Noted Lincoln Scholar Says Obama Misquotes Lincoln

Noted Lincoln Scholar Says Obama Misquotes Lincoln.(BG).“[Barack Obama] didn’t get it right,” says Harry V. Jaffa, professor emeritus of Claremont McKenna College, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and author of two influential books on Lincoln.Jaffa was referring to this quotation from President Obama.

“I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.”

Professor Jaffa noted that this quotation leaves a lot out. The 93-year-old Jaffa, by memory, recited the full statement from Lincoln’s speech, “The Nature and Objects of Government, with Special Reference to Slavery” (July 1, 1854):

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.”

Notice the difference? The emphasis is on need to have done, not on government doing the action. “That distinction was missing form his quotation,” Jaffa explains. But Obama has repeatedly invoked this misleading Lincoln quotation on both the campaign trail and during his presidency.

Yet despite getting this quote wrong repeatedly, expect Obama to continue to use it for his political ends. In trying to paint the Republicans as more extreme than the visionary who led their party, he hopes to run against the Congress and win the election. But it is he, not they, that misunderstands Lincoln as he tries to enslave us all to bigger and bigger government.Read and see the full story here.