I am obliged to Matt Yglesias over at Vox for pointing out that the Republican Party marked Lincoln’s birthday this year by posting on its
official Twitter account a quote from the great man — “In the end, it’s not the
years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years” — that is
apparently fake, there being no evidence he ever said it.
A fake quote is actually an apt way for a fake Republican
Party to celebrate the birth of its great champion. Yglesias offered a genuine
quote from the man who once led Donald Trump’s party. In a letter to his friend
Joshua Speed, Lincoln addressed the anti-immigration, anti-Catholic American
Party, more widely, and more accurately known as the Know-Nothings. (Spelling
in the original.)
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How
could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor
or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me
to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are
created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created
equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read
“all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and
Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some
country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for
instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of
hypocracy.
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2017.
