15 Abraham Lincoln Quotes That Show He’d Be Ashamed Of Today’s GOP
Today’s Republicans love to invoke the first President elected on their party’s ticket in 1860 when it’s convenient. Abraham Lincoln, a man of humble birth in a Kentucky log cabin with one year of formal schooling who rose to become the most admired and repected President the United States has ever known, fits the image that today’s GOP politicians love to promote that anyone can make it in America if they have the talent and work ethic (and that therefore programs to help people make it in America are not needed.) Lincoln’s deep patriotism and reverence for the Constitution are values which Republicans today love to pay lip service to, as well as his speeches calling for sacrifice in the name of the national good (which today’s Republicans are all too happy to call on others to do while they reap the profits and keep their own children away from the battlefield.)
The real Abraham Lincoln made statements and took actions that were progressive by 1860’s standards and would be completely alien to today’s Republican Party. He took strong federal action to tax the rich to pay for the war, supported the right of workers to organize and strike, gave settlers cheap land in the west through the Homestead Act and funded the improvement of the nation’s infrastructure through the Transcontinental Railroad. Lincoln, who used federal power to build up the nation’s economy and pushed for the 13th amendment to finally end slavery, would be absolutely embarrassed by the policies and rhetoric of the Republican Party today. These 15 quotes offer proof:
Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
Lincoln always favored what Civil War historian James McPherson called a “hard war and a soft peace.” He knew that the Union had to be preserved, but that once the war was over forgiveness and benevolence would keep the peace. He would be turning in his grave to think of the use of torture in Iraq and Afghanistan and Dick Cheney’s refusal to back down from supporting it.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
Today’s Republican Party relies almost entirely on outright lies, distortions or distractions. Death panels! Obama is coming for your guns! Socialism! Benghazi! Lincoln was wise enough to know that you don’t need to make things up to criticize and defeat your opponents.
I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser than he was yesterday.
The anti-intellectualism of today’s right wing makes this impossible. From climate change to guns to foreign policy to tax cuts, the Republicans never learn and seem almost proud of their own stubborn refusal to do so.
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Tell this to the religious right who use the book of Leviticus to condemn gay and lesbian Americans demanding to be treated as equals, or the Rush Limbaugh crowd calling women who want their reproductive health covered by their employer or government whores.
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.
How many women consented to being required to have invasive procedures before they can exercise their right to reproductive choice? How many workers consented to losing their collective bargaining and job protections? The GOP’s shameless attacks on these freedoms and protections are inexcusable.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice and Libby were given power. Enough said.
There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it.
At a time when CEOs make 300 times what their employees make and the upper 1% have as much as the bottom 90%, the current Republican Congress and GOP governors are fighting to end the inheritance tax and yacht tax.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
In other words, you can’t start wars without paying for them. You can’t cut taxes for the wealthy without paying for it down the road. You can’t ignore infrastructure and health care without all of us being worse off for it in the long run.
‘Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Rick Santorum, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry and Donald Trump are running for the GOP nomination. Google any of the names and look for quotes and you’ll get the idea.
When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.
This simple philosophy of ethical and moral standards for oneself first would baffle the right wing of the Republican Party today in which some have made careers out of imposing selective Old Testament morality on others while failing to live up to it themselves
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
Again, practicality and common sense over rigid dogmas and clinging to the past. The men who led the American Revolution and wrote our Constitution would be the first to admit that they did not have all the answers for all time, and the Tea Party fantasy that we can go back to 1773 is a dangerous delusion
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
Since the Reagan years, the United States now has 4% of the world’s population but 25% of its prisoners. This has not made us safer than comparable industrialized nations that incarcerate less and have no death penalty. The “tough on crime” stance has made a lot of money for private prisons and helped judges to get re-elected, but has cost a tremendous fortune and ruined many a life. The Republican Party that once amended the Constitution to guarantee equal rights and voting rights with the 14th and 15th amendment is using felony voting restrictions to remove as many poor and minority voters from the rolls as possible. They know they can’t win elections without trying to stop those most harmed by their policies from casting ballots.
“LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.”
Most of the current crop of 2016 Republican candidates are in a race with each other to see who can have the most hawkish rhetoric toward ISIS and Iran and who will do the most to throw illegal immigrants out of the country. While the world is certainly rife with threats and danger, nowhere is today’s GOP talking about leading by example through moral suasion rather than forcing our will at the barrel of a rifle. Hardline militarism and democracy have always been and always will be incompatible.
“Let us do nothing through passion and ill temper”
Watch any Tea Party rally, listen to any religious right fundementalist preacher or listen to any GOP politician commenting on the Obama administration and you’ll see that this idea of evenhanded dealing is completely lost on them.
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
At his Cooper Union speech in New York, Abraham Lincoln spoke about the need for workers to organize and strike for better conditions. His idea that people should come first and profits second was also the basis for favoring restrictions on the expansion of slavery and voting to abolish it within Washington, D.C. while a Congressman. The only people that today’s Republican Party fights for are billionaires and corporations, and “leaders” like Scott Walker have declared open season on hard working state employees who want the rights and protections that the labor movement fought for decades to guarantee them. Today’s GOP is so far from its origins as the party of “Free soil, free labor and free men” that most of these quotes would be branded socialist rhetoric by its elected officials in 2015. |
