LyrArc Article Gist
On the idea that America is losing faith when it is losing churchgoing people it should be said that during the Second Awakening in the 1850's America was struggling against the sin of slavery. The country and Evangelicals rallied around Lincoln who had an unconventional idea of Christian beliefs coming directly from reading the bible not churchgoing.   Lincoln was denied the Whig nomination for Congress in 1843 and faced Evangelical opposition in the 1846 Congressional election which he won against an evangelist Cartwright, because of his unconventional views on Christianity coming from reading the Bible. The Lincoln Association of Springfield reports that during the dark days of 1862 Miner tells Lincoln that Christians are praying for you as they have never prayed before, and Lincoln replies "If I were not sustained by the prayers of God's people I could not endure this constant pressure. I would give up hoping for success."   Americans are less church going today than at previous times in history about 40 million Americans have stopped going to church in the last 25 years. This is evident among Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Southern Baptists. White and Black congregations are affected in the same way, though less for Hispanics. Pew reports 63% of people in America identify as Christians, down from 78% in 2007.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Are elite colleges worth it and do they embody virtue today even if they did in the past. Dartmouth is not the little college embodying virtue that it was in the days of Daniel Webster. Some of the elite colleges have turned into business propositions that have neglected their history and their heroes in favor of an imported mix of ideas that have nothing to do with America's past, places where Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln would find they are foreigners.

LyrArc Article Gist
DJT White House Cabinet Meetings: Susie Wiles in tight cursive, Bessent writes "parallel prosperity" and "blue collar boom," on notepad, Lutnick says "why not copper tariff," DJT talks about why he is not fond of windmills. All the time a picture of Abraham Lincoln in a small four person meeting around a round table watches everyone. You have to have some humor in cabinet meetings. DJT brings humor to the White House, lightening up the mood, while he says new letters will go out to Japan, South Korea and EU, recalcitrant nations when it comes to negotiations for agreements, and Putin is voicing meaningless platitudes on his desire for peace.

LyrArc Article Gist
America had forgotten it's workers built America in a Clinton-Trump world. The Federal Poverty Level is $35000 - $40000 when entry younger UAW workers at lower tiers make $34000 a year during wage negotiations and a UAW strike in 2023. The contrast from 2016 could not be greater- no president in history except Biden on a worker strike picket line yesterday, Mrs Clinton oblivious about unions in the midwest in 2016. Mr. Trump saying wage negotiations not important as he visits Drake Enterprises, automobile parts supplier, in Clinton Township, Macomb County, Michigan. The Guardian reports most were small business owners, with  few autoworkers. Enthusiasm of small business owners high for Trump in this swing county in Michigan. In stark contrast to the 2016 campaign president Biden was seen the previous day with a bull horn at a UAW auto workers strike picket line, becoming the first US president in history to do this. Biden said "workers built the middle class." Trump said China was the enemy not low wages or incompetent bosses, saying "the current wage negotiations are not as important as you think," when workers had tiered wages from previous concessions on wages, with entry level wages starting at about $17 an hour. That is only slightly above the $16 minimum wage in California. America in the Clinton-Trump world had truly forgotten that workers in its factories built America, and workers families made America what it was for most of the century since Lincoln and the Industrial Revolution. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
See the full text of the speech by president Biden on the "Battle for the Soul of the Nation" which was delivered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 1, 2022. It is the place where the Declaration of Independence was debated and written by Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers. See  the Lyrarc Gist for the speech given by president Abraham Lincoln in the same Hall on Feb. 22, 1861, on his way to the White House as the Civil War began. 2022 marks a turning point for the nation as it seeks to remain the beacon to the world that it was under Jefferson and Washington, and it was under Lincoln and Stanton.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Guardian calls Chris Whipple's account of president Biden's first 2 years in office fascinating and timely. It gives a close look at what happened to get path changing legislation passed in the US Congress that will shape America for decades through new infrastructure, science and technology investments, climate change action, and building a society of opportunity envisioned by president Lincoln since the 1850's, that define what America means- a land of opportunity and dignity for all.

