Lowry:
The conservative case against Lincoln is not only tendentious and wrong, it puts the Right crosswise with a friend. As I argue in my new book, Lincoln Unbound, Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the foremost proponent of opportunity in all of American history. His economics of dynamism and change and his gospel of discipline and self-improvement are particularly important to a country that has been stagnating economically and suffering from a social breakdown that is limiting economic mobility. No 19th-century figure can be an exact match for either of our contemporary competing political ideologies, but Lincoln the paladin of individual initiative, the worshiper of the Founding Fathers, and the advocate of self-control is more naturally a fellow traveler with today’s conservatives than with progressives.
In Lincoln Unbound, I make the positive case for Lincoln, but here I want to act as a counsel for the defense. The debate over Lincoln on the Right is so important because it can be seen, in part, as a proxy for the larger argument over whether conservatism should read itself out of the American mainstream or — in this hour of its discontent — dedicate itself to a Lincolnian program of opportunity and uplift consistent with its limited-government principles. A conservatism that rejects Lincoln is a conservatism that wants to confine itself to an irritable irrelevance to 21st-century America and neglect what should be the great project of reviving it as a country of aspiration.
An excerpt from Rich Lowry’s “Lincoln Unbound.” Morning Joe. MSNBC, June 11, 2013.
Rich Lowry audio interview on Lincoln Unbound with John Miller. National Review Online, June 11, 2013.
Rich Lowry: Lincoln Can Teach Us Today. By Courtney Coren and Kathleen Walter. Newsmax, June 12, 2013.
The Ricochet Podcast: Lessons from Lincoln. Interview with Rich Lowry. National Review Online, June 13, 2013.
The lost lesson of Lincoln. By Rich Lowry. New York Post, June 16, 2013.
Hard work, discipline and self-improvement make the man.
Lincoln, America, and Opportunity. Rich Lowry interviewed by Kathryn Jean Lopez. National Review Online, June 18, 2013.
Lincoln’s Path Still. Review of Lincoln Unbound. By Jay Winik. National Review, July 1, 2013. Also here.
Press Pass: Rich Lowry on Lincoln Unbound. Interview with David Gregory. Meet the Press. NBC News, June 14, 2013.
Address to the 166th Ohio Regiment, August 22, 1864. By Abraham Lincoln. The American Presidency Project. Also in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. Vol. 7, p. 512.
Lincoln:
SOLDIERS—I suppose you are going home to see your families and friends. For the services you have done in this great struggle in which we are engaged, I present you sincere thanks for myself and the country.
I almost always feel inclined, when I say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them, in a few brief remarks, the importance of success in this contest. It is not merely for the day, but for all time to come, that we should perpetuate for our children's children that great and free government which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen, temporarily, to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has. It is in order that each one of you may have, through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field, and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life with all its desirable human aspirations--it is for this that the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthrights--not only for one, but for two or three years, if necessary. The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel.
