he had been ruminating on the matter for a matter of weeks before this conversation.

Lincoln then discussed the matter with his entire cabinet a little over a month later telling them he intended to issue an emancipation proclamation. Some, such as Secretary of War Stanton and Attorney General Bates encouraged him to immediately issue it; Secretary of the Treasury Chase was reluctant to do so, the others were mixed, but it was Seward that suggested, to Lincoln's agreement, to wait to issue the proclamation until after a Union victory...

But the notion of Lincoln being in any fashion like an "evangelical" via Brooks column is a pigheaded notion (one that he tries to run away from, pathetically, at the column's end). Brooks, like so many puts Lincoln's thoughts into their own head and has him, in the end, coming out thinking like he thinks [something that is possible in only two ways, being Brooks or through a *special* assist from John Wilkes Booth -- sic semper moronis].

It was not the way that Lincoln thought, particularly in the Summer of 1862.

Brooks could be stupid enough not to know the difference, but I would guess its a lying manipulation of history.

Oh, and unlike Bobo Brooks, I will source my authorities:

LINCOLN, David H. Donald, pgs. 362-377.

The real shame is that Brooks is unlikely to be called on his bull/horse/bat/monkey shit by anyone with the kind of access he gets in the regular media. So, he'll bounce from this to, oh, I don't know, maybe a column about red-state ideas about humor to insane rantings about Social Security to god knows what. And yesterday's insanity will quickly be forgotten, though ultimately inculcated into wingnut mythology--Lincoln the evangelical--just like the bullshit about James Madison.

Isn't there a way to revoke their pundit license for any extended length of time when crap is proffered as shinola?