I could go on quoting Abraham Lincoln all day long, for he was one of the finest writers of his or any time. Here’s one very special quote, where Lincoln uses the metaphor of a snake to make distinctions between slavery itself being bad, versus policies to limit slavery to the south, versus policies to…
For at least the last few decades, conservative legal scholarship in United States has paid a great deal of attention to the idea of original intent. According to this view, the best way to interpret the Constitution of the United States is to imagine what the writers of that document meant at the time they…
It’s always tricky to judge anyone’s moral character, much less that of historical figures who lived during times very different from our own. Most of the great people who founded the United States, for example, had slaves. Some even sired children with those slaves – like Thomas Jefferson. Hard to know how to judge that….
I write frequently about the importance of perspective taking in clinician/patient interaction. Seeing the world through other people’s eyes is also a crucial moral and political skill. No surprise then that Abe Lincoln showed great perspective taking abilities. Consider these words, from an 1854 speech on slavery: I think I have no prejudice against the…