DEFEAT FASCISM: READ REBUKE RESIST

 Presidents Day. America has benefited from some great presidents. She has suffered, and now suffers, from some stinkers.

We attribute great events to great individuals such as presidents. Some thinkers, however, like Leo Tolstoy, didn’t subscribe to what was known in his day as, “The Great Man Theory.” Rather than the actions of one person shaping history, he attributed events to the combined action of hundreds of thousands of individuals.

Let’s look at perhaps our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. During his term of involvement, the union was saved and slavery, one of the darkest spots in America, ended. He receives much of the credit. But what else happened that may have influenced, at least to some degree, these admirable things?

-          An obscure woman wrote a book called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

-          Another obscure woman taught us the value of freedom by her work in the Underground Railroad.

-          A group of elderly men sitting on the United States Supreme Court ruled that American people of African descent enjoyed no benefits of citizenship.

-          Thousands of property owners in the American South performed such mendacious deeds on fellow human beings as to arouse the indignation of the righteous.

-          Over two million American men, for that many different reasons, donned the uniform of the United States of America to defeat insurrection and save the Union.

-          Thousands of leaders in Europe and elsewhere declined to support a group of rebels waging war against their mother country in order to preserve the institution of slavery.

And so it goes. Where does greatness lie?

Within each of us, that’s where.