NO LONGER THE PARTY OF LINCOLN!

[Republicans] “are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.”
- Abraham Lincoln -


For many years, Republicans have loved to call themselves "the party of Lincoln" because he was the first Republican President. They revel in the fact that one of the most widely acclaimed and revered Presidents of all time was a member of their party. I always laugh and shake my head in disapproval when I hear members of today's GOP crowing about that. For if he were alive and seeking office today, Lincoln would be rejected outright by the ultra-conservatives and teabagger types who now control the modern Republican Party.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860. The 1860 version of the Republican Party was far, far different than the one we see today. A look at their 1860 party platform, the one Lincoln ran on, shows this very clearly. One of their planks expresses strong support for the working man, as evidenced below:


"12. That, while providing revenue for the support of the General Government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interest of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the working men liberal wages, to agriculture renumerative prices, to mechanics and manufactures an adequate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence." This plank is amazing in that it calls for "liberal" (higher, fairer) wages for working people, but also advocates the federal government taxing imports so as to protect American workers' jobs. This flies right in the face of today's ultra-conservative, pro-business and anti-labor GOP, fully stocked as it is with "free trade" advocates who oppose nearly all taxes and who constantly push for unregulated export of American jobs and importation of foreign-made goods! I wonder how many of today's Republicans, including the tax-and-regulation-hating Grover Norquist, have ever read or understood that initial historic platform?

Months before his nomination as the Republican candidate for President, Lincoln wrote, "I was an old Henry Clay-Tariff-Whig. In old times I made more speeches on that subject than any other. I have not since changed my views." Such an advocacy for taxes and protectionism would be violently opposed by today's GOP and by their teabagger allies. In fact, Lincoln signed the bills creating the very first income tax and the IRS!

A look at the third plank on the 1860 Republican Party platform shows how completely off-base modern-day ultra-conservative Republican heretics like Rick Perry and various teabaggers are when they make threats about secession due to their displeasure with current Federal Government policies:

"3. That to the Union of the States this nation owes its unprecedented increase in population, its surprising development of material resources, its rapid augmentation of wealth, its happiness at home and its honor abroad; and we hold in abhorrence all schemes for Disunion, come from whatever source they may: And we congratulate the country that no Republican member of Congress has uttered or countenanced the threats of Disunion so often made by [southern] Democratic members without rebuke and with applause from their political associates; and we denounce those threats of Disunion, in case of a popular overthrow of their ascendency, as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative duty of an indignant People sternly to rebuke and forever silence."

The rigidly ideological religious right would have little time for Abraham Lincoln today, either. "He had no faith in the Christian sense of the term," wrote longtime friend David Davis, whom Lincoln appointed to the Supreme Court. Lincoln's former law partner John Todd Stuart even wrote, "He was an avowed and open infidel and sometimes bordered on atheism...went further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I ever heard, he shocked me...Lincoln always denied that Jesus was the Christ of God - denied that Jesus was the son of God as understood and maintained by the Christian church." Speaking of Supreme Court Justices, today's far-right Republicans would have a fit were Lincoln to appoint some of those he appointed during his 4+ years in office: Samuel Freeman Miller was a liberal Unitarian; David Davis (apart from his comment above) played a big hand in the Ex Patre Milligan decision, which rendered unconstitutional an attempt to imprison a civilian charged with insurrection by a military tribunal as opposed to a civil court; Stephen Johnson Field, a Democrat; and Salmon P. Chase, who wrote the platform for the 1848-1852 Free Soil Party, a group which challenged the then-existing status quo through its advocacy of forbidding slavery in the western territories. Given the intense scrutiny and vocal opposition today's Republicans gave President Obama's recent nomination of moderately-left Sonia Sotomayor, and that which they are starting to give Elena Kagan, I wonder how many of them would filibuster or oppose Lincoln's Court appointees?

Today's Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln. With some of its members talking secession, its abandonment of support for "liberal wages" or job protection for American workers, its complete and utter capitulaion to big banks and big business, and its extremely social conservative views regarding religious belief and personal behavior, the party now more closely resembles the conservative Democratic secessionists of the old Confederacy, who were, of course, diametrically opposed to the more liberal 1860 party of Lincoln. And, as a result, just like the old Confederacy, it has become a party of only a small number of fanatical and geographically-limited adherents.

WHAT IF...?

