Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1985. január-június (39. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)

1985-01-24 / 4. szám

Thursday, Jan. 24. 1985.

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ

7.

MERCUR1US VERIDICUS EX HUNGÁRIA.

IF ABRAHAM LINCOLN WERE ALIVE

In the present season of national holidays highlighted by the birthdays of Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, as well as the inauguration of a president, we deem it eminently timely to publish a remarkable statement written nearly twenty years ago by a friend of our paper, a noted editor and writer, Henry Wilton.

The prophetic strain is an outstanding feature of the best representatives of Hungarian literature. Even a cursory reading of Mr. Wilton's article will prove this truth to the reader.- Editor.

Negative is the role history has carved for our country in this vital period of human evolution. We, among its citizens, whose compassion for human suffering transcends the borders of nation-states, are burdened with a tremendous responsibility. It would be superfluous to cite post-war history in detail; even a glance into the recent past would vivify a sufficient number of aggressive acts (all aimed at keeping unfortunate oppressed peoples from freeing themselves) to rise to a higher level of existence) and cause the resounding of enough aggressive pronouncements (all to the same ends) from the lips of high U.S. Government officials, to justify the deduction that the Vietnam affair is not the last of the Mohicans, that it is but the latest in a chain of sequences that preceded it. Indeed, if piercing enough the glance be, it will discern on the not so distant horizon harbingers of even more ominous events in the making. ,

It would be calamitous to view these events in isolation within the shell of the moment; they must be seen in their broad sweep, as they will affect the American political scene, and consequently the world scene; with cognizance of the appetite of the forces that propel it, with realization that success enhances the appetite, that the means for future belligerence are constantly made more lethal, and ever more abundant. The true aim? In California Romney of Michigan, the most liberal of the 'opposition' party, said: "This is a war against Communism; but this is not the time, and Vietnam is not the place." Warring on other peoples holds no abhorrence for him; its immorality neither torments him nor deters him; it is only a question of strategy, time and place.

The existence of the devil (alias, communism) has been well planted into the minds of our fellow Americans.

The peace-movement, fragmented, void of a generally accepted aim and method as it was, has remarkable accomplishments to its credit; some of its participants have shown admirable determination and self- sacrifice. But now, it seems to me, they have reached their wit's end, that some of their actions are no more than thrashing and writhing from the pains of frustration; a frustration due, I think, to the lack of a trump that would premise more than the ones already played, which d'd no more than vex the men in the drivers seat"A right that will liberate the world..."

We need to strike out for goals that are indigenous in their concepts, immune to conversion into stigma, comprehensible to and holding elements of attraction for Tom, Dick and Harry. In 1776 it was declared in the words of Jefferson, that:"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...". Yet, eighty-' seven years later it was necessary to shed native blood to start that humane, highly desirable state of human relation on its first step toward realization. The man who led that struggle was, above all, hones^, devoted to his people, concerned more with the oppressed than with the oppressors; and wise. Many of his utterances suggest strongly that he was influenced primarily by that part of the Declaration of Independence that says: "...That whenever any FORM of government becomes destructive of these ends..." This great man, a son of the people,saw millions of his fellow Americans toward whom it was destructive "...of these ends..." and he decided to alter it in a manner he thought would be remedial. "I can see that emancipation is coming; whoever can wait for it, will see it; whoever stands in its way will be run over by it," predicted this ancestor. Is it not our unquestionable duty to advance his vision toward reality?

It was at that time that the noble concept of democracy was first truly infused into American tought by the immortal Lincolnian phrase: "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..."; in paraphrase, long burlesqued, bent - with cunning psychological manipulation, through legerdemain that would challenge the most skilled pres- tigiator - to the selfish use of the privileged, the well-connected; oh! how often through those whose souls are up for surreptitious auction.

That noble concept: Government by the people, hundred some years after those immortal words caused the ether about our Globe to quiver, is still limited to but the very periphery of our political structure; When the construction of a school building is proposed, involving perhaps no more than a half a million dollars, Tom, Dick and Harry is given the right to have a direct say in the , matter. In matters involving many many billions of dollars, to which

Tom, Dick and Harry have contributed with their sweat and blood, indeed, in matters involving their very lives, they can have no direct say.

How regrettable that the persons holding political sway in our country at this very crucial period, are so void of compassion; how regrettable that intellectually they are more dwarfed than are the pygmies physically; how desperate our need for a man of Lincoln's passion, wisdom, understanding of change as a permanent law of nature, courage to accept it; no, not only to accept it, because of his devotion to men everywhere, he had the courage to espouse it.Do we have any clear indication as to what position Lincoln would take in the face of today's problems? Yes. Because we know him to have been honest, consistent in his devotion to, and trust in the people, we must, in justice to his spirit, conclude that he would act in conformity with his basic precept of "...government by the people..." or, as I have paraphrased it: all power to the people.

Since the people's hard-earned money is squandered by the many billions without us, John Does, having a chance to approve or disapprove, and since this squandering of our billions subsequently induces the squanderers to commit our armed forces - under one excuse or another , as recent history teaches us - with the untold thousands of American and other lives lost — Abraham Lincoln would propose an amendment to the Constitution that would call for a referendum vote of the people prior to commitment to such squandering, prior to

committing the shedding of the blood of young Americans, and oh heavens! anybody's blood; except if any American territory is attacked, or threatened with invasion imminently by a power or powers possessing the means for its execution.

It would be a betrayal of his legacy for us, people of compassion, to do less; to strive for anything less in line with his noble > precept: "...government by the

people..."

To those who would question the peoples competence to decide their own fate, and through it their contry's,Lincoln would repeat the words he had spoken so many years ago: "I always assume that my audiences are wiser than I am, and I say the most sensible thing I can to them, and I never found that they did not understand me.-"

To those who would foam and roar, pointing with dismay at the many peoples about our Globe who are rising against the kind, no! against much, much more cruel kinds of oppressions than against which our predecessors had risen, Abraham Lincoln would restate once more the pronouncement he had made in 1848 when other peoples in other lands were fighting against their native as well as their foreign oppressors:

"Any people anywhere0 being d inclined and having the pówérl',<i1ta’ve "'tTie right to rís'é'" <0úíp *.áft2fl,í*$&jk£T:l óff' ttí'e existing government, and form a"new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world."

Henry Wilton