What would Lincoln do?

By Tom Quiner

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJVuqYkI2jQ]

Compromise!

Liberals are screaming from the top of their lungs that the lesson from this month’s election is that conservatism is dead.

We are being told this is a new America, that it is time to turn our back on who we are.

We are being told it’s time to liberalize abortion laws and have taxpayers pay for them, that God made the pre-born unequal just as Democrats of yesterday claimed He made the slave unequal.

We are being told it’s time to accept gay marriage as a healthy redefinition of marriage for America.

We are being told that high taxes are good.

We are being told that unsustainable entitlements are good.

We are being told that there’s nothing wrong with deficits, that in fact the solution for our economic woes is more “stimulus” spending and even higher deficits and even higher levels of national debt.

What a bunch of bull.

I saw “Lincoln” over the Thanksgiving holiday. Steven Spielberg’s biopic of the 16th president is a work of art. Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of Mr. Lincoln is a work of art. The entire look and feel of the piece is a work of art.

This is cinema at its finest.

I sat on the edge of my seat throughout all 150 minutes of this historic drama. Every single word is immediately relevant to today.

President Lincoln was hammered from all sides to compromise. The year was 1865. He had won re-election. The end of the Civil War was in sight.

So what was the conflict? Lincoln insisted on the passage of the 13th Amendment, which would outlaw slavery and involuntary servitude:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Democrats said “no way!”

Republicans fretted that it would undermine the final resolution of the Civil War, that Lincoln should compromise and bide his time and wait until another day to fight this battle.

Lincoln pounded his fist on the table and said NO. He demanded its immediate passage. He leaned on his party operatives to get it done now.

Now!

NOW!

Republicans said it was impossible, that they needed to peel away 20 votes from the Democrats while getting every single Republican to tow the line, itself an unlikely proposition.

You know how the story ends.

Lincoln won.

America won.

Human dignity won.

Democrats were on the wrong side of history then, just as they are now.

Now is not the time to compromise when it comes to the dignity of human life. Now is the time to double down.

What would Lincoln do? Stick to his principles.

Defend the dignity of human life NOW!