Ten days ago, I climbed the long stairs towards Lincoln’s imposing statue, the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C. Once I had made it to the top, I was immediately struck by the silence, the calm that reigned around the monument, even though there were, as usual, many visitors. No one talked on the phone, no one yelled at a child, no one made remarks out loud. You could sense the respect that the tourists, mostly Americans, felt towards the great man. Indeed, as inscribed over the head of the marble statue, “in the hearts of the people (…) the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”
