Love Your Gun More Than The Children

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
--Second Amendment, United States Constitution

One of my neighbors asked me to go out on a walk through the salt marshes on the border between Hampton and Hampton Falls, where the Seabrook Nuclear plant sits. He had planned an early morning excursion, just after sunrise, and he planned to bring his dog and his rifle. 

"You can shoot a gun there?" I asked amazed. "There're houses along the salt marshes and there's a road.
"Yeah, it's fine," he told me. "It's legal."
I declined the offer.

Now an article in today's New York Times comes the report that the Newtown police commission tried to get an ordinance passed to limit shooting of guns to 500 feet from occupied buildings. It was defeated. People in Newtown had disturbed their neighbors by firing weapons which sounded like machine guns from morning into the night. There was no ordinance to prevent it.  Mary Ann Jacob, the librarian at Sand Hook Elementary who saved many lives, had been part of the petition to enhance the ordinance. "Right now," she had testified, "If you're standing on your property and my house is 20 feet away, you can shoot." 
One of the incidents which prompted calls for the ordinance was gun fire in a wooded area on Cold Spring Road, right across from an elementary school,  A police commission member testified, "I've hunted for many years, but the police were getting complaints of shooting in the morning, in the evening and of people shooting at propane gas tanks just to see them explode."

The meetings to consider the new ordinances occurred last August and the representative of the National Shooting Sports Federation said there was greater danger of swimming accidents than shooting accidents. "This is a freedom that should never be taken away. Teach kids to hunt, you will never have to hunt your kids."

Say what? Hunt your kids? Catchy, though.

Another Newtown resident, owner of a shooting range, Scott Ostrosky, said, "Guns are why we're free in this country." 

Funny, I would have thought the Constitution is why we are free, but then again the Constitution as interpreted by Justice Antonin Scalia and his fellow "orginalists"  the "strict constructionists" may give me pause.

I have read the arguments about the history of the 2nd amendment, from its creation in the 18th century, and the origins of the concerns which led to its inclusion in the Bill of Rights. Academics  date the idea of a free society requiring an armed citizenry back to the 1600's in England, when a Catholic king tried to disarm Protestants, but all that sounds like academic masturbation to me. 

The fact is, as I read the Constitution, correct me if I'm wrong, but the 2nd amendment is the only place in the entire document where the founding fathers actually tell you the reason they grant a right--the right to keep and bear arms is there because we want to be sure militias function to preserve a free state.  They did not have a standing army, just militias and there was no defense budget then, so if you wanted a militia you had to have private citizens buy their own guns for that purpose. 

But as Antonin Scalia has it: 
Nowhere else in the Constitution does a "right" attributed to "the people" refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention "the people," the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset.

Well, that's very nifty, Mr. Scalia, but completely irrelevant and immaterial. We are talking about a unique set of sentences, one in which the authors tell you why they are providing a right and saying, quite clearly, it's for one purpose and one purpose only, and they define the right as belonging to a specific category of person--that person who would be part of a militia to protect a free state, not to protect himself personally.

Next to "obfuscation" in the dictionary, place a photograph of Mr. Scalia. Either the man is being willfully blind, or he simply has not read the relevant amendment, or if he has read it, he has not understood plain speech.

What you really have to wonder about is how many of our neighbors and citizens so adore blowing up propane tanks and firing weapons they are willing to endure a quarterly blood letting of six year olds so they can thrill to the excitement of shooting their guns.

They are correct, that simply passing a law against AR-15 guns, the attack rifle favorite of both mass killers and gun enthusiasts who simply love blowing things away, will not prevent the next maniac from getting his hands on one, on his mother's or his brother's or his friend's gun.  To clamp down on this exceptional sort of disease event you'd need to do more than just make an antibiotic available; you'd need public health measures to identify the likely perpetrators, institutions to confine them,  security cameras to watch for them approaching schools and day care centers. And even then, there will be "events." 

I do not believe, at least not yet, that passing a single law would prevent rampages by maniacs. But just looking at who is on the gun side of this debate, I'm prepared to vote with Maud--screw the bastards. Make 'em all illegal.

