Today, April 14, marks the 145th Anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln!
This was one of the most tragic moments in American history, and transformed the future of the nation, both in the South and nationally!
Assassination always affects the long term future of a nation, and certainly, the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy in 1968, and other political assassinations as well, had a deleterious effect on the future of the nation!
Political extremism is always evil, when it provokes marginal personalities to seek fame and notoriety by murdering a political leader, whether in America or anywhere else historically.
The political atmosphere today is so poisonous, with extremism and hot rhetoric so common, that it makes one concerned that it would not take much to convince some unbalanced individual to set out to assassinate our President, or our Speaker of the House, or some Governor, or any other political leader.
Nothing good can come out of this, and were this to happen, there would be a revulsion against those who had provoked it!
Why can’t we all realize how dangerous a situation we are in during the year 2010, and that we must pledge to lower the temperature of our debate, and recognize the common humanity of those who we might disagree with?
We do not want to mourn the loss of another leader, and this should be the message as we remember the sacrifice of Abraham Lincoln, who gave his life for his country to preserve the Union he took the oath to defend!