One of my favorite Lincoln quotes: "Stand and Deliver"

[bigtree]

from digby:


Well, it is Gohmert. But then Candy Crowley asked Rand Paul this morning if he thinks it's a bad idea to raise the debt ceiling and he said that Obama is being irresponsible and a bad leader for telling people that the nation will default if we don't do it. So, he's not alone in his delusions.

Crowley didn't ask if Obama should be impeached if the Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling but I feel pretty confident that he'd be game.

This is exactly what Lincoln was saying in his Cooper Union speech:

You will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me - my money - was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

watch Gohmert:

[demwing]

1. "That is cool" - Couldn't believe Lincoln actually said that!

but he did, and now I'm wondering if it meant the same thing in 1860 that is does in 2013?

[KittyWampus]

2. I had same reaction however cool= unfeeling. At least that was my interpretation.

related to "cold-hearted".

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. "Stand and deliver" means "halt and give me everything you have"

see for instance the lyrics of "Whiskey in the Jar": "As I was going over the far-famed Kerry Mountain, I met with Captain Farrell and his money he was counting/well I first produced me pistol, and I then produced me rapier, saying stand and deliver, for I am a bold deceiver"

[demwing]

4. No. The quote I doubted was "That is cool"

"the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool."

Had to look up the speech to verify it, but apparently it's true! Lincoln was cool before cool was cool.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. Cool = cold, not "awesome"

OED says:

4.a Of persons (and their actions): Not heated by passion or emotion; unexcited, dispassionate; deliberate, not hasty; undisturbed, calm.

6. Assured and unabashed in demeanour, where the circumstances would call for diffidence and hesitation; calmly and deliberately audacious or impudent in making a proposal or demand: said of persons and their actions. Esp. in phr. cool customer

(Sense 6 has citations dating to 1825.)