The Father of the Republican party believed in equality, freedom and liberty.
The Father of the Republican party believed in equality, freedom and liberty. The modern Republican party believes in special privileges and considerations to rich white Christians, while giving lip-service to .... No, they don't even give lip-service to equality anymore.
In #TrumpNation Lincoln would be ashamed.
Originally shared by David Brin
Abraham Lincoln speaking in 1858 about the Declaration of Independence.: “They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. The erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began — so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.”
How many ways can you find, in that one paragraph, that today’s Republicans have betrayed both Lincoln and the Founders? Now the party of oligarchy, fighting only for the privileges and property of a kingly-lordly-owner caste?
Lincoln does speak of “humane and Christian virtues —” as do today’s Red Letter Christians, who emphasize the caring, generous words of Jesus, and not the bilious hate-drenched Book of Revelation, or BoR. Notice that Lincoln gets almost science fictional, in speaking of “farthest posterity” — an implicit utter-rejection of the gleeful apocalypse yearning expressed by today’s End Times junkies, like president-in-waiting Mike Pence.
Read this appraisal of Lincoln’s 1858 speech…
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/declaration-of-independence-lincoln-trump-fourth-of-july/564431/
…though the author seems to be under an impression that the Great Commoner won his senate race against Stephen Douglas. He did not. Indeed, the 1850s were a hellish era, when aristocratic forces seemed hell-bent on ending our revolution. When plantation lords held the federal government for three decades, sending platoons of irregular southern cavalry rampaging across northern states.
Today, in similar dark times, remember that. Gird yourselves, patriots, to defend this great experiment, as our ancestors did at Cowpens and Valley Forge. At Antietam and Gettysburg. At Normandy and Dachau. At Little Rock and Selma. It will be hard. The Confederacy has powerful foreign backers, this time, and they have taken Washington. But we are made of no lesser stuff than those forebears? And we can still be a light unto the world.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/declaration-of-independence-lincoln-trump-fourth-of-july/564431/
In #TrumpNation Lincoln would be ashamed.
Originally shared by David Brin
Abraham Lincoln speaking in 1858 about the Declaration of Independence.: “They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. The erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began — so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.”
How many ways can you find, in that one paragraph, that today’s Republicans have betrayed both Lincoln and the Founders? Now the party of oligarchy, fighting only for the privileges and property of a kingly-lordly-owner caste?
Lincoln does speak of “humane and Christian virtues —” as do today’s Red Letter Christians, who emphasize the caring, generous words of Jesus, and not the bilious hate-drenched Book of Revelation, or BoR. Notice that Lincoln gets almost science fictional, in speaking of “farthest posterity” — an implicit utter-rejection of the gleeful apocalypse yearning expressed by today’s End Times junkies, like president-in-waiting Mike Pence.
Read this appraisal of Lincoln’s 1858 speech…
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/declaration-of-independence-lincoln-trump-fourth-of-july/564431/
…though the author seems to be under an impression that the Great Commoner won his senate race against Stephen Douglas. He did not. Indeed, the 1850s were a hellish era, when aristocratic forces seemed hell-bent on ending our revolution. When plantation lords held the federal government for three decades, sending platoons of irregular southern cavalry rampaging across northern states.
Today, in similar dark times, remember that. Gird yourselves, patriots, to defend this great experiment, as our ancestors did at Cowpens and Valley Forge. At Antietam and Gettysburg. At Normandy and Dachau. At Little Rock and Selma. It will be hard. The Confederacy has powerful foreign backers, this time, and they have taken Washington. But we are made of no lesser stuff than those forebears? And we can still be a light unto the world.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/declaration-of-independence-lincoln-trump-fourth-of-july/564431/
Comments
Granted, I have the advantage of seeing how little a difference was actualized following the massive human sacrifice for the sake of unity. I also have significantly better access to records of the centuries of human behavior which led up to that point than Lincoln did. It is by no means fair for me to second guess his decision. Still, where might we be now if he had taken a more "West Berlin" approach; if he had replied to the secession with something like, "We are not making slavery illegal in the United States. However, as you do not wish to be part of our great nation, we will not protect the 'property' of your citizens. Any slave belonging to a person who is not a United States Citizen will not be returned to your country should they be found in ours, and shall be freed and granted citizenship here." This, plus trade embargoes on South Carolina, would possibly have prevented further secession delaying but ultimately rendering more effective the eventual ending of slavery. Eventually, any separate states would have found the need to petition for re-entry into the Union for which an anti-slavery clause in their state Constitution could have been a requirement (they made Utah ban poligamy, after all). Without "The War of Northern Aggression" and carpetbaggers as rallying points, the KKK wouldn't have had nearly as much support. And, while I can't say with certainty we would be racism free by now, or even close, I can say we would be much closer than we are.