A distinguished Canadian journalist rose to the podium, surveyed his audience and announced he was about to cite a passage from his favorite politician.

After a requisite pause to give his listeners time to think about who this privileged person might be, the speaker delivered a quotation from the pen of Abraham Lincoln.

I was gratified by the speaker's selection, not because of being an American citizen living in Canada but because the speaker appreciated the fact that the thought behind the words of America's 16th president transcended geography, time and, especially, party politics.

Abraham Lincoln belongs to humanity. Certainly he was a man for his time, but more importantly, he brought to his political moment the force and clarity of ideas that are never out of date.

Eighty-seven years separated the signing of the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's address at the cemetery in Gettysburg, Pa. The year 1776 marked the birth of a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Lincoln understood only too well that liberty without truth led inevitably to war, and that liberty welded to the truth that all human beings are equal in worth and dignity is the only formula for a peaceful democracy.

“As I would not be a slave,” Lincoln declared, “so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”

It is by no means a coincidence that the notions of “philosophy” and “democracy” come from the same culture in ancient Greece. The fact that philosophy is the love of wisdom implies there is wisdom for everyone to discover. Therefore, since people can discover the truth of things on their own — however imperfectly — democracy rather than tyranny naturally and logically follows.

Lincoln argued for the “philosophical cause” of liberty, accessible to each and every human being, through the medium of “that government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

“Whenever the question [of slavery] shall be settled,” Lincoln insisted, “it must be settled on some philosophical basis. No policy that does not rest on some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.”

In contrast, Southern politicians defended slavery on the basis not of broad, enduring philosophical principles but on custom and convention.

George Fitzhugh, in his book Sociology for the South, or the Failure of a Free Society, and Henry Hughes, in his A Treatise on Sociology, Theoretical and Practical, both defended the right of the local consensus. They urged that the practical realities of plantation life should replace the ideals of philosophy.

It would be a grave mistake to restrict Lincoln's relevance to his own time. Lincoln's opposition to those who defended slavery was intellectual and philosophical. His understanding of democracy was based on his understanding of philosophy. And his understanding of philosophy was based on his understanding of a common reality that was essentially knowable.

Seven score and one year after Gettysburg, in the year 2004, America is engaged in a different kind of civil war, one more properly called a “culture war.”

Those who stand with Lincoln in accepting the great philosophical tradition understand that peaceful democracy depends on the ability to know about the truth of man and the truth of human society. They are eager to engage in genuine dialogue because they know the “logos” or core intelligibility of reality can be discovered and shared by everyone.

On the other hand, deconstructionists or post-structuralists — who, in a prevailing mood of “undecidability” reduce philosophy to a meaningless game — are really, though perhaps unwittingly, proposing war. They warn us against the fallacy of “logocentrism” but offer no hope for even agreement, let alone peace. For how can there be agreement if there is no basis for agreement? If reason has nothing to attach itself to, nothing to discover, nothing to share, how can democracy be possible?

Deconstructionists might find their own free-floating individualism amusing. But they survive only because they are living off the capital they have inherited from saner people living in saner times. It is a startling irony, worth noting, that Lincoln, who was a politician, aspired to become a philosopher, while many of today's philosophers aspire to become nihilists.

Cardinal John Henry Newman once remarked that he treated his enemies as if one day they would become his friends. Lincoln said, “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” Lincoln knew that human beings, despite their myriad peculiarities, are more alike than dissimilar.

Moreover, they are alike in their most basic features — their dignity and humanity, and their capacity to know the fundamental truths about life. Liberty, equality, justice and friendship are real. They are not to be dismissed as the misguided musings from people who lived in unenlightened times.

The culture wars continue. Let me close with one of my favorite quotations from the pen of Abraham Lincoln, who is also my own favorite political figure: “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”

Dr. Donald DeMarco writes from Waterloo, Ontario.