"Many great ideas go unexecuted, and many great executioners are without ideas. One without the other is worthless."
- Tim Blixseth -

"God is not looking for alms. God is looking for action."
- Bono -

"Well done is better than well said."
- Benjamin Franklin -


We are often a nation of complacent and sometimes cowardly people. Many times we look the other way or say or do nothing as others around us engage in actions or practices harmful, or not beneficial to, the common good. We allow our elected officials to legislate, and our business community to forge ahead unchallenged against our best interests, and many times we simply take it, without so much as a whimper. Have you ever stopped to consider the cost of such complacency? Or thought about what would have happened had other courageous and visionary -people before us had been as complacent as we are today? Have you ever thought, for example...

What if Rosa Parks had meekly submitted to that irate Alabama bus driver's demand that she move to the rear of the bus to make room for white passengers up front? You know the answer: blacks and all other persons of color would still ne regarded and treated as second-class citizens, and would never be afforded the simple dignity every human being is entitled to.

What if Thomas Jefferson and our other Founding Fathers had complacently stayed on their plantations or in their shops and businesses instead of meeting to plan for independence by crafting its unprecedented declaration? The action they took was at great personal risk and could have cost them their lives. The United States would still be a colony, and the most democratic form of government ever devised, with its emphasis on individual freedoms, would never have come into being.

What if President Lyndon B. Johnson had not pushed for civil rights legislation or for expanded social programs like the War on Poverty or Medicare? He knew as he pressed for these things that doing so would cost his Democratic Party votes for years to come, especially in the South. To his credit, though, he rejected political expediency and fought for and got these passed anyway. The result? Institutionalized racism was overturned; millions of poor were lifted out of poverty; and millions of elderly were able to lead less worrisome and more comfortable lives.

What if Ralph Nader had simply graduated law school, kept quiet, and opted to become another play-it-safe corporate lawyer? From 1959, when he published "The Safe Car You Can't Get" in The Nation, through his well-known 1965 study called "Unsafe At Any Speed," to numerous other industry and environmental exposes over the decades, this man acted as a whistle-blower on negligent American industry for our safety and benefit. Alkong the way, he has become stigmatized by corporate America as a kook and opportunist, when in actuality, he has spotlighted negligent businesses and polluters and caused them to produce safer and cleaner products. Though I still blame him for George W. Bush becoming President, I nonetheless admire his guts and conscientiousness in looking out for consumers.

What if Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had merely golfed their termns away instead of developing NASA and channeling our science and industry toward space exploration and a manned moon landing ahead of the Russians? Both gambled with possible failure and risked political criticism for making huge expenditures on untried projects without any guarantee of success. But the positive end results of their actions benefitted us in numerous ways: we eventually won the Cold War, there was rapid growth of computer technology, vast improvements in electronics and communications technologies, new discoveries in medicine and even agriculture were all spawned due to their efforts.

What if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had let polio defeat him? Or had become the benign, unadventurous President many in his upper class background had preferred he become? The answer to this is way too easy: there would be no time-and-a-half overtime pay, no unemployment compensation, no labor unions, perhaps no middle class (or a far more microscopic one), no Social Security for retirement, no protection for your bank (and therefore none for your deposits), and no regulation of the stock market.
The many good benefits FDR pushed for and attained for this nation are so vast and important to our quality of life that living without them would be incomprehensible!

What if the 1860 Republican Party and President Abraham Lincoln had just played it politically safe and had struck another in a series of meaningless compromises on slavery with southern politicians just as his predecessors had done? Yes, his life would have undoubtedly been spared, and yes, there would have been no Civil War, but slavery would still exist and the universal freedom and dignity of persons of color would never have been achieved in this country. The courage and justice practiced by Lincoln and his party helped make this nation truly legally become a "land of the free".

What if President Theodore Roosevelt had taken the easy way out and let the huge trusts and corporate bankers of his day have their way completely unchallenged as they had for many years? Simple: the concept of government taking a regulatory role over big business to protect small business and average people from the excesses of concentrated capital would never have come into being. Roosevelt instituted the federal government as a protective buffer between big business and everyone else. He also helped establish regulation over food and drug products to ensure public safety. Our National Parks and provisions against pollution were direct results of Roosevelt's influence, and the beneficial results of his activism remain to this day.
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In contrast to many of today's visionless, play-it-safe conservative Republicans and Blue Dog conservative Democrats, the persons featured above were not lazy defenders of the status quo. They refused to accept unjust or backward-looking conditions as they were and strode to change them by taking individual action. They did so at great risk politically, physically, and economically. They acted toward fulfilling a more just and improved society for all. The same cannot, and will not, ever be said of mediocre, corrupted, and self-centered politicians like Sarah Palin, Mitch McConnell, or Ben Nelson, or of egomanaical demagogues like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck.