Meaningful Action

The news from Newtown, Connecticut is one of eleven reports of over 11 murders in  a single event by gun fire since 1984, one of 19 over the past 5 years of multiple deaths in a single shooting incident.
President Obama's statement was masterful, but, through no fault of his, incapable of ameliorating this sort of disaster; having said that, I cannot think of another President or leader who has ever done better--even Reagan addressing the Challenger explosion, was still just an actor playing the part. Mr. Obama was through and through, authentic, not milking this for anything, simply expressing what every parent is thinking.
The news media, you would think, would have figured out by now  what to cover and what not to say, but, as usual, the reporters, columnists, TV news show producers have been insufferable. (NPR's Scott Simon being my personal migraine--he seems to just love wallowing in these moments with that syrupy, unctuous voice he does, to tell you just how deeply he feels for your loss, as if nobody in the country could possibly feel as badly as Scott does about this.) Interviews with distraught witnesses, people hugging, interviews with clergymen, interviews with "trauma psychologists" and with social workers, saying things like, "This is a tragedy,"  clips from the governor and police chiefs.
As if any sort of authority figure has a clue about what to do about all this.
And then there are the men and women who are paid to swing into high gear because they work for the National Rifle Association, the Republican Party or for some gun control group.
All of the "experts" sound like imbeciles. The office holders are simply unable to say anything of value. The world will little note nor long remember what they say. 
The prize imbeciles are the NRA faithful who say we ought to arm more people, so Next Time, someone in the crowd will pull a gun and shoot the shooter, just like in old Westerns. 
Right here in New Hampshire the legislature debated and may, for all I know, have passed a law to be sure legislators could carry their guns into the statehouse.
Has there ever been a case when an armed citizen truncated a murderous spree by shooting the shooter? 
It reminds me of the days when AIDS was arising, before anyone knew much about the virus, and before there were any drugs to treat it.  It was already out there, having infected hundreds of thousands, and we heard interviews about how this was all the government's fault for not spending enough money on the problem.

 People from the National Institutes of Health were saying, "It's not money we need: It's ideas."

But AIDS turned out to be a single--albeit ever mutating--virus. While it has not been successfully eradicated, on the scale of polio, it has been managed.

We are not managing gun violence of the Newtown type.

If we stopped the manufacture and sale of another gun of any sort tomorrow, we would still be pickled in guns--over 300 million by some estimates, extant in this nation as we speak.
How do you control access to guns by deranged people, when there are more guns than McDonald's restaurants, when guns are like automobiles--ubiquitous, and the only reason there are not even more deaths is the self interest and will of the operators in possession of these instruments of destruction?
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ever the fresh minded thinker, suggested we give up on restricting access to guns, but attempt to restrict access to bullets. Even Chris Rock picked up on that idea as a way to restrict gun violence in the ghetto, saying, "Can you imagine if a bullet cost $5000? Ain't no way no brother going to shoot more than one round, and only at close range. Then he'd go dig it out." 
Somehow, though, I cannot imagine the well planned shootings at schools would be much deterred by expensive bullets.  And you can steal bullets as easily as stealing guns. 
I need ideas. I agree with the President, we ought to take meaningful action, if only I had a clue what form that might take.

What's Eating Labor Unions?

Howard Zinn, One of Mad Dog's Heroes

I should begin by telling you where I am going with this:  I think labor unions are essential, healthy, a very positive social force. Without them or with their power substantially diminished all but the upper 1% are less free.

But...
Like liberals and Democrats, labor unions have been negligent about marketing their message. Labor leaders have been guilty of a certain arrogance in believing their arguments are self evident, that they do not have to convince anybody their cause is just.

Consider some examples from Mad Dog's own family album--and this is a family, which whether or not  its members know it , owes a great deal to labor unions.  Let us consider some items...

1. Mad Dog has a son who worked as a medical student at two hospitals:  One had a union, which negotiated for an hour for its workers to clean up operating rooms between cases; the other hospital's maintenance crews were not unionized,  and cleaned up between cases in 30 minutes. The non unionized hospital could schedule 8 cases per OR per day; the unionized hospital could only do half as many. That, multiplied by twenty OR's, 5 days a week,  meant the difference in millions of dollars a year, the difference between a robust hospital balance sheet and red ink. And beyond that, the sight of cleaning crews standing around after 20 minutes, doing nothing,  made Mad Dog's son's blood boil and destroyed, in this gestating surgeon, all  sympathy. And Mad Dog, would have to echo his father: "I'm all for the workers--but these are not workers."

