Post by strange on Sept 14, 2012 18:29:57 GMT -5
I wrote this to a friend. This was my review of a lecture given by John Stauffer regarding his new book "Giants: The Parelel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln". I listened to this lecture on youtube and these were my thoughts about it.
I sat through a long lecture from John Stauffer that was supposed to
be about Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass but ended up turning
into an Obama rally.
He made praise of Obama's oratory skills and compared him to that of
Lincoln and Douglass, but this is quite laughable. Obama is a rather
mild speaker, his most attractive asset is humbility. Lincoln was more
of a quick wit and his speeches had a lot of sharp humour and bustle.
Obama has a bauble, a slower delivery of words, a lot of "uhs and ums"
(like me!), and his jokes are usually kinda awkward. There is a
certain charm and relate-ability to Obama, but he's not a great speaker
by any means. Douglass made his living as a professional orator, and
is also much better than Obama.
He also tries to depict Obama as a "self made man" with the same
breath for which he refers to Douglass and Lincoln as being self made
men. Obama has actually demonstrated a huge gap in his appreciation of
self made individuals. A person like Lincoln had to educate himself by
reading books and he had to support himself with regular jobs and hard
labour whereas Obama attended schools and universities throughout his
life and then went straight into government and community jobs. Obama
does not quite appreciate the other walks of life that have been
brought up differently than him, and I don't think he would encourage
the kind of self education that we see in individuals like Lincoln, or
Douglass, or Thomas Edison and onward (Edison being the most extreme
example of something like this. He actually was rather spiteful
against school because his teachers weren't nice to him and he just
was more comfortable reading books and figuring things out at his own
paces).
The best case that Stauffer does make for a comparison of Obama to
Lincoln is Pragmatism, the two of them can indeed be comparable in
this regard. Although I will again remind everyone of one thing I
believe in.... democrats are morons and republicans are generally
smarter (even Bush jr). But thats more of my opinion rather than an
established fact. Pragmatism with people like Lincoln (and Nixon) is
an industrial quality. Everything that gets done has to go through the
proper channels and it needs the right nuts and bolts to get going and
stay going. Democrats typically follow the John F Kennedy example and
they just keep making promises and promises and they will usually fail
to meet their promises or they will be very irresponsible in the way
they approach the fulfillment of their promises. This is why Jackie
Robinson was a happy Republican and this is why he voted for Nixon,
against Kennedy, in 1960.
The democrats have been very eager to try and hijack the civil rights
history away from the republicans, and some republicans (usually the
Libertarian RINOs or the Strom Thurmond ex-democrats) are trying to
distance themselves from the civil rights. But my party is the same as
it ever was. One reason for why civil rights is not currently the big
issue on our plate is because the battle is already won and we have
moved on to others things. Segregation is gone, women and blacks have
the right to vote (we in fact supported them before they had this
right), every man and woman is guaranteed equal rights regardless of
Color, and there is no more slavery allowed under the law.
I sat through a long lecture from John Stauffer that was supposed to
be about Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass but ended up turning
into an Obama rally.
He made praise of Obama's oratory skills and compared him to that of
Lincoln and Douglass, but this is quite laughable. Obama is a rather
mild speaker, his most attractive asset is humbility. Lincoln was more
of a quick wit and his speeches had a lot of sharp humour and bustle.
Obama has a bauble, a slower delivery of words, a lot of "uhs and ums"
(like me!), and his jokes are usually kinda awkward. There is a
certain charm and relate-ability to Obama, but he's not a great speaker
by any means. Douglass made his living as a professional orator, and
is also much better than Obama.
He also tries to depict Obama as a "self made man" with the same
breath for which he refers to Douglass and Lincoln as being self made
men. Obama has actually demonstrated a huge gap in his appreciation of
self made individuals. A person like Lincoln had to educate himself by
reading books and he had to support himself with regular jobs and hard
labour whereas Obama attended schools and universities throughout his
life and then went straight into government and community jobs. Obama
does not quite appreciate the other walks of life that have been
brought up differently than him, and I don't think he would encourage
the kind of self education that we see in individuals like Lincoln, or
Douglass, or Thomas Edison and onward (Edison being the most extreme
example of something like this. He actually was rather spiteful
against school because his teachers weren't nice to him and he just
was more comfortable reading books and figuring things out at his own
paces).
The best case that Stauffer does make for a comparison of Obama to
Lincoln is Pragmatism, the two of them can indeed be comparable in
this regard. Although I will again remind everyone of one thing I
believe in.... democrats are morons and republicans are generally
smarter (even Bush jr). But thats more of my opinion rather than an
established fact. Pragmatism with people like Lincoln (and Nixon) is
an industrial quality. Everything that gets done has to go through the
proper channels and it needs the right nuts and bolts to get going and
stay going. Democrats typically follow the John F Kennedy example and
they just keep making promises and promises and they will usually fail
to meet their promises or they will be very irresponsible in the way
they approach the fulfillment of their promises. This is why Jackie
Robinson was a happy Republican and this is why he voted for Nixon,
against Kennedy, in 1960.
The democrats have been very eager to try and hijack the civil rights
history away from the republicans, and some republicans (usually the
Libertarian RINOs or the Strom Thurmond ex-democrats) are trying to
distance themselves from the civil rights. But my party is the same as
it ever was. One reason for why civil rights is not currently the big
issue on our plate is because the battle is already won and we have
moved on to others things. Segregation is gone, women and blacks have
the right to vote (we in fact supported them before they had this
right), every man and woman is guaranteed equal rights regardless of
Color, and there is no more slavery allowed under the law.
