Posted on 03/16/2012 3:43:02 PM PDT by Nachum
Would Abraham Lincoln be a Republican or Democrat today? President Obama seems to think he'd be a Democrat, as Obama suggested today that his green energy spending better reflects Lincoln's domestic agenda than the proposals of the Republican presidential candidates.
Obama opened his speech in Chicago today with a crack about the long Republican primary. "Apparently, things havent quite wrapped up on the other side. So there is actually some interest in the primary that we have here on Tuesday," Obama said to laughter. "And my message to all the candidates is, 'Welcome to the Land of Lincoln', because I'm thinking maybe some Lincoln will rub off on them while they are here."
The president then recalled some of Lincoln's domestic programs, such as launching the transcontinental program and investing in colleges, before associating his campaign mantra with the first Republican president.
"He understood that we are a people that take great pride in our self-reliance and our independence but that we are also one nation and one people, and that we rise or fall together," Obama said. "So I hope that while my counterparts on the other side enjoy the outstanding hospitality of the people of Illinois and spend some money here to promote our economy, I hope they also take a little bit of time to reflect on this great man, the first Republican President."
Obama invoked Lincoln to justify his spending on green energy research. "We have to make investments in basic research," he declared. "Lincoln understood that, you understand it. Nowhere is that truer, by the way, than in the area of energy . . . Now is the time to stop subsidizing an oil industry thats rarely been more profitable. Double down on a clean energy industry thats never been more promising -- solar and
(Excerpt) Read more at campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com ...
Lincoln? I don’t think so. A Chevy Volt maybe but not a Lincoln.
That’s very funny. The theater is only a few blocks away. I know because I officed next door.
I commented on the “Examiner’s” article suggesting it was quite a sense of humor “O” had or he was dumber than a yard of dirt!
He’s best president ever in seven of the fifty-seven states.
OBAMA OR AMERICA, YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH!!!!
PASS IT ON.
The left loves dead Republicans. It allows them to rewrite history.
Double down on what? Further proof he's three cards shy of a flush.
He is an enslaver.
“Lincoln understood that”
Yeah, Lincoln’s research budget and expenditures for green energy set a record. The Civil War was a minor inconvenience. /s
Oh, then there’s the whole learning to read by reading the Bible and studying law books by the hearth in the firelight.
It’s all about the research, isn’t it.
He is talking about that Lincoln that used to be on “Mod Squad”.
Abe would want to send you back to Kenya, Barry.
Obama really is a DUMBO for saying what he did, considering what happened to Mr. Lincoln. (And because of his ears.) In fact, Obama is almost an anagram for Dumbo.
Can you even grow a beard?
Truly a humble man.
Abraham Lincoln was very much a person of his times - times and a set of circumstances that no longer apply today.
For one thing, the problem of slavery was supposed to be settled law by now. But apparently the taste of freedom was too much for some, so a serfdom is being re-imposed, by steady diminuation of opportunity, and the impractical schemes that are endlessly foisted upon the citizens of this country, in contravention of a body of law that already exists.
The Current Occupant of the Oval Office is, if anything, the ANTI-Lincoln. There is no thought to lift the imposed burden, but only to thrust the boot even more sharply on the throat of America, in an attempt to “teach a lesson” to those high-and-mighty Americans who think they are so much better than the rest of the world. Well, a little side-note, Americans HAVE been better people than the large portion of the rest of the world, not because of excessive ego, but because the arrangement has always been to encourage positive attitudes, not punish achievement.
Carter was an idiot, a liberal fool who couldn't help himself.
Obama is a traitor, a Benedict Arnold who is doing everything he can to hurt America. Obama could not be this stupid, it's just not possible.
Who is Obama working for and who financed him? Does his name Hussein give you a hint?
Lincoln believed in the ideas of Jefferson and warned future generations on what to do if the nation strayed from those ideas. Perhaps we might remind ourselves of the difference between those ideas and those of the current Administration:
Springfield, Ills, April 6, 1859
Messrs. Henry L. Pierce, & others.
Gentlemen
Your kind note inviting me to attend a Festival in Boston, on the 13th. Inst. in honor of the birth-day of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. My engagements are such that I can not attend.
Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago, two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them, and Boston the head-quarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.
Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then assuming that the so-called democracy of to-day, are the Jefferson, and their opponents, the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.
The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.
I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have perfomed the same feat as the two drunken men.
But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.
One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.
And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success.
One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard--the miners, and sappers--of returning despotism.
We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers[initiators of threatening change] of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.
Your obedient Servant
A. Lincoln--
Source for this reproduction of the letter is
------
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines which conflict with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence
let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountains whose waters spring close to the blood of the Revolution. (Abraham Lincoln)
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