The article is by George McKenna. The title - On Abortion: A Lincolnian Position.
The loggerheads of the abortion controversy have long since bored me (both extremes want the government to intervene and do their bidding, which is to the principles of my personal political disposition), but the mention of Lincoln piqued my interest.
Oddly enough, McKenna's argument dealing with abortion was deftly woven into the fabric of the Lincoln-Douglas debates on slavery and the survival of the union and/or states rights. The piece must be read to appreciate the point of view he expresses and the quality of his argument.
Along the way, McKenna reveals from his study of Lincoln a maxim of sorts that should not be lost upon we who come along the way of life a century later, and who wrestle with the institution of outcome based education -- an institution as evil as slavery and not entirely unrelated.
Lincoln, McKenna tells us, found foreign to his thought the idea that he might resolve the slavery question in the courts, whether by argument or stuffing the courts with justices who thought as he did. Instead, "...he intended to conduct his argument before the American people. Lincoln knew that in the final analysis durable judicial rulings on major issues must be rooted in the soil of American opinion. 'Public sentiment,' he said, 'is everything' in this country.
"'With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.'"
There is practical truth. Let it be put to use by those of us who have learned of the methodological bankruptcy and moral evil of that educational cancer known as outcome based education, mastery learning, performance based learning, Goals 2000, or whatever its progenitors choose to call it. For freedom's sake, for the sake of our children and grandchildren, we oppose it. We work to defeat it. We will take it into the courts. We will lobby our legislators and use our votes to expel its architects and supporters from the public offices they are abusing. Most of all, as Lincoln advised, we will expose that bankruptcy and evil for all to see.
By exposure of the truth about OBE, we will surely build momentum that will capture public sentiment in ever larger segments of the American people. In the end, it will assure that outcome based education shall be consigned forever to the rubbish pile of history.