Ryan Streeter
Rich Lowry has a fine column on Abraham Lincoln in today's New York Post. It’s worth quoting the final few paragraphs as we round out President’s Day:
For Lincoln the vital test of a democracy was economic -- its ability to provide opportunities for social ascent to those born in its lower ranks," the historian Richard Hofstadter argues. “This belief in opportunity for the self-made man is the key to his entire career; it explains his public appeal; it is the core of his criticism of slavery.”
One hundred and fifty years later, Lincoln's test still applies, although, with failing schools and crumbling families crimping mobility, it doesn't get the attention it deserves from either political party.
“Advancement -- improvement in condition -- is the order of things in a society of equals,” Lincoln insisted. It is our challenge to ensure that it is ever so.
The best, recent statement regarding "those born in the lower ranks" of democracy was Mitch Daniels' statement on those "on the first rung of life's ladder." We need more of those who say they are cut from presidential timber to talk this way and, like Lincoln, let this conviction guide their actions.
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