Anti-Climacus

LINK: Kieran Hally creates a little tiff in the blogosphere my opining thus, on Memorial Day:

"That so many are willing to serve is a testament to the character of ordinary people in the United States. That these people have, in recent years, shouldered the burden of service for the sake of a badly planned war begun in the name of an ill-defined cause, on the thinnest of pretexts, and with the most flimsy sort of evidence, is an indictment of the country’s political class."

He defends himself thusly:

"I am not the one who is “test[ing] my ability to invent a populist voice” as Orin claims. For an example of that, you could have gone to Arlington Cemetery today and heard someone claim that ‘we must honor [the war dead] by completing the mission for which they gave their lives, by defeating the terrorists, advancing the cause of liberty, and building a safer world.’"

One wonders, then, whether he'd argue for equal time against this sentiment:

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain --"

I'm not saying that it's illegitimate for Mr. Healy to make such points as he wants to make, nor do I necessarily want to link the Civil War to the current international situation (though I quite often want to make just such a link, I wouldn't force anyone else to make it). I certainly don't want to make an accusation of bad faith, but the only difference I can see between Lincoln's speech and Bush's is that Mr. Healy thinks one is 'inventing populism' and the other, perhaps, is not. I confess I might be missing something, and so anyone who can actually substantively differentiate the rhetoric that's being used (on grounds slightly stronger than one of them meaning it and the other not) should feel free to do so in the comments.

UPDATE: The more I think about it, the more oddly apposite Mr. Healy's suggestion seems. Bush uses Lincoln to try and 'create a populist voice,' just like Lincoln uses Pericles to try and effect the same thing. Of course, you go back far enough, and the thing divides into rhetorical and ethical principles, but if one cana ctually succeed in doing a nuanced negotiation between them, well, bully to you.