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In response to Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas’s speech from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago, Abraham Lincoln returned the next night, July 10, 1858, and made the following remarks that still bear on the uniqueness of our country and that place Lincoln among the great men:
Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.
We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty—or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,—with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,—we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us.
We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations.
But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration [loud and long continued applause], and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. [Applause.]
Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of “don’t care if slavery is voted up or voted down” [Douglas’s “popular sovereignty” position on the extension of slavery to the territories], for sustaining the Dred Scott decision [A voice—“Hit him again”], for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form.
Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden.
That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it! [Voices—“me” “no one,” &c.] If it is not true let us tear it out! [cries of “no, no,”] let us stick to it then [cheers], let us stand firmly by it then.
Resulted in this video from Gad Saad
Birth of Old Glory by Percy Moran
Madeline Osburn:
“…Now that media-savvy congressional Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have brought attention to the humanitarian crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border caused by Congress’s refusal to fix our exploited immigration laws, political pundits are having to eat their own words from just a few months ago claiming that the border crisis was manufactured by President Trump as a political stunt.
Last week, before President Trump departed for the G20 Summit in Japan, he told reporters on the White House lawn that his critics are now seeing he was right all along.
“It’s humanitarian aid, it’s very important and I think that a lot of people are starting to realize that I was right when I said we have a crisis at the border,” Trump said. “…A crisis at the border wasn’t a manufactured crisis, which they were saying, it wasn’t manufactured at all. We have a crisis at the border.”
So who are the people he’s referring to? Many of the journalism world’s favorite pundits and media institutions. Here are the receipts…”
https://youtu.be/hJNL_rhGDq4
David Rutz:
“…MSNBC guest Michael Eric Dyson compared the Betsy Ross American flag to the Nazi swastika and a burning Ku Klux Klan cross during an appearance Wednesday.
Nike canceled a release of shoes featuring the iconic flag with the 13 stars representing the original colonies, after former NFL quarterback and liberal activist Colin Kaepernick objected because it was “offensive.”
Dyson, a Georgetown University professor who frequently comments on racial issues from a left-wing perspective, defended the cancellation, citing its connection to the revolutionary period and that it was “deeply embroiled in enslavement.”…”
A lot of things became offensive after Obama left office. Go figure.
(June 23, 2019) The Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) transits the Suez Canal. Kearsarge is the flagship for the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group and, with the embarked 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, is deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in support of naval operations to ensure maritime stability and security in the Central Region, connecting the Mediterranean and the Pacific through the Western Indian Ocean and three strategic choke points