2.  In a movie about Marilyn Monroe, she is shown on set, and she moves a chair from one place to another, only to incur the wrath of the stage workers' union chief, who places the chair back in it's original spot, until a union stage hand can pick it up and carry it five feet to where Marilyn had placed it.  This may be fiction, but it is a scene which resonated with most Brits.
4.  State police officers in Massachusetts have filed grievances to be sure a unionized state trooper is paid to park his car at road construction sites to observe traffic go by, at union wages, when an entry level lower paid worker, non unionized or unionized, could stand out with his or her fluorescent yellow jacket and flag to wave at approaching cars.
5.  National Football League football players make millions of dollars a year and they are represented by a union. Are these millionaires really "workers?"  Or are we watching, now and then, millionaires argue with billionaires--in which case, who cares?
Most of  these instances are examples of  enforced inefficiency, stupidity and pissing contests, and they alienate the American public from labor unions. 
But then there is another type of problem, one of middle class people thinking they have been denied what they want because union workers have got cushy deals for their own workers. Middle class workers may feel offended to learn a teacher who has been identified/accused of being incompetent can be sent to a lounge and get paid for not teaching classes for a year.
A great town for a national nurses' convention is Chicago, but owing to union wages, prices for hotel rooms, convention space makes  Chicago unaffordable for nurses's conventions; these nurses are middle class workers who resent not being able to get what they want because a union got for other workers what those hotel workers wanted.

In these instances, the man in the street, who is not directly involved,  sees a union fighting with bosses and managers as an inconvenience to himself, rather than as a group of underdogs standing up for themselves, demanding their contribution to a productive nation be recognized and fairly compensated.

Arrayed against the unions is a powerful set of controlling forces, including the Koch brothers who congenitally loath anyone who is not rich, the Republican party, which is compromised of elected officials who are bought and paid for by those who hate unions--the bosses, the owners and the corporate CEO's,  who act as if paying fair wages is a threat to their stockholders rather than a benefit. And union wages should be seen as a benefit to all--a way of keeping an well trained work force happy and well fed.

What Mad Dog would argue:  Organized labor, believe me, we love you. But you are not making it easy to defend you. 
Go find yourself some phrase makers, some office on K street with an auditorium and an oval desk at the front.  
Do us all a favor:  Zip up your fly and shave, stop dragging your knuckles on the floor, and spend some time thinking about how you look and sound.

Jill Lepore Taxes Patriotism Fairness Courage

Jill Lepore, is a professor of history at Harvard, but Mad Dog does not hold that against her, considering the edifying article she has written in The New Yorker about our nation's attitudes about taxes. Below is a link to this article, which given Mad Dog's record, affords no better than an even chance of working:

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2012-11-26#folio=024


As New Yorker articles are wont to do, this one does go on for some pages (5) and as professors are wont to do, Professor Lepore strays into some pretty distant and currently less than relevant epochs of Amercian history, but what she does manage to do is to place our own confused, frothy and irrational attitudes toward taxes in perspective.

Her main messages, as far as Mad Dog is concerned, can be broken down as such:
1. Those who rail against taxes see only the tax and not the benefit. As Oscar Wilde once observed: The cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Or, to put it another way, the tax hater is a government services taker who is not willing to become a giver.  The most ardent New Hampshire anti tax man is very willing to accept his Medicare, his Social Security check, his free currency system courtesy of the federal government, the roads he drives on, the bridges he crosses, the internet he uses, the clean air he breathes, the fluoridated water he drinks, the vaccines he receives, the public health he enjoys, the university he went to on a GI bill and the mortgage assistance for his first home, all while complaining bitterly that the income tax is a socialist plot to confiscate his property and to redistribute his wealth.

2. Liberals have failed to vigorously defend taxation, particularly the income tax for not just decades, but for generations.

3.  Conservatives, whose patron saint is Ronald Reagan, howl about the dreaded deficit and national debt, conveniently forgetting that when Mr. Reagan lowered income tax rates for the upper 1%, the national debt rose from $930 billion to$ 2,600 billion. 

