‘Nonsense on Stilts’: The Rhetorical Cornerstone of the American Welfare/Warfare State

In a 1922 essay about Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in his book Prejudices: Third Series H.L. Mencken asked, “Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg Address”?  One example of the nonsense of Lincoln’s rhetoric as explained by Mencken is as follows:

“Think of the argument in it.  Put it into the cold words of everyday.  The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – th...