“Love begins with forgiveness; everything before forgiveness is jumped up manners.” – Arnold Kunst

21 December

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

We could do with following Abraham Lincoln’s example. Democracy is threatened in our day by our abiding addiction to rancor, an addiction every bit as corrosive in our day as the threat [the Civil War] posed by an attempt at dissolution by a vastly determined foe in Lincoln's day. Let us give thanks in our day, as Lincoln did in his, for this abiding idea - "I want every man to have a chance!" And let us give thanks in our day, as Lincoln in his, to those in our circle who do the grunt work to make that ideal a reality. And finally, let us in our day, as Lincoln in his, give practical expression to the astounding conviction he expressed when he won the Presidency in 1860: "In all our rejoicing let us neither express, nor cherish, any harsh feeling towards any citizen who, by his vote, has differed with us. Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feelings."