Those of you who are particularly masochistic, can browse through past blogs from Mad Dog about people like John Hunter of Greenland, who wrote the Portsmouth Herald complaining that he sees no justice in his having to pay more income tax than his poorer neighbor, who, after all, breathes the same air, uses the same roads and benefits just a much (in his mind, at least)  from the government as he does. 
This is the old argument about the "fairness" of a progressive vs a regressive tax, and Professor Lepore explores this with great clarity.
As Mad Dog has insisted, and still insists, we ought not argue for the virtues of progressive taxation on the basis of "fairness."  Tax discussion bursts into flames when such emotional arguments are allowed. We should only say, it is most practical to place the burden on those who are least injured and who can carry the load most easily. 
Dr. Lepore cites the study of Thomas Hungerford, which showed raising tax rates on the richest top percentages did not inhibit economic growth, but cutting those rates on the rich does correlate with concentrating the wealth in smaller in smaller percentages at the top of the food chain.  This study raised howls of protest from Mitch McConnell and other Republicans in the pocket of the rich Republican masters, understandably.
It is reassuring to see this argument has been with us since the founding of the country. 
It was thus ever so, and will continue to be. 
We just have to be sure we win the argument by facing it head on.
Here In New Hampshire, Jackie Ciley attempted to win the Democratic nomination for governor, and she refused to take "The Pledge" to never sign into law an income tax. Mad Dog, on reflection, thinks she might have been more successful had she been more willing to explore this issue more head on. At virtual every venue she appeared, the first and last questions were about whether or not she was for an income tax. She said she thought the option ought to be there, if only to use a leverage in discussions with the Republicans, but her phrase was "all options should be on the table," which meant to the old codger who seemed to show up at all her appearances, "Then, what you are saying, is you're for an income tax."
Mad Dog would then stand up and shout, "I think we do not pay enough in total taxes in New Hampshire! All we do is pay property tax, which hurts the elderly, who have paid off their homes, and we whine about how we pay too many taxes and too much. Well, if we paid more, maybe we could build more roads, improve our schools and hospitals and emerge from the 19th century in this backward state!"
Mad Dog is the most un-electable citizen in the Granite State.
Mad Dog has often recounted how his own father paid his income tax bill every April 15th, with a smile on his face, saying, "I never dreamed I'd make enough money to get me into the top brackets. I'm a closet patriotic. I served in the Army  during WWII, and I vote every four years, but this is real patriotism. This hurts. Real patriotism always does."

Right To Work States

Senator from Kentucky, which is, strangely, not a right to work state.

The following states are "right-to-work" states:

• Alabama
• Arizona †
• Arkansas †
• Florida †
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Indiana^[29]
• Iowa
• Kansas †
• Louisiana
• Mississippi †
• Nebraska ††
• Nevada
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma †
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Virginia
• Wyoming

Anything strike you about this list?

Well, one thing it doesn't yet have Michigan on it, but it soon may.

A "right to work" state has a law or constitutional provision which says that a worker whose wages have been negotiated by a union does not have to pay union dues.  The unions, of course, say that worker has benefited from their services without paying for them. The workers say, we never asked for them. You negotiated for yourself, and if I benefited, well how does that hurt you?  The unions say, if you don't have to pay union dues, why should anyone else? Pretty soon, without our being able to collect for our services, we are out of business.

Actually, as sympathetic as I am to unions, and as important as unions are, I can see the argument that a person should not be forced to join any organization to work. On the other than, that same person is forced to sign a contract with an employer, often a very one sided contract, if he wants work. Why should the employer be the only force holding trump cards? Why not allow a countervailing force have some play?

But setting aside the fairness, the right or wrong--and I do not think for a moment this a matter of right and wrong--it is a simply matter of power and who is allowed to have power, employers, unions, individuals who want to work but who don't like feeling they are not in control.

Setting aside all those considerations, it is interesting how tightly these states match another map of the country: Virginia is the only state on this list which voted for Obama, and Virginia voted for Obama in the Washington, DC suburbs, mostly.  So the folks who are voting against union power are the Confederacy, the far West, mountain cowboy states.  They are the states with the poorest people, the most ignorant populations (or, to put it more gently, the least educated people) and the most reactionary politics. 

There is, of course, Florida, but that state is even more schizophrenic than Virginia, and is a Confederate state, at least until January and February, so we can forget about Florida. They don't even know how to count votes in Florida. I'm not sure who they really voted for in the last election.

