Happy Presidents' Day
 

At the risk of sounding quaintly GAY [jaded liberals read: DUMB PATRIOTISM], Happy Presidents' Day to my fellow US webmasters.

What's there to celebrate? A whole fucking lot, actually. The 2 men we honor today -- Abraham Lincoln and George Washington really shaped the future of this country and really can't be thanked enough. G.W. of course gets some mad shouts out for not just leading the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War but resisting angry veterans' tendencies to make him President for life. This would have turned the US into another Banana Republic [the economic development system, not the khaki pants store]. It's a great tribute to this man's strength and integrity that he turned his back on the easy path of dictatorship.

As for Abraham Lincoln, we all know what he did. But he gets the most praise for leading the nation to a different vision of national unity--a vision that leads to our current national power. Back in Lincoln's day it was a real toss up whether states had the rights to back out of the Union. Many of the founders and framers of the constitution were of the opinion that states can freely back out of the United States. Lincoln changed all that.

Sure, both men were not saints... Washington owned slaves and Lincoln's original plan for blacks was to ship them to Africa, but they definitely rose to the challenge of their times and pushed this country forward so we can be given the opportunity to shape and share in it during our lifetimes.

Interesting how the US did not turn into a dictatorship [of course radical leftists would say its a corporate dictatorship] or an economics basket case. What was the magic ingredient? or is it ingredients? What turned 13 backwater colonies into an information/finance behemoth?