What would Lincoln do

The streets are filled with chaos. States have asserted a right to nullify federal law.

Governors have refused federal directives, nullified federal statutes, and mobs attack federal buildings. The President is openly mocked and scorned by the Press. The judiciary is blocking virtually everything and the President is trying to restore order. Courts issue repeated injunctions against the President. The Supreme Court is missing in action. Attacks on federal property are common, lawful speech is chilled by threat. Bureaucracies will not budge, they will not obey and they do not respect the elected apparatus. The President lives under constant threat of assassination. The murder of the political opposition is openly endorsed. Violence over political disagreement is common and even leads to murder.

The year is 1861. If this sounds like today, that is because this was a time eerily similar to the present day. The President at that time, Abraham Lincoln, was the most unpopular President in this history of the United States. So unpopular that the Democrat party declared that his election was a bridge too far, and that his mere election alone would make them secede. The violence and chaos that followed his preceded our Civil War, the bloodiest war in American History.

Just five years previous, in 1856, the Senator Charles Sumner, a leading abolitionist was caned and beaten repeatedly while trapped under his desk on the floor of the Senate by South Carolina Senator Preston Brooks. He was beaten so severely that he could not return to the Senate for three years. Northern newspapers were aghast. Southern newspapers and southerners in general rejoiced because Sumner had tarnished their “honor” by attacking slavery.

Earlier this year, on September 10, 2025, conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk was allegedly assassinated by a coward named Tyler Robinson, who hid out on a roof and shot Kirk with a Mauser bolt-action rifle. Unlike Preston Brooks, he did not even give Charlie Kirk the chance to know who killed him. There was no honor in this, it was not a duel or a fair fight. His assailant, a cowardly 22 year old college drop-out and do nothing, sobbed and threatened suicide when confronted by his father. He ran away and hid before ultimately being forced to turn himself in by his parents. Rather than face his opponents is court, is kept in solitary confinement in a suicide vest.

In keeping with the cowardly nature of today’s insurrectionists tens of thousands of Leftist Democrats mocked and cheered Charlie Kirk’s murder because they disagreed with his conservative views. The murder was not only celebrated on social media, but Mr. Kirk and his widow were mocked on network and cable television. Leftists continue to mock Mrs. Kirk, and celebrate his death a month after his murder.

Mr. Kirk’s assassination was the culmination of years of insurrection on the part of the Left in the United States. The Democrat party first came to be dominated by the Marxist Left during the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, five years after the murder of John F. Kennedy. Today, both JFK and his brother RFK the Democrat President who would be deemed to be a dangerous right-wingers by the current standards of the Democratic Party.

The first manifestation of the far leftward leaning of the Democratic Party was in 1972 with the nomination of George McGovern, and then in subsequent years with Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, and then lurching far to the left with Obama and a puppet President, Joe Biden. When President Trump first took office in 2016, the Democratic Party went into an attempted nullification of the election, first with concocted stories about Russian collusion, the attempted murder of a Supreme Court justice nominated by President Trump, attempted impeachments and continual protests around the country. It came to light that the allegations involving Russian Collusion were not only false, but they had been fabricated by Hillary Clinton’s campaign team in an effort to deflect attention away from possible wrongdoing on her part. As part of this scheme, FISA warrants were illegally obtained by the FBI under false premises, and granted by judges who did not ask a lot of questions. It also came to light that FBI agents were involved in the conspiracy, only one of which has actually been convicted of anything.

In the interim period between President Trump’s terms he was subjected to middle of the night searches, attempts to concoct novel felonies involving misdemeanor charges beyond the statute of limitations, de-platforming on all social media, and two assassination attempts involving suspicious security failures by the Secret Service. In addition, Republican Senators were spied upon by the FBI, a baseball field of Republican Senators was shot at during a friendly practice, and it became fashionable for movie stars and other public figures to threaten violence against the President or other Republican leaders or politicians.

During President Biden’s term of office, the fact that he was cognitively challenged was a fact repeatedly denied by the mainstream media. After it became obvious that he was, it remained unclear who actually was running the country during his term. Meanwhile during his term, over 20 million illegal aliens crossed the border, cities fell into chaos, and over 300,000 Americans died from fentanyl as a result of drug traffickers being allowed cross the border safely into the United States.