But it is curious that these downtrodden, poor, low earning people should reject unions.  One would think they would have the most to gain. Why would these bottom feeders reject unions?

Perhaps it is because these people have an inferiority complex. They, on some level, know they are uneducated, un competitive and they are grateful for any job on any terms and they do not feel worthy. Instead of demeaning them, and calling them bottom feeders and saying they are all  ignorant and inbred and stupid, we should ask them why they reject unions. 

Maybe we'd learn something.

Maybe we'd hear something intelligent, like, well Honda would not have built their plant here, Boeing would not have built their plant here if they saw we had unions. So what they are saying is, we are so down trodden, we are just happy to have any job, on any terms,  and we do not want to seem too pushy, because we are selling humility, tractability and we are willing to take the jobs those pushy Blue state workers are arrogant enough to spurn. 

Of course, they are playing the game of not paying their union dues but reaping the benefit of union action. Let the unions fight the fight and we'll sit down here and look oh so attractive because we are not them.

I don't know. I'm not an economist or political scientist. I just look at that list and try to imagine what makes the workers in the Confederacy and those cowboy states look different from the workers in the Blue states.

Do you have an answer?

Obama Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens

History has much to teach us:  It allows us to step back from the fog of conflict and the mists of emotion to gain perspective, as if from a mountaintop, looking at a distant time when the very same issues beset the nation, and we can learn from the solutions our forebears created.

Mad Dog has, almost since the first months of his first election, criticized President Obama for being insufficiently combative, for being too willing to compromise, but not bringing down the heavy hand of government on those who so richly deserve it.  So when Mr. Obama did not move to punish the financial miscreants who in their greed almost sent this nation into another Great Depression, Mr. Obama said something to the effect of, "Oh, that's all history. Let us move forward."  And Mad Dog howled, "Are we to look at a robbery or a murder and say, 'Oh, that's in the past. Let us forgive and forget?'" 

When President Obama did not push harder for a single payer system as one of the alternatives within Obamacare, Mad Dog frothed.

But most of all, when Mr. Obama did not attack his Republican opponents with sufficient venom and vigor, Mad Dog became apoplectic. 

Having seen the movie Lincoln and having read about Thaddeus Stevens subsequently, Mad Dog can see the many pressures which pull and push at the Presidential coat.  Thaddeus Stevens pushed Lincoln to state forthrightly and to move boldly to free the slaves, but Lincoln looked at those who emancipation would offend, particularly the slave owners in the border states, and he demurred. Upon arriving in Washington to take office he said he had no will to free the slaves in any state. Lincoln supported shipping the slaves back to Africa, because he could not see the United States of America ever functioning as a multiracial society. When he freed the slaves, he freed only the slaves in states actively rebelling against the Union, leaving slaves in Maryland, Kentucky and Tennessee untouched.  And once the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in Congress Lincoln did not advocate giving the freed men of color (never mind the women) the vote. He said only he hoped particularly "intelligent" Negroes and those who had served in the army might be granted the vote.

As the movie did make clear, Lincoln did abhor slavery, and he pressed reluctant Cabinet members and Congressmen to pass the 13th amendment before the Confederate states were readmitted to the union so they could not vote against it. 

As Lincoln is depicted as telling Stevens in a wonderful scene, after Stevens has accused him of having no moral compass:  "A compass only tells you true north. But it cannot get you where you want to go, if there is a swamp or a mountain between you and true north."  Thus, the argument for adjustment, compromise, going around obstacles rather than sinking in them, being concerned to play the game to win, not just being content with making the dramatic gesture and losing.

But Stevens, Mad Dog would argue, was just as important as Lincoln. Had Stevens not been so visibly and vocally hounding Lincoln, it would not have been clear that those who opposed Lincoln were better off dealing with Lincoln than with their more truculent radical opponents.  Or, at least, that's the argument of the moderate.

