Neocon Ira Stoll, writing in the Daily News, claims Lincoln for Israel. He says that Hamas has perpetrated the equivalent of slavery and the only way to fight slavery is to destroy it. He, and Cynthia Ozick too, is upset about a new Jimmy Carter book saying that the Civil War could have been averted, and that Lincoln became deluded by messianic ideas when there were better ways to end slavery than war.
My friend Jack Ross seizes on this and writes, "Put this in your Lincoln kick and smoke it."
1) Has it really
completely slipped my mind to point out in this whole discussion what
Lincoln is for the neocons and especially the Straussians, that is, an
example to be invoked for any and all atrocities to be committed in a
war fought for progress?
2) What, ultimately, is the difference between Lincoln's mythical "Union" and Herzl's mythical "Jewish people"?
Weiss response. I limit my Lincoln hermeneutics to pre-1859. I don't see a mythical Union in his writings at that point, I read hatred of slavery and a political mission to oppose it. I share Jimmy Carter's hope that the Civil War might be avoided–this time–in Israel/Palestine, where slavery is being practiced, with great statecraft. I haven't studied Lincoln as president. I wonder whether he didn't himself feel that he had erred. As Carter observes, slavery was dying around the world when we had a war that not only killed hundreds of thousands but wounded the south to this day. Today democracy is flourishing in the west and Israel is practicing apartheid. How do we lead it forward without bloodshed?
