Global Abe

Abraham Lincoln's global presence is ubiquitious; he probably gets mentioned only a little less than Barack Obama in the international press. Someone should do a systematic study of just how Lincoln has gotten used, cited, and on occasion distorted by the global media during the 21st century.

On the whole, I'd be willing to bet that people abroad do with Lincoln pretty much the same things we do with him here in America: that is, he likely gets manipulated to fit the exigencies of the moment, as we see in him pretty much what we want to see, or need to see. I don't mean this observation to be as cynical as perhaps it seems. But let's face it; over the last 140-odd years, Americans North and South, liberal and conservative, etc. have routinely twisted and turned Lincoln to fit their needs, sometimes at the expense of historical accuracy. In this I don't think Americans are any better or worse than anyone else. Surely the British people do much the same thing with Winston Churchill, for example, or Indians with Gandhi, or whatever.

The thing about Lincoln, though, is that he seems to be uniquely malleable, bendable in a wide variety of ways--more so perhaps than any other major American figure. I wonder why this is so. Is it the man's complexity that lends him to so many different uses? Or maybe it's his rags-to-riches persona, the fact that he came from such a common background that makes him more approachable by a variety of perspectives, more perhaps than an aloof George Washington, or an American aristocrat like Franklin Roosvelt.

At any rate, here are some examples of how Lincoln gets cited by people outside the United States, in no particular order. Talk about variety:

• An article from Ghana calls Lincoln "the great libertarian." Not sure I buy this one; I've never really thought of Lincoln as possessing libertarian impulses, and I have often had the distinct impression that some of the more extreme libertarians can't stand Lincoln because of his (real and alleged) excesses concerning the supression of civil liberties during the war.


• A Tibetan commentator reference's Lincoln's humble roots (though the article focuses primarily on four other presidents). I very much think that this is the facet of Lincoln's life to which people from other nations can most readily relate.


• The World Socialist Web Site (not exactly sure from which country this originates) rather predictably cites Lincoln as a friend of the laboring classes.


• A Canadian conservative website takes on the currently popular question about conservatives' role in the Republican Party, citing "eight principles" of the GOP that were created by "Abraham Lincoln and his political allies." The principles are fairly inocuous and generic, though I'm not so sure I see Lincoln as advocating cutting taxes and the size of government. That sounds a lot more like Ronald Reagan.


• A Bangkok site quotes the Gettysburg Address on the subject of, curiously enough, the proper grammatical use of ellipses. It would be interesting to research which Lincoln speech is referenced the most often abroad: the Gettysburg Address or the Second Inaugural. I'd guess it to be the former, though I'm not sure quite why--just a gut feeling.


• This article from England has a curious take on Lincoln, arguing that it was the "shock jocks and rednecks" of Lincoln's day who assassinated the president. I don't know about this one. Booth was many things, but I don't think "redneck" was one of them.


• A Carribean website carries commentary suggesting that Lincoln--along with Obama, FDR, Nelson Mandela and others--were "trendsetters," through exactly what this means is a bit unclear.


• A Russian website resurrects the old set of coincidences between Lincoln and Kennedy. Not much new here.


• This English website delights in mentioning that Lincoln attended a cricket match in 1859.


• An Australian site wonders--a bit tongue in cheek--if we're not better off just going ahead and announcing that Lioncoln was gay.


• An interesting Arab article mentions Lincoln approvingly as one of several founding American figures who created a "deeper moral level of America's political consciousness."