The fact is, those who opposed Lincoln were not persuaded to choose the lesser of two evils. They voted against Stevens and Lincoln on the 13th amendment, on slavery, on the idea of Negro citizenship and voting and for that matter on the idea of women voting.  The movie argues there was a middle ground, occupied by people who were wavering, but it is not clear there really was a middle ground, when it came to slavery. Lincoln wanted a gradual emancipation, which would have allowed slave states to keep slavery until 1900. But that was impossible in human terms.
And on this point, Stevens was more visionary: He could see a multiracial nation, and Lincoln was unable to see this. Just as Lincoln tended to forgive deserters, he could not bring himself to confront people and tell them they were wrong and had to change--at least that's the picture we see now. Lincoln did sign an order to hang 13 Indians in the Midwest for some act of rebellion. But he did not want to hang white Southerns once the war was over, not even "the worst of them."

Mad Dog would argue that it was pretty clear if Mr. Obama had cleaved to the Lincoln model, the inoffensive, jocular, unruffled approach he showed in the first Presidential Debate against Mr. Romney, Mr. Obama would not have been re elected. It was only when Mr. Obama began to look more like the truculent Mr. Stevens,  the tide began to turn in his favor.

Mad Dog is hoping we see a lot more Thaddeus Stevens and a lot less Lincoln in the coming months and years from Mr. Obama. 

Lincoln Our Contemporary

“If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

Oh, Maud.  I've just seen the movie. I cannot recall when two and one half hours passed so quickly.

I have sometimes fantasized about time travel, and how I'd like to meet Lincoln, (and Emily Dickinson, Thoreau, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan) but tonight I had to remind myself I was not watching the actual man.

I am guessing your second man was Secretary of State Seward.  I had not realized how important or righteous he was. He is depicted as even more--a man who could see the genius of what Lincoln was doing, and he could change to accommodate it.

Of course, Thaddeus Stevens is a wonderful character. He really did hate the aristocracy of the South, and all they stood for, and his remarks in the kitchen to Lincoln about what he had planned for the South, the way he would do Reconstruction, comported well with all I've read about him. He wanted to lay waste to the whole region, and rebuild it from the ashes as a totally new place, with new values, if not new people. He wanted to humble the arrogant slave owners.  But Lincoln, as he told Grant in the movie, wanted no such revenge.  He understood you could not change the hearts of men with guns.

I was most relieved that Spielberg did not ruin the movie with his hallmark sentimentality--he always has one scene which is so sentimental, emotionally overwrought and false and obviously pitched to the tear jerker crowd, he can spoil a movie with it. But in this case, he got done with it  in the first scene, with all the soldiers reciting the Gettysburg address, and somehow it worked and was over quickly enough.

But the hard headed decision to focus on the passage of the 13th amendment, and the politics,  was a great one.  I have not read A Team of Rivals, but I have read President Obama has.  If you look at what Mr. Obama has heard from his own supporters (myself included) that he has not been strong enough, not willing to fight for his convictions, not willing to vilify his opposition, as they so richly deserve, you realize Lincoln had to navigate the same waters. That wonderful scene where Lincoln tells Thaddeus Stevens, who has accused him of having no moral compass, "Well, a compass tells you true north, but it doesn't help you to get where you want to go, if there is a swamp in your way. You have to navigate around the swamp." 

In a previous post I said that by 1862 all meaningful opposition to slavery in Congress had left town, but obviously I did not know what I was talking about.  I assumed that without knowing that.  Clearly, the Congress was, like some of the rest of the country, willing to fight to preserve the union without embracing the idea of freedom for the slaves. 

Of course, one of the pleasures of the movie is listening to Lincoln's stories, trying to figure out where he is going, and in the end, the point is always to the point, even if the on screen characters (especially Secretary of War Stanton) cannot see the point. 

The George Washington in the outhouse story really is priceless.

I loved the decision to end the movie with that famous Second Inaugural address--although I wish they had included more of it, especially the part where Lincoln outlines the history of the war, how most people wanted a result less drastic, how, in the end, slavery turned out to be the cause of the war.  

I was also hoping to see in the party scene that wonderful encounter between Lincoln and Harriett Beecher Stowe, where Lincoln bends over to shake the hand of the diminutive author of Uncle Tom's Cabin and says, "So this is the little lady who wrote the book that started the great big war."  Of course, that might not have happened in 1865, and the film makers were cleaving to historical accuracy--except for the soldiers reciting the Gettysburg address. 

So here is a movie without any sex, no female love interest, no chases, no explosions, no shootings, no gun fights, (well, almost none, except for a brief battle scene) and yet it kept me enthralled for 150 minutes. That's quite a feat.