Sunday, October 9, 2016

Lincoln-Douglas debates

There wasn’t a lot of give and take at the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  One candidate spoke for an hour, followed by the other candidate for an hour and a half, followed by the first candidate for 30 minutes.  There were seven debates, and the candidates took turns being first.

In one of the debates Douglas accused Lincoln of believing that blacks were equal to whites, much to the amusement of the crowd.  When Lincoln had his turn, he brought in the philosophy of John Locke, and said that when a black man mixes his sweat with his labor, the product of that labor belongs to him, and in that regard he is the equal of Mr. Douglas or any other man.

His audience, quite familiar with Locke’s philosophy, agreed with Lincoln.


I wonder if tonight’s debate will reach that level.  I wonder if the audience will reach that level.  I have my doubts.

2 comments:

  1. We just saw 2 monkeys flinging poo at each other for 90 minutes. It's a sad, pathetic state of affairs.

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  2. No, we saw one monkey, Donald Trump. We also saw a serious woman trying to bring reason to the situation. The fact that Trump's defense of his behavior was "he did it first" is worthy of a five-year-old, but not a serious candidate for the presidency. I believe if you paused to think about this, you'd realize that no matter how flawed you think Hillary Clinton is, she will not create an 11 million refugee problem, will not do away with the Federal Reserve Bank, will not impose the first religious test in the nation's history on immigrants, will appoint qualified Supreme Court justices, will continue to work to provide health care to all Americans, and will help college students.

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