President's Day: A Most Timely Holiday

Today is President's Day, a day set aside to honor some of the great presidents this country we've had.  Tomorrow is actually George Washington's birthday, but this day includes Abraham Lincoln's birthday, which was February 12th.

But I wonder if the conservatives actually remember why these men are great or if they are just providing jingoistic lip service when they praise them.

Washington, as everyone knows, was not only our first president, but also was the general that fought and won the Revolutionary War, when our freedom from England's rule.  The spark of the war was the oppressive rule of King George III who ruled from afar without listening to a word the colonialists had to say.

I find it most ironic that they would praise Washington for fighting for our rights, but then belittle the nurses, the teachers, the police officers, the firefighters, the social workers, the doctors, the plow drivers, the bus drivers and all the other workers, from both the public and private sectors, who are standing up in Madison and every other town in the state to protest and fight against the theft of our rights.

Likewise, they'll praise Lincoln, who led the Union through the Civil War and enacted the Emancipation Proclamation.

However, they do not realize their absurdity in belittling the fourteen Democratic state senators who took off for parts unknown in an effort to stall or even prevent this unjust bill from being passed. It is to wonder if they know or even care that Lincoln did the same very thing, but in an even more dramatic fashion:

Indeed, 170 years before the Wisconsin Democrats fled Madison to deny a quorum, then-state Rep.Abraham Lincoln was fleeing the capitol in Springfield, IL — via a window, no less — to do the same in an attempt to save the State Bank of Illinois:

[Democrats] agreed to allow [the bank] to suspend its obligation to exchange its paper money for specie, but only for the remainder of the legislative session.

That’s when Lincoln determined to keep the legislature in session in order to buy precious time for the bank to find a way to survive, and that’s how he jumped into the national limelight on December 5, 1840. On that date, the Democrats proposed an early adjournment, knowing this would bring a speedy end to the State Bank. The Whigs tried to counter by leaving the capitol building before the vote, but the doors were locked. That’s when Lincoln made his move. He headed for the second story, opened a window and jumped to the ground!

No, I don't expect them to put these things together. That would be too much to hope for.