The politics of religion is one long Book of Revelation, free of faith in all other books, including the Five Books of Moses, with malice toward the Word of the Creator and the words of the Father of our Abrahamic religion—casting out the spirit of charity from the temple of our civil religion, so Rick Wilson can destroy democracy in order to save it; so he can label the party of No Labels a threat to democracy.
Wilson’s war is the life of the Lincoln Project, or the business of his devotion, with silence regarding an anniversary in the life of our country, and the death of the savior of our country.
One hundred fifty-eight years to the day, not a word—not even a tweet—from Wilson or the Lincoln Project about the anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
So much for the shock of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, or the sorrow of the morning after, or a day of mourning, because the memory of Abraham Lincoln is not enshrined in the principles of the Lincoln Project.
So much for the notion that Wilson knows anything about Lincoln save the words of a bad actor who wears a top hat and beard, and hawks mattresses and cars.
So much for the rightness of leaving the people’s business in their own hands, with firmness in the right of the weak to grow stronger and the ignorant wiser; and all better, and happier together.
As it pertains to the party of No Labels, Wilson sounds more like a Ford—the Ford on the front page of the Daily News—than a Lincoln
As it pertains to the people who eschew all labels save one, in whom the power of a representative of the “plain people” resides, Wilson says: Drop dead.
He says worse things in his book Running Against the Devil, forsaking the right to call himself a Teddy Roosevelt-style Republican.
Does Wilson not know the history of the 1912 election, or of Roosevelt’s two speeches in one city—Chicago, that somber city—where trumpets sound the advance and the good gird themselves for battle?
Or does Wilson see himself in Roosevelt’s description of Woodrow Wilson, unable to rise above the cheapest kind of party politics and raise a division for the man in the arena?
Perhaps Rick Wilson is more like the priest Roosevelt disdains, and the warrior Woodrow Wilson despises, neither just nor holy.
About Wilson’s distrust of the people, that he would deny them the right to choose, because he sees the Reich in the Right, trust that he has no shame.
Trust that he believes his opponents are his enemies, and that his enemies must never be his friends, because total war requires the unconditional surrender of all political rivals, foreign and domestic.
No Labels is Wilson’s latest enemy, not his last.
Were he to do otherwise, choosing the sunlight of Lincoln’s legacy over the shadows of Wilson’s words, we would have more civility in politics and more courageous politicians.
Labels would then be like laurels, a celebration of virtues such as honor, duty, wisdom, and judgment.
No such labels apply to Rick Wilson.