We see the positive results of the actions of those pioneers pictured above all around us, every day. We know the "what if" of had they never acted. Ours would be a far bleaker and uncomfortable world had they not shown the courage to move as they did. This should serve as inspiration and impetus for all of us to leave our comfort zones once every so often to make a courageous stand for the benefit of others on occasion!

WISDOM ACROSS THE AGES

I will return to commentary on current events soon, but in the meantime, here are some more eternal truths to ponder...


"...in 1851 [the] New York Herald Tribune...employed, as its London correspondent, an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx. We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone cold broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed...for an increase in his salary...but when all his financial appeals were refused, Marx looked around for some other means of livelihood and fame...devoting his talents full time to the cause that would bequeath to the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, and revolution, and the Cold War. If only his capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him more kindly...history might have been different."
- John F. Kennedy -

"...intellectual and emotional inertia traps people in antiquated ways of thinking even though circumstances radically change."
- Matt Miller, in The Tyranny of Dead Ideas -

"Advancement - improvement in condition - is the order of things in a society of equals."
- Abraham Lincoln -

"Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history."
- Joan Wallach Scott -

"Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will either be extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of these excesses."
- Aristotle -

"The role of the journalist in America is to harass money and power to no end, every day, day after day on behalf of the American taxpayer."
- Dylan Ratigan, MSNBC -

"An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information."
- Albert Einstein -

"When you're finished changing, you're finished."
- Benjamin Franklin -

"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi -

"Poverty and War have no excuse."
- Vanna Bonta -

"If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States."
- Henry A. Wallace -

"Although it is true that about only 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the kindness of their hearts."
- Molly Ivins -

"The dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweigh the dangers which are cited to satisfy it...even today, there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it." (Take THAT, Dick Cheney)!
- John F. Kennedy -

"The way to change...is to let go of fear."
- Roseanne Cash -

"In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right to work.' It includes no 'right' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining...we demand this fraud be stopped."
- The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. -

"If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves."
- Lane Kirkland -

"The blind spots bred by complacency or arrogance or certitude of habit fill the obituaries of civilizations that didn't make it, businesses that didn't make it, even marriages that didn't make it."
- Matt Miller -

"Change happens on the inside first. Then you realize you're not the only one who needs it. The you DO SOMETHING. Then it becomes 'social change.'"
- Kimberly Bock -

"There is no America without labor, and to fleece one is to fleece the other."
- Abraham Lincoln -

"The good we ensure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."
- Jane Addams -

POINTS OF RELEVANCE

"...idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality."
- George Bernard Shaw -

"The GOP only cares about costs when a government program is not lining the pockets of their corporate supporters."
- SJ of Random Thoughts, New York City -

"There are some oligarchs who make me want to bite them just as one crunches into a carrot or a radish."
- Evita Peron -

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."
- Mark Twain -

"If the Lored can see His way to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking."
- Will Rogers (courtesy Burr Deming of Fair and Unbalanced) -

"Not being beautiful was the blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome."
- Golda Meir -

"Madness is hardness of spirit, when one seeks profit from all sources."
- Aristotle -

"In today's world, it is no longer unimaginable that business can compete - and even thrive - in an environmentally-friendly manner."
- Olympia Snowe -

""Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed."
- Mahatma Gandhi -

"Tax the very wealthy to make everyone healthy!"
_ Vigilante, Sozadee, CA -

"As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen remember that they are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class."
- Eugene V. Debs -

"Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe off your spectacles and see the world is moving."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton -

"I don't like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things are going so right for so many of the wrong persons."
- Ogden Nash -

"You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea."
- Benazir Bhutto -

"The oppressed never free themselves--they do not have the necessary strengths."
- Claire Booth Luce -

"There is not a man of us who at times does not need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother."
- Theodore Roosevelt -

"The Democrats and the Republicans are equally corrupt - it's only the amount where the Republicans excel."
- Will Rogers -

"Eminence demands that man is the only animal which devours its own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor."
- Thomas Jefferson -

"Republicans sleep in twin beds - some even in separate rooms. That is why there are more Democrats."
- Will Stanton -

"What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?"
- Abraham Lincoln -