LyrArc Article Gist
A moment of reflection by Joe Biden at the candlelit Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in memory of the 400,000 Americans who died in the pandemic of 2020-2021. Mr. Biden plans to vaccinate 100 million Americans in the first 100 days.

LyrArc Article Gist
Why China India Brazil see the old liberal order discussed at Davos Switzerland, based on the world in 1947 not reflecting growth of Asia in 2026, and not serving the working class or middle class. UK's Farage says it is about people at Swiss Ski resorts deciding what the world should look like. Today the Swiss cannot even take their trade arrangements with the US for granted after US tariffs on entrenched unfair dealings in trade with the US. There is a growing perception in the UK and US and many parts of Europe that this so called liberal order is not working for the people of these countries. China and India, Brazil, see that arrangements set in 1947 as part that order that is cherished by the folks at Davos, and not reflecting the growth of these countries in 2026. The attitudes at Davos may be the most at issue, with Swiss and French attitudes not reflecting the situation in France which is deeply divided between the rural parts of the country and the urban areas about the direction of the country and the need to make life better for the working class and the middle class. In many ways the people of the US and of Europe share this huge rural vs urban divide made worse by the deindustrialization and shipping of manufacturing overseas to Asia.  Looking back at US history provides better clues- many of the same improvements made by Lincoln as Republican, Theodore Roosevelt as Republican, Franklin Roosevelt as Democrat, JFK as Democrat have created the society Americans cherished for so long and was the beacon to the world, which is not about this so called liberal order but rational step by step corrections of course and improvement after improvement, and offer a pathway to the future better than the whole host of politics and politicians that failed America and Europe. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Daniel Webster once said the Nation will do fine as long as it retained faith in the Bible and in spirituality. In 2025 33% of Americans attend religious services, 68% (Christians Jews Buddhist/Hindu) pray once a day, 80% believe in spirituality. This is shown in the Pew Research Religious Landscape Report just out in 2025. In America 40% are Protestant, 19% Catholic, 4% other Christian, and 2% Jewish, 2% Buddhist/Hindu. About 65% of the population openly identify with Christianity and the Bible, and this is now stabilized over the last 5 years. It is important to remember that Abraham Lincoln questioned some church religiosity and practices, yet had a profound belief in the Bible, his Devotional based on the Bible that was published in London in 1854 was one that he kept with him for most of the years serving the Nation. For close to 70% of the population having a belief in the Bible, and in God, is a good sign for the future of the Nation as it approaches it's 250th year, and a community that settled these British colonies and a vast continent since the 1600's for 400 years. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
WSJ's Chief Editor Emma Tucker comments on its choices in writing Style in its pages. It is appropriate we comment here on our own choices in Lyrarc.com. We respect the old forms such as Cornell English Professor William Strunk's Elements of Style for its basic emphasis on simplicity. We take from the new to always keep in mind how it sounds as is suggested by Ben Yagoda in Sound on the Page. In actual practice it goes back to our mix of reading influences and the style in each- from Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Conrad, Whitman, Lincoln. We strive for the simplicity and directness of a Walt Whitman or a Abraham Lincoln, while developing a directness of our own drawing from these influences. Inside this are all the other influences- Gandhi's amazing candour adding to directness. There is also in the background individually for this writer the energy of Prof. Kuruvila who helped transform some of the writings in English just described into living spoken words with ideas that held one's imagination.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Readers critique the Wash. Post on its coverage of 2024, 2024-2028 policies and vision, and president Biden. They ask is the Post itself turning into social media with crass titles and misleading coverage? The Post itself says it is in the subtitle sometimes patting sometimes stabbing. One reader says on the different reporters coverage of Biden after the NATO Summit that it was nothing more than a dogpile, that it is not what he reads the Post for. One obvious question for the Post is with all the passion you show on climate change action, is the absence of climate action for 4 years, and exactly the opposite its exacerbation not likely to impose a huge cost in 2028 for the American people of upwards of a trillion dollars to correct? Is the Post listening or just another billionaire run organization running against the instincts of Carl Sandburg- the author of the Lincoln biographies found even in the libraries of Asia forgotten in the US-  who wrote the famous poem of the nineteen sixties "The People, Yes." Lincoln, TR, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy are completely erased or forgotten for their policies, their wisdom and their zeal for America. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Claudia Sheinbaum and Lopez Obrador- Mexico's government elected 2018 (after DJT election in 2016) and major failures for the American people. This has been an unmitigated failure, a complete disaster for the American people, when one sees the loss of 3 times more young Americans than in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined from illegal trafficking of fentanyl. A Memorial to these deaths next to these 2 Memorials and the Lincoln Memorial would remember the deaths that happened as American politicians looked away from the Monroe Doctrine that kept colonial powers out of this hemisphere, and that provided the history and traditions of good government since 1600 on the continent of the Americas.

