COVID Amnesty Without Accountability and the Enduring Promise of the Gettysburg Address

On November 18, 2022, Kim Monson explores accountability for pandemic overreach with essayist Allen Thomas, then commemorates the 159th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address with Princeton scholar Allen Guelzo, examining Lincoln’s enduring vision of government of, by, and for the people.

COVID Amnesty Demands Accountability, Not Blanket Forgiveness

Start listening at 0:35 – Hour 1

Allen Thomas challenges the Atlantic article’s call for pandemic amnesty, arguing that true forgiveness requires substantive change. Thomas contends that bureaucrats and officials who wielded unprecedented emergency powers must first relinquish those authorities before any meaningful reconciliation can occur.

Thomas traces the erosion of individual liberty during COVID-19 lockdowns, from school closures that devastated children’s mental health and education to the morality police who weaponized public health mandates against their neighbors. He argues that the “uncertainty” defense offered by amnesty seekers cuts both ways: those who questioned lockdowns faced the same uncertainty yet were vilified as murderers and science deniers.

The discussion highlights Governor Polis extending emergency orders two and a half years into the pandemic while deflecting accountability to boards and commissions. Thomas calls for Americans to reclaim the founding virtues of self-reliance, self-restraint, and self-assertion that the framers understood as essential to preserving liberty.

“If you’re in a position of power and you’re wanting amnesty, well, then you need to give up the power that you had. If you were an administrator who was responsible for locking down the schools against the wishes of the parents, you need to start giving up that power.”

Allen Thomas, Essayist

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the Meaning of Democracy

Start listening at 60:00 – Hour 2

Allen Guelzo, Senior Research Scholar at Princeton University’s James Madison Program, provides a masterful analysis of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address delivered 159 years prior. Guelzo reveals how Lincoln’s 272 words, 190 of them single syllables, accomplished what Edward Everett’s two-and-a-half-hour oration could not: a timeless articulation of democratic principles.

Guelzo explains Lincoln’s famous phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” as three distinct democratic requirements: consent of the governed, active citizen participation, and governance that serves the people’s interests rather than monarchs or elites. The scholar describes the battlefield conditions at Gettysburg, where the stench of 6,500 to 8,000 dead soldiers and countless horses remained so powerful that residents kept windows shut even in summer heat.

The interview also explores Lincoln’s complex spiritual journey, his remarkably poor relationship with his father contrasted with deep devotion to his stepmother Sarah Bush Lincoln, and his distinctive border-state accent that led Washington elites to underestimate him. Guelzo notes that Lincoln remains the only president never baptized, never a church member, yet his Second Inaugural stands as perhaps the most profound theological reflection by any American president.

“Sweat once said about Lincoln that anyone who took Abe Lincoln for a simple-minded man would soon wake up with his back in a ditch. There were a lot of people with their backs in ditches because they underestimated Abraham Lincoln.”

Allen Guelzo, Princeton University