Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Lincoln

Edward Rothstein uses the modest collection of thirty images at the National Portrait Gallery--especially the two white plaster masks--to reflect a bit on Lincoln (mentioning a number of new books along the way). Not perfect--and there is always Obama in the background--but not awful either. There will be much more such from every quarter, of course, leading up to February 12th. 

Discussions - 2 Comments

I have fallen under the spell of Lincoln, which means that for every book read, there are several lifetimes’ worth of books to follow. It is a field in which there are so many opinions that no one could ever be lonely.

Isn't that just the way of it? Peter, you said in previous posts this week that you were in DC. Did you see this exhibit or are you commenting on it because you did not get time to go? I read about this, or interesting exhibits elsewhere and think how much I would like to go for the satisfaction of my eyes.

In connection with that, this following line was interesting and I will be thinking about it all day:

He suffered greatly but acted as if he had a right not to happiness itself, but only to its pursuit.

I have come to think I have not even the right to the pursuit. I suppose this raises the question of what happiness is. I know it is not grading my students' papers, which is what I ought to be doing and for goodness' sake will turn to.

I hadn't heard this Lincoln comment: "This war is eating my life out."

Leave a Comment

* denotes a required field
 

No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: https://nlt.ashbrook.org/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/13364


Warning: include(/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2008/12/lincoln.php on line 439

Warning: include(): Failed opening '/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/opt/sp/php7.2/lib/php') in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2008/12/lincoln.php on line 439