LyrArc Article Gist
White House Correspondents Dinner shooting on April 25 2026 at Washington Hilton, the scene of the shooting of Ronald Reagan decades earlier. It is unbelievable that over 2000 guests including the US president and important members of his cabinet would be assembled in a hotel in Washington DC that is not designed for this type of event security. The Washington Post raises questions about the security as the assailant stayed in the hotel. The president DJT says this shows why the White House should have a ballroom or hall that can hold such an event that is designed with security in mind. A 31 year old graduate in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology who worked as a tutor in science subjects was the assailant who was apprehended. Secret Service agents acted quickly to clear the podium where the president and vice president were seated. Most of the people in the hotel ballroom were in complete shock. DJT has not attended previous correspondents dinners saying the media has fake news- much of the press in the US tends to have political leanings that slant the news in one direction or the other and television channels exaggerate the divisions for profit by supplying information tailored to what audiences in their political spectrum want. That may be seen as a clever business strategy when it really hurts the  democratic process that has been nurtured for 250 years. It could be said that young people in particular believe what they are told by media run for profit, opinion created for profit, and this leads to violent behaviour. A robust debate has always taken place in the US- on Iran compare that with the Mexican War under president Polk in the 1850's, before the civil war when Lincoln debated Douglas, under Democrat Harry Truman when he did a whistlestop rail campaign after the war against Republican Wendell Wilkie, yet the fragmentation of rural-urban, white male and white female, within minorities today is excessively and without remorse stoked by the television channels and the newspapers.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The problem of elites in the US controlling most of the wealth and funding of candidates is discussed in The Times by Matthew Syed. The distortions in the American system of democracy and lack of funding of infrastructure, basics of education, healthcare, and public services, the misallocation of capital by capital markets in the current state, a reversal of everything Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and FDR- Truman set out to do, that is a result of the current situation prevailing in America.

LyrArc Article Gist
David Brooks makes the case for reconciliation and renewal based on making room for the African American narrative. He cites thoughts of a moral order shared by Abraham Lincoln as he struggled with the same issues.

LyrArc Article Gist
Keir Starmer of Labour  in Britain says "From 20 points behind to 20 points ahead in the polls." As Lincoln said you can fool some of the people all the time or all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time." This has relevance also for America in 2024 as president Biden in his transformative work for America faces the same kind of rumor and doubt Keir Starmer faced for the last two years, much of it pushed by the Tories. Lincoln said this in Clinton, Illinois, in the Lincoln- Douglas debates, September 2, 1858.

LyrArc Article Gist
The historic letter of president Joe Biden to Congress and to the American People shows what this struggle is about to defend and secure the rights of the working people and families of America in ways that Lincoln, Wilson, TR, FDR and Truman did in their day. To defend the American people from the intrigues and misinformation about where America's future lies, to defend the best hope of this and future generations, to defend the rights, freedoms and hope of free people everywhere.

