These words were spoken by a prominent republican politician who later tossed his hat into the presidential race.
I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.
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Sounds much more like a democrat than a republican doesn’t it? But it’s not. No it’s not Ron Paul and certainly not any of the other current republican presidential candidates. Nor are we ever likely to hear any of them say anything like this today. No, these are the words of one Abraham Lincoln, spoken in 1854 about the Kansas-Nebraska Act and it’s treatment of whether slavery will be allowed in new states and territories.
When I read something like this, I am reminded of how much the republican party has changed, how it has regressed. At one time it was the bulwark of civil rights, the bastion of anti-war sentiment, non-interference, and general pacifism as well as a staunch defender of the constitution.
I think old honest Abe would be rolling over in his grave to see what his party has become today. Today as they make war indiscriminately and with falsified reasons, trample the constitution on an almost daily basis in a myriad of ways we all know all too well, and systematically smash the civil rights of thousands of voters in Florida and Texas and Ohio, they have systematically rejected all that was once at their core. They have become infected by the diseases of greed, lust for power, and hegemony. Their principles have not just been compromised, they have been eradicated and replaced by their opposites in nearly every way.
No longer lovers of peace and non-interference, now they prefer to impose their will on any and all who stand in their path. No longer believers is laissez faire, now they do all they can to stack the deck in favor of large oligarchic business interests to the detriment of small businesses and individuals making it almost impossible to fairly compete in an open market. Not satisfied with the damage this does to our own economy, they export these same principles under the guise of "free trade", when in fact it is not at all free. Indeed it’s fraught with unspoken long term costs.
It costs us high paying jobs here and costs low paying jobs in foreign countries. Then it entices those low paid workers from abroad to leave their family and homes behind to make a dangerous journey through a gauntlet of rattle snake infested desert populated with Neanderthal vigilantes to a life of near slavery, hidden in the shadows with few if any rights.
Is this what Lincoln had in mind when he became the leading voice of republican values? I think not. No the republican party is no longer even a shadow of itself. And as it’s greed and power lust has grown greater and greater, it’s becoming more and more repulsive to a larger and larger segment of the American nation. Their days are numbered, they just don’t know it yet. So sorry Abe, your modern counterparts are spitting on your grave at the same time they invoke your name as a progenitor.