The Assault on Quotes
Filed under: Al Gore, Books — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on June 9, 2007 @ 8:22 pm CEST
Andrew Ferguson wrote a fascinating column for the Washington Post about Al Gore’s new book, The Assault on Reason. Ferguson is wondering about something…
You can’t really blame Al Gore for not using footnotes in his new book, “The Assault on Reason.” It’s a sprawling, untidy blast of indignation, and annotating it with footnotes would be like trying to slip rubber bands around a puddle of quicksilver. Still, I’d love to know where he found the scary quote from Abraham Lincoln that he uses on page 88.
In a chapter entitled “The Politics of Wealth,” Gore argues that the ancient threat to democracy posed by rich people run amok has finally been realized under the man who beat him in the 2000 presidential race. Even Lincoln, Gore says, saw the age of Bush coming in 1864: “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
Now, this quote might sound very familiar to a lot of you; when I read Ferguson’s column I thought “yes, I know this quote.” Ferguson explains:
The quote is a favorite of liberal bloggers, which is probably how Gore came across it. And as a description of how many on the left see the country seven years into their Bush nightmare, it’s pretty much perfect.
Too perfect, in fact. If you’re familiar with Lincoln’s distinctive way of expressing himself, you’ll hear the false notes the passage strikes. For one thing, Lincoln just wasn’t the “trembling” kind — or if he was, he kept his trembling to himself. Words such as “enthroned” and “aggregated” are a bit too fancy for his plain, unclotted prose, and the phrase “money power” suggests a conspiratorial turn of mind that would have been foreign to him. Indeed, these words don’t show up anywhere else in “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln” (which, thanks to Gore’s Internet, are now searchable at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/).
Moreover, the point of the passage is very un-Lincolnian. A corporate lawyer whose long and cunning labor on behalf of the railroads earned him a comfortable income, Lincoln was a vigorous champion of market capitalism, even when it drifted (as it tends to do) toward large concentrations of wealth. Many of his administration’s signal initiatives — the transcontinental railroad, for example — amounted to what liberals today would condemn as “corporate welfare.” Lots of speculators got rich under Lincoln, as Gore notes. As Gore does not note, Lincoln seemed not to have minded.
There is more:
Writing in 1999 in the Abraham Lincoln Association’s newsletter, the great Lincoln historian Thomas F. Schwartz traced the bogus passage to the 1880s, about 20 years after Lincoln’s death. One theory is that it first appeared in a pamphlet advertising patent medicines. Opponents of Gilded Age capitalism — Gore’s forerunners — found the quote so useful that Lincoln’s former White House secretaries felt compelled to launch a campaign “denouncing the forgery,” Schwartz said. Robert Todd Lincoln, who was the president’s only surviving son and himself a wealthy railroad lawyer, called it “an impudent invention” that ascribed to his father views that the former president would never have held.
Lesson learned: check your quotes.
Having said that, it has to be pointed out, of course, that this misquote does not discredit Gore’s message. His point still stands: Reason is, according to Gore, assaulted by politicians, lobbyists and the media alike. Reason has been replaced by soundbites and shouting and yelling at each other. Political discourse has become a caricature of what it once was. Science is under attack by pseudo-science, the list goes on and on.
1 Fact Checking The Gore Fact Checker - Liberal Values - Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought
June 10, 2007 @ 3:13 am CEST[…] Michael P.F. van der Galiën comments and accepts Ferguson’s claim that the quotation is not correct. Even in accepting this, he rejexts Ferguson’s argument: Having said that, it has to be pointed out, of course, that this misquote does not discredit Gore’s message. His point still stands: Reason is, according to Gore, assaulted by politicians, lobbyists and the media alike. Reason has been replaced by soundbites and shouting and yelling at each other. Political discourse has become a caricature of what it once was. Science is under attack by pseudo-science, the list goes on and on. Written by Ron ChusidLast 5 posts by Ron ChusidGeorge Bush’s English Isn’t Very Good - June 9th, 2007SciFi Friday: Human Nature and The Dark Side - June 8th, 2007Paris is Burning - June 8th, 2007Fact Checking the Republicans II: Romney Rewrites History on Iraq Inspections - June 8th, 2007Fact Checking the Republicans I: Socialized Medicine - June 8th, 2007 […]
2 Ron Chusid
June 10, 2007 @ 3:15 am CESTFerguson claims that Gore does not have references to the facts given in The Assault on Reason. Actually Gore does provide references.
The note on page 282 shows that Gore attributes the Lincoln quote as being from a letter to Colonel William F. Elkins from November 21, 1964. Gore’s source for this letter is The Lincoln Encyclopedia edited by Archer H. Shaw (New York: Mcmillan, 1950, p. 40.)
It may be the case that subsequent research showed that the quotation is in error, however Ferguson is also incorrect in his claim that Gore does not have references, and his implication that Gore’s work is full of errors.
3 CaseyL
June 10, 2007 @ 4:36 am CESTOur public discourse is so degraded, trivialized, and polarized it’s hard to know how or even if it can be corrected. I agree that the MSM bears much of the blame, but so do the people who put up with it, who don’t change the channel or shut the TV off altogether. There are better sources of information; why aren’t people availing themselves of that?
Until people want intelligent information (and politicians, and policies, and so on), until they not only want it but demand it, until they not only demand it but boycott the “infotainment” industry altogether… the situation won’t change.
4 C Stanley
June 10, 2007 @ 1:24 pm CESTThe mistake may not discredit Gore’s overall message but it (along with the errors in his GW documentary) discredit Gore
Why anyone considers him “the smartest guy in the room” is beyond me. Anyone who’s that sloppy with facts when he feels he has such important messages to convey hasn’t earned that degree of respect.
5 mvdg
June 10, 2007 @ 1:30 pm CESTChristine,
I’ve got anohter post coming up later today which, umh, well… lets just say I may have to take back some words, as does Ferguson.
6 C Stanley
June 10, 2007 @ 1:39 pm CESTHa, well, OK, I’ll reserve judgment on this particular point (though I still feel the criticism applies to Gore’s documentary and speeches on GW which contain too many errors which he has not corrected).