I'm not a twitter person. But when I became aware of one thread, in response to a tweet from lying (and pardoned by Cadet Bone Spurs, after pleading guilty to campaign finance laws) scumbag Dinesh D'Souza, promoting his latest propaganda movie, I had to read it.
Everyone should read it.
D'Souza has produced a new movie, called Death of a Nation. The movie's purpose is to demonize the Democratic party for actions that led to the Civil War, and then project those dastardly deeds to today's party. It may be why the Orange Shitgibbon gave him the pardon.
His propaganda is, as usual, intended to assign the very worst example of our racist history to those who are leading the fight for equality today.
He's a liar and con man, just like Cult 45 and his entire, swamp-dwelling administration.
And he’s trying to hoodwink the uneducated masses.
Heather Cox Richardson's twitter retort was brilliant.
Richardson is, according to Wikipedia, “an American historian and Professor of History at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and Plains Indians. She previously taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts.”
“Richardson has authored five books and is currently working on several projects, including a graphic history of Reconstruction and a new book on the American West. She is also a founder and editor at Werehistory.org, which presents professional history to a public audience through short articles.”
What she shares is extremely revealing about how the Democratic and Republican parties of today are literally 180 degrees different from what they were in the 1850’s.
D’Souza’s grift is to make us think otherwise.
His tweet to advertise his movie said,“Has the Republican Party changed its core principles since Lincoln’s day? Absolutely not.”
So below is a copied-and-pasted twitter response from Ms. Richardson. It’s brilliant, illuminating and worthy of being mandatory lesson content in grade schools, high schools and colleges. I made no edits, although I have bolded some sections just because they’re either so vile or virtuous.
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The Republican Party formed in 1854, after rich slaveowners got Congress to pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which let them spread slavery across the nation. Northerners recognized that free workers-- the little guy-- would be shut out of the West + rich slaveowners would take over.
"We were thunderstruck and stunned," Lincoln recalled. But opponents of this power grab splintered into different factions, at first. "We rose each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach- a scythe- a pitchfork- a chopping axe, or a butcher's cleaver."
And then, in 1858, South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond, famous for raping his nieces as well as his slaves, explained his view of the world. Known as the "Cotton is King" speech, his explanation was really a vision of society.
Hammond explained that every society needed "a class to do the menial duties," the "mudsill" that was strong, dumb, and unable to rise. On it rested "that other class which leads progress, civilization and refinement. Most folks were mudsills; slaveowners were "that other class."
Let's pause here for a minute to remember what Alexander Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy said about his new nation:
"Our new government is founded ... upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and more truth." (Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861)
But back to Hammond: he also said that people should have no say in the policies of their government; they could only vote for leaders, who would do what was best for them because they understood the world better than regular folks.
And, even if everyone wanted something (like roads) the government could do nothing unless it was enumerated in the Constitution, which only protected property (including slaves, of course). This would move money to the very top, but that was clearly the best system for everyone.
Ah, but Lincoln. Hammond's speech gave Lincoln the chance to articulate what Republicans stood for. In 1859, in Milwaukee, at an agricultural fair, he laid out the worldview of the Republican Party:
A former day laborer himself, Lincoln attacked Hammond's mudsill theory, denying that workingmen were dumb drudges who could never rise. Instead, he outlined the "free labor" theory that declared the men at the bottom, not those at the top, to be the nation's important class.
"The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, save a surplus with which to buy tools or lang, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This, say its advocates, is free labor -- the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all -- gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all."
The idea was that poor folks created wealth for all while rich folks lived off others. Republicans rallied to the idea that the government should not work for rich slaveholders, but rather should make it easier for hardworking folks at the bottom to prosper.
Just for fun, let's look at this plank in the Republicans' 1860 party platform. See? They really did believe that helping poor people-- including immigrants-- was good for everyone.
"14. That the Republican party is opposed to any change in our naturalization laws or any state legislation by which the rights of citizens hitherto accorded to immigrants to foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired; and in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad."
So what did they do when they got control of the government in 1861? Well, they turned the government over to regular folks. They began by taking control of the finances of the nation away from rich bankers, by inventing the American income tax. Yep.
In 1861, the GOP invented the income tax. They graduated it, and raised it in 1862 and 1864. The government had a right to "demand" a man's income, they said. When necessary, "the property of the people... belongs to the government." [Justin Smith Morrill, 1862]
They also created a tariff wall around the country to raise money and to develop industries. But that put a squeeze on regular folks, so to make it easier for poor people to prosper, they gave them land, money, education... and eventually, freedom.
In 1862, the Homestead Act gave every settler (or immigrant) 160 acres of land (most of which belonged to Cheyenne and Lakota). "Every smoke rising from a new opening in the wilderness marks the foundation of a new feeder to Commerce and the Revenue"-- GOP editor Horace Greeley.
When bankers tried to threaten the government, Congress created new money, backed by the people. These were the greenbacks- printed on the back with green ink. GOP also issued bonds that regular people snapped up, financing the war themselves, rather than through banks.
GOP Congress also created the Land-Grant Colleges, aka our state universities, so that kids from poor families had access to education, and so could rise more easily. Previously, only rich kids got college degrees.
They also established the Department of Agriculture to help farmers get accurate information and good seeds. This "seed money" was worth it, they said, for the country would be "richly paid over and over again in absolute increase of wealth. There is no doubt of that."
Ah, but wait. So far this is all about white men. What about enslaved men? What did the GOP do for them? Make no mistake, most Republicans were racists, and wanted the West (and America) for themselves. In 1861, they didn't want slaves... or free blacks, either. That changed.
By 1862, it was clear that black workers were key to southern victories, and northerners began to see them as good workers. Then, black soldiers fought brilliantly and died in disproportionate numbers for the US government. They started to look way better than Rebels.
To weaken the southern war effort, Lincoln emancipated southern slaves under the War Powers, and justified it by pointing to the loyalty of black soldiers at Olustee, where they covered the retreat of white comrades and got clubbed to death for their pains, and at Fort Wagner.
So concerned was he that his wartime proclamation might not stick that Lincoln made a constitutional amendment the key to his 1864 election, even though he thought he might well lose that election. He didn't, and we got the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery.
Lincoln and the GOP had given the nation "a new birth of freedom," rededicating it "to the proposition that all men are created equal" and that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
He recognized that once we start deciding that some folks are better than others, we are all at risk, according to which of us can be useful to the people in charge of the government.
"When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic]," Lincoln wrote to his friend Joshua Speed in 1855.
From 1854-1865, Lincoln and the GOP took a stand against rich oligarchs who had taken over the country. The GOP pioneered an active government that helped regular Americans, believing that a democratic government should give equal access to resources so everyone could rise.
No extraordinary stretch of any fevered mind can see those as the principles of today's GOP.