Brooks’ unifying call is needed now
Thank you for publishing David Brooks’ thoughtful and timely call for a new, unifying American narrative (“America: The Redeemer Nation,” Nov. 27).
In emphasizing themes of renewal, redemption and reconciliation, Brooks wisely draws on the second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln. Our 16th president is a unifying figure across the political spectrum, except for those on the fringes who demean him as either a racist or an oppressor of the South.
Brooks highlights Lincoln’s well-known call to “bind up the nation’s wounds” “[w]ith malice toward none, with charity for all.” However, lest anyone on the aforementioned fringes either condemn or celebrate Lincoln, in his magnanimity, for a lack of moral clarity on the question of slavery, we also should recall the preceding, less-quoted passage from the address: “Yet, if God wills that [the war] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'”
Norton Wheeler