“I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.” - Thomas Carlyle

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

27 October

“Lincoln was not doctrinaire - and that at a time when being doctrinaire was automatically taken to mean being a man of convictions. His contemporaries had the answers, all the answers, and had them surprisingly easily. At the very outset of Lincoln’s term, when South Carolina actually passed what was called an Ordinance of Secession, Northern editorial writers in the winter-spring of 1860-61 saw the situation in simple terms: they wrote [pontificated?] that if South Carolina wanted to leave the Union, we should just let ‘em go - good riddance to bad rubbish; they’ve been nothing but trouble from the beginning anyway. Simple! Similariy South Carolinians manning artillery aimed at Fort Sumter saw the situation in equally simple terms: we gonna kill us some Yankees! Simple! The examples go on and on. And against all that was this new man in the White House who said, more than once, ‘My policy is to have no policy.’” – Arnold Kunst