[Mb-civic] New truths from Lincoln - Thomas Oliphant - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

New truths from Lincoln

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist  |  September 27, 2005

WASHINGTON
''FELLOW CITIZENS, we cannot escape history."

Normally, Lincoln always works for me, and accompanied by Aaron 
Copeland's uniquely American sound, he is especially stirring. But 
hearing Colin Powell read words that have been part of patriotism's 
essential sheet music for more than 60 years, they were for the first 
time in my experience a kind of damning boomerang.

At the National Symphony Orchestra's opening concert Saturday evening -- 
its 75th in a lovely odyssey that traces Washington's gradual emergence 
from a sleepy company town to a real city -- the choice of Powell, one 
of the local establishment's favorite figures, and his wife to perform 
the role of readers for Copeland's Lincoln Portrait was automatic.

But the war in Iraq intruded, causing more than one formally attired 
guest to glance with surprise at the person next to him or reach for a 
pen to get down the freshly discovered double-entendres in Lincoln's 
language.

After a day of stunningly large antiwar demonstrations that surrounded a 
beleaguered White House while its occupant attended to a more natural 
disaster, the Lincoln words bit hard.

''We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in 
spite of ourselves," observed Lincoln long ago in a written message to 
Congress after the gore of Antietam but just a month before the 
Emancipation Proclamation. ''No personal significance or insignificance 
can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass 
will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, 
even here, hold the power and bear the responsibility."

Indeed. The inspiring words of the past mock the poses of the present.

Earlier that day, there had been a demonstration downtown that dwarfed 
official expectations. In an interesting abandonment of post-9/11 
paranoia, the parade permit allowed a virtual encirclement of the White 
House by a throng that easily exceeded 300,000 peaceful souls from 
around the country. I have either been in or covered every peace 
demonstration around here since 1967, and this one was more than 
reminiscent of the whoppers in the Nixon years.

The people are currently leagues beyond the politicians. The link 
between the ongoing war and the literal storms of the past month is in 
the opinion polls, with solid majorities not only of the opinion that 
the invasion of Iraq wasn't and isn't worth its cost but demanding that 
money being sent overseas be invested in reconstruction at home. The 
problem is that no one prominent in politics is really listening.

This disengagement of the people from a war used to be one of the 
warnings in Colin Powell's post-Vietnam doctrine, which he developed 
after his service there and as he rose to the top of the civilian and 
military power structures through the first Gulf War. Today, however, 
the former secretary of state is hoist by his own language and 
increasingly anguished by his role in selling the need for war to a 
too-credulous nation and international community.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/09/27/new_truths_from_lincoln/
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