LyrArc Article Gist
Democrats in the House of Representatives need about five votes of moderate Republicans to get approval for spending that exceeds the debt ceiling if no agreement can be reached with the Republicans under Speaker McCarthy. This is one of the options Democrats under president Biden are keeping open if the spending cuts Republicans are asking for hurts workers and families in ways unacceptable to values of fairness to all segments of society supported by Lincoln, Wilson, FDR and Truman that have shaped America over two hundred years. T Though it is not readily apparent in an America where about 22% of 8th graders are able to get a passing grade in civics and history in NAEP tests, a rereading of the writings and speeches of Abraham Lincoln show the same concern for the rights of all segments of society that are found in Wilson and FDR or Truman. This is also what Biden means when he calls this a struggle for the soul of America. More not less funding for education, more not less funding for health after the pandemic and cost of living crisis, more not less funding for public services at a time like this where there is a fracturing of society as well as isolating certain segments of society from others such as the growing distance between workers and families from places such as Silicon Valley and capital markets in America.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The State of the Union Address in 2026 cited the enormous impact on the world we know today over 2 centuries by this Nation. Jefferson breathed his last in 1826, between that and two persons in the chamber- including Air Force pilot who is 100 years old- between 1826 and 1926 when this pilot was born is a span of 100 years, and in this pilot's lifespan another 100 years. In this period, a couple of generations in our lifetimes, so much was achieved, said the president. So much of the address was about the potential ahead following the heroic efforts of the past. We are part of something larger than us, says the president, and this larger than us is the collective consciousness of the American Nation. "Two-hundred fifty years is a long time in the life of a nation. But in another sense, it's really a mere moment in the eye of history. Two of the gentlemen we met in the gallery this evening took their first breaths one century ago. One hundred years before that, on July 4th, 1826, the author of the Declaration of Independence, brilliant Thomas Jefferson, drew his last breath. Just a single long human life span separates the giants who declared and won our independence from the heroes who stand among us tonight. Everything our nation has done, everything we have achieved, has been the work of those few great lifetimes. In those brief chapters, Americans built this nation from 13 humble colonies into the pinnacle of human civilization and human freedom. The strongest, wealthiest, most powerful, most successful nation in all of history. Americans ventured out across the daunting and dangerous continent. We carved pass through an unforgiving wilderness, settled a boundless frontier, and tamed the beautiful but very, very dangerous wild west. From empty marshes and wide-open plains, we raised up the world's greatest cities. Together we mastered the world's mightiest industries, shattered history's monstrous tyrannies. And we liberated millions from the chains of fascism, communism, oppression and terror." Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and JFK, through their efforts and the efforts of scientists and industrial pioneers, and of the People of the United States, of educators and scientific endeavors, so much was achieved, and so much lies ahead. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
After segregation in housing and schools since the 1867 Lincoln Emancipation, particularly in the US Southern states, protests happened in the South led by Martin Luther King Jr. to change this. situation. Voting Rights Act 1965 signed by LBJ ensures right to vote for Black people in the South- it follows protests in Selma Alabama and LBJ's 1965 "We Shall Overcome" speech that followed Selma. The first Blacks elected to US Congress were from seats redrawn to give Andrew Young a seat in Atlanta, and Barbara Jordan one in Houston. In 1993 2 more seats were added. James Clyburn was given a seat in South Carolina- he was a key supporter for president Joe Biden. Others followed. Today in 2026 there are 62 Black Members of the US Congress. This is about 11.6% of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 100 seats in the Senate total of 535. As a percentage of the population Black people are 16.4%- or 56 million out of US population of 342 million. The Supreme Court is essentially saying it is time to pause this as enormous progress has been made 12% out of 16% already achieved in representation for black people in the US considering the other inequities in American society, the changes in culture and in technology, inequities in world trade and for rural America. In a 2013 5-4 decision Shelby vs Holder US Supreme Court  swing to this conclusion with Alito, Scalia and Thomas joined by Kennedy and Roberts. This already struck down the core of the Voting Rights Act as unconstituional. Roberts wirties in that decision- Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” Times have changed - in 2026 the Court reaffirms this. In Louisiana vs. Calais the Court voted 6-3, striking down the last aspects of the Voting Rights Act, because white voters in Louisiana objected to use of race to redraw districts. The equal protection clause of the 14th and 15th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibit using race to redraw political representation maps. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Jim Vandehei, Politico founder, is from two small towns, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and Lincoln, Maine, and understands what it is like for ordinary Americans struggling to make it. Sanders and Trump are riding an anti-establishment wave, says Vandehei, but do not have programs that would lead to growth and jobs. Something better is needed, he says, to tackle today's problems- poverty, trade, wages, and jobs for working class families.