Abraham Lincoln and Global Democracy

He led an armed struggle to abolish slavery and believed in freedom and equality. Abraham Lincoln, U.S. president, did not exactly speak about global democracy, but his notions can be applied globally.

 

(1) Lincoln believed that "all men are created equal" [this makes sense globally]

(2) Lincoln believed that democracy was "unfinished work"  [this makes sense globally]

(3) Lincoln believed that "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." [this makes sense globally]

 

Based on Lincoln's criteria, the IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc. are undemocratic, as they do not constitute "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Given his idealistic view of what is "American", he would probably also consider these organizations to be un-American (in the sense of, being in violation of the spirit of the true America).

 

It could be objected that this is stretching Lincoln too much. However, it is a fact the American Ideology was explicitly anti-imperialist until about 1945.

 

-Gert

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REFERENCE:

The above quotations are taken from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which is, in full:

[my apologies to those who know this from school]

The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."