Vote Yourself a War - Thoughts on Real Leadership

“Cromwell:     Your Majesty, it is my most solemn duty to place you under arrest.

King:                 - By whose command, sir?

Cromwell:        - By the command of Parliament, sir.

King:                 I know of no authority in England above that of the king.

Cromwell:     It is upon that issue that this war was fought.”

Conversation between Oliver Cromwell and King Charles I in the movie Cromwell.

 So often in history, society tries to solve issues by war, anger and violence.  Real leadership is finding another way.

Abraham Lincoln's 1860 Presidential Campaign Slogan was:

Vote Yourself a Farm

https://www.presidentsusa.net/campaignslogans.html

I wonder if the people voting in 1860 realized they were voting themselves a civil war.  Maybe there were no solutions to the problems the country faced in 1861 other than war - even with Abraham Lincoln the great bridge builder as President.  The politicians and people of 1861 could not find a way to resolve their differences other than war.

Abraham Lincoln won this election with only 39.8% of the popular vote.

 In 1916  Woodrow Wilson slogan was:    

He Kept Us Out Of War

Woodrow Wilson’s second term started March 5, 1917.  Less than 30 days later on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked a special joint session of Congress for a declaration of war.  So much for slogans and promises.

 In 1932, there was an election in Germany. The National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) party promised to:

“Tear up the Treaty of Versailles and make Germany great again”

 The leader of the NSDAP won this election with only 37.3% of the popular vote.  Seven years later the people of Germany had voted themselves a world war. Thirteen years later, German cities were destroyed and the country divided for almost 50 years.  So much for slogans and promises.

 Now we face the election of 2016 and to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln “Twelve score years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great debate of ideas, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

 Last year I posted the essay

 Thoughts on MLK, the 19th Amendment and Voting

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/thoughts-mlk-19th-amendment-voting-doug-hohulin?trk=mp-reader-card

 We all need to remember the struggle of the women’s suffrage movement and the civil rights movement. We must not take our right to vote for granted. The sad fact is that turnout of the voting-eligible population was just 36.4% in 2014 (United States Elections Project, Dr. Michael McDonald at the University of Florida). We should do better.

 I would encourage everyone to vote.  Remember that men and women had to work so hard for so many years to gain the right to vote.  Choose men and women of integrity that look for ways to build bridges and not walls to solve problems.  If not, you may have just voted yourself a war. 

 The words of Abraham Lincoln Second Inaugural Address is needed even more than ever.  Remember, he spoke these words even with the Civil War still raging.  He was a bridge builder that we so desperately need today. 

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

In the book How To Win Friends and Influence People Kindle Edition by Dale Carnegie he tells the following story about Abraham Lincoln.

 “In the autumn of 1842 he [Lincoln] ridiculed a vain, pugnacious politician by the name of James Shields. Lincoln lammed him through an anonymous letter published in Springfield Journal. The town roared with laughter. Shields, sensitive and proud, boiled with indignation. He found out who wrote the letter, leaped on his horse, started after Lincoln, and challenged him to fight a duel.

 Lincoln didn't want to fight. He was opposed to dueling, but he couldn't get out of it and save his honor. He was given the choice of weapons. Since he had very long arms, he chose cavalry broadswords and took lessons in sword fighting from a West Point graduate; and, on the appointed day, he and Shields met on a sandbar in the Mississippi River, prepared to fight to the death; but, at the last minute, their seconds interrupted and stopped the duel.

 That was the most lurid personal incident in Lincoln's life.   It taught him an invaluable lesson in the art of dealing with people.  Never again did he write an insulting letter. Never again did he ridicule anyone. And from that time on, he almost never criticized anybody for anything.”

 From this post, The Time Abraham Lincoln and a Political Rival Almost Dueled on an Island

 https://mentalfloss.com/article/12382/time-abraham-lincoln-and-political-rival-almost-dueled-island

 It gives additional insight:

“Colonel John Jay Hardin helped the two reach a face-saving compromise, working it out with words instead of swords.”

 May we all be like Colonel John Jay Hardin to help find solutions with words instead of swords.   

This is real leadership.