In 2020, Abraham Lincoln Will Be Controversial

[Gene C]

Article by Newt Gingrich in Fox News

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2020-abr...t-gingrich

What ever your political leanings, look for the positive things said about Abraham Lincoln.

[LincolnMan]

Just taking the title of your thread (without reading the article, sorry)- Lincoln has always been controversial!

[Rob Wick]

Sorry Gene, but I would rather have my eyes plucked out than read anything by Newt Gingrich.

Best
Rob

[Gene C]

Glad I told you who wrote the article before you tried to read it.

[AussieMick]

Its a good-in-parts article (IMO obviously). A political one that makes some good points I think. It has a bit of sucking up to Trump that I dont like ... and by criticizing dopey Left wing ideas about Lincoln's legacy he moves to attack govt bureaucracy.


as for the following , I dont like the style/grammar ... maybe its just that I dont understand it (what does credentialing mean ? I googled without much help ... I can guess and I think I know whats intended ...)

"We have moved from government of the people to government of the experts. We have replaced an aristocracy of inherited family status with an aristocracy of credentialing."

I guess he's saying there's too much of govts announcing "Experts tell us that ... blah-blah ... so we have to do this ('this' being what a govt official always wanted to do, but need the imprimatur some 'expert' they have found in a dusty university to have suggested).

I agree with much of the gist except that the author is taking the easy way out of attacking 'bureaucrats' . Ok, I guess he's attacking the local govts state-wide that attack Trump. He'd be braver if he also took on the (bulk of, anyway) media and 'celebrities'. IMO, its the look-at-me film stars, one-hit wonder teenage singers, and dead-beat actors, who jump on the band wagon to prove their politically correctness who are causing history to be re-written. But the author doesnt mention them.

His focus on the nameless bureaucrats :-

"In many states and localities, the citizen no longer has any significant influence on government. In almost every level of government, Washington bureaucrats can dictate to elected local officials. The result has been a more and more dissatisfied citizenry."

and
"One of the great challenges for the Trump administration and its allies is to re-center government on Lincoln’s values and dismantle the elitist “bureaucrats know best” model that now defines so much of our government."

[David Lockmiller]

(01-07-2020 04:08 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Sorry Gene, but I would rather have my eyes plucked out than read anything by Newt Gingrich.

Best
Rob

Well phrased critique!

[Amy L.]

Thank you for sharing Gingrich's baffling editorial, Gene.

It hurts to disagree with almost every sentence in the editorial.
Down is up, and up is down.

The 'importance' of not having expertise makes me think of G.K. Chesterton's (1909) The Twelve Men
although Chesterton actually makes a case for his idea - that a layman will serve justice on a jury better than an expert.

This logic DOES NOT APPLY TO A LEGISLATOR OR THOSE WHO IMPLEMENT THE LAW.

"The trend of our epoch up to this time has been consistently towards socialism and professionalism. We tend to have trained soldiers because they fight better, trained singers because they sing better, ... specially instructed laughers because they laugh better, and so on and so on. The principle has been applied to law and politics by innumerable modern writers. Many Fabians have insisted that a greater part of our political work should be performed by experts. Many legalists have declared that the untrained jury should be altogether supplanted by the trained Judge."
...
"Now, one of these four or five paradoxes which should be taught to every infant prattling at his mother’s knee is the following: That the more a man looks at a thing, the less he can see it, and the more a man learns a thing the less he knows it. The Fabian argument of the expert, that the man who is trained should be the man who is trusted, would be absolutely unanswerable if it were really true that a man who studied a thing and practiced it every day went on seeing more and more of its significance. But he does not. He goes on seeing less and less of its significance. In the same way, alas! we all go on every day, unless we are continually goading ourselves into gratitude and humility, seeing less and less of the significance of the sky or the stones."

[LincolnMan]

Gene: I liked the article. Thanks for posting it. My eyes are intact