When President Trump took steps to deport criminal illegal aliens upon retaking office, he was met with resistance by the Democratic Party and their supporters. It was for the most part functional nullification. Cities and states declined to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, prosecutors declined to charge violent offenders and agencies slow-walked the programs of the Executive Branch. Lone federal judges issues nation-wide injunctions against federal law enforcement. Waves of street violence and attacks on ICE agents were rampant, encouraged and even at times assisted by Democratic politicians. The Press, far from decrying these attacks, encouraged them.

When the President tried to make cuts in the Federal budget to reduce the 37 trillion in debt, it was decried by the Press, and the president’s corporate allies and appointee were given death threats, their businesses attacked, and violence encouraged against them by Democrat politicians and media outlets. Bureaucrats, who had not even shown up to work for years, refused to be fired. And the same bureaucrats insisted that it was they—not the elected government, that set policy.

WHAT WOULD LINCOLN DO?

Those who claim that President Trump is a Nazi and a “fascist”would probably not have been a fan of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had few fans, and sadly, he was not able to dodge the bullet of his Democrat assassin, John Wilkes Booth. But the story of Lincoln shows that Democrat refusal to accept election results and violence against those that they disagree with is nothing new.

Lincoln did not believe that just because one disagrees that they are free to cause chaos, disruption or violence. Being a Republican and living in a Republic for Lincoln, meant that one should be mature enough to accept election results, even if one doesn’t agree with all the policies of elected officials.

Lincoln would not have thought it an intelligent position to call people who disagree with you evil or fascist, and he certainly would not have approved of violence against those you disagree with. He believed that the Union was not merely geography, it was a nation’s consent to lawful order. When parts of that system demy that order in practice, the executive’s first duty is to reunify the field of law—not for the Party but for the Republic.

To this end, he did not believe that the judiciary was the final arbiter of interpreting the Constitution. When the Taney Court attempted to settle the matter of slavery with Dred Scott, or to justify insurrection with Merryman, Lincoln did not accept the results. Courts in his opinion, could interpret cases, but they do not govern the nation. And their judgments cannot dissolve Executive Duty. As such, the “law fare” practiced by the federal district courts issuing nationwide injunctions, and trying to prevent the President from saving lives – especially on federal property -- would have received the attention it deserved from Lincoln. He would have ignored the court as he did in 1861.

Lincoln would have seem mob insurrection for what it is. Mob insurrection. He would not have seen Antifa beating up people, setting fire to things, threatening police or neighborhoods as a noble expression of free speech. Mob rule is insurrection because it substitutes force for persuasion and terrorizes the neutral middle. Lincoln would have sent in the national guard without delay and he would not have cared what an ineffective or compromised Governor or Mayor would think.

President Lincoln would have been no fan of the Deep State. He not only fought insurrectionists, but inertia. He reorganized, replaced and insisted that it was elected government, not the deep state apparatus that sets policy. When the machine forgets who they serve—namely the will of the people—Lincoln believe it was his duty to restore accountability. He would have quickly clarified the lines of accountability, insisted on lawful obedience and replaced any officers who substituted their personal preference for policy.

President Lincoln most famously said, “ The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” The Constitution was there to preserve the union not provide a legal excuse for its destruction. The Nation was not bound to commit suicide by strict adherence to procedure while rebellion destroys the very system those laws were meant to protect. It is easy for a federal district judge to sit and wax philosophically about what she believes is her interpretation of the Constitution. But there is nothing quaint about federal buildings being ransacked, innocents being hurt and federal officers being put in harm’s way for simply doing their job. There is nothing acceptable about an obese governor calling Federal officers trying to arrest felons, “jackbooted nazis” from the safety of his Governor’s Mansion.

Lincoln took pains to replace leaders who would not lead, and to work around judges who would not judge fairly because of their partisan leanings. In terms of what Lincoln did, and what he believed during his time, his actions today would “out-Trump” Trump. His patience would have been exhausted with do-nothing politicians and corrupt courts long ago.

As we look back on Lincoln, his bold stand that ultimately cost him his life, we see a man who was not afraid to lead, was not afraid to be unpopular, and did not act for the purpose of being liked. Such men are never appreciated in their lifetimes. They are usually despised, and many meet with a terrible end. But as we look up and see the Lincoln Memorial, we see a man who freed the slaves when it was unpopular to do so, defied the Courts when it was unpopular to do so, and who held the Union together at the cost of his life when the easier thing to do would have been to simply give in.

And when we think of him, and what he should do today, perhaps that will give us the insight and the courage to understand what we are called to do.