Fox News' "Madison Protest" Footage Aims to Deceive

I don't think there is anyone disputing the fact the Lincoln was the leader of the newly powerful Republican party 150 years ago or that those Republicans were radically liberal in their determination to pass constitutional amendments to secure equality for all men regardless of race. And there is no dispute that the Democratic party of the South at that time was backing secession and slavery (and, as a matter of historical literacy, Stephen Douglas (not to be confused with the great African American opponent of slavery, Frederick Douglass) was a northern Dem who supported the deplorable Dred Scott decision on "state's rights" grounds).

Those historical facts belie the modern reality of how the parties have changed over the last century and a half. President Lincoln, who leapt from a window to try to block a bill in the statehouse, before becoming president, may well have admired the efforts of modern Dems to break a quorum needed for the modern Rs to destroy labor rights. Afterall, it was Lincoln who in his state of the union address 150 years ago said this:

"In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.

It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

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."

But I bet your FOXy "analysts" and TP buddies never mentioned that to you.