It Is Meet and Right So To Do

In Porcupine's office, there hangs a framed original Harper's Weekly cartoon - similar to this one - with the branch that the desperate Republican elephant is clinging to labeled "Massachusetts". You see, in 1856, the fledgling Republican Party was kept alive by the strong abolitionist vote in Massachusetts. To campaign in the Congressional races here in Worcester, Taunton, New Bedford, and other Massachusetts communities, a young Illinois attorney came, with quite a reputation for speechifying. His name was Abraham Lincoln.

Two years ago, Porcupine wrote THIS post, to try to explain his admiration and devotion to the memory of perhaps the most tortured and brilliant man to occupy the Presidency. His humble beginnings, his work ethic, his natural ability to communicate - all of these qualites speak powerfully to the current polarized political climate, and it is appropriate to consider how we choose our Presidents, and how we value the Office. As Porcupine wrote back then, "As we go into another election year, and begin the wailing about the quality and timbre of those who put themselves forward, please consider this. Would we, as a nation, state or district, allow a person with clinical depression to serve as our elected representative? Would we narrow our focus to the flaw, and fail to see the person that the flaw has strengthened? Worse, would we elect a person who was ugly, with a thin reedy voice?"

Today, the Middlesex Club stood proudly by as legislation was introduced to create a Lincoln BiCentennial Commission, to celebrate President Lincoln's two-hundreth birthday on February 12, 2009. Founded in 1867, the Middlesex Club holds an annual tribute to Lincoln, most recently its 140th, making it the longest continuous Lincoln memorial society in the nation. Porcupine is honored to have such distinguished Lincoln admirers as fellow Massachusetts Republicans John DeJong and Dan Winslow, and the Club plans events for the BiCentennial Year.

Click HERE to learn more about the coming bicentennial - and let us all reflect upon our most brilliant President. It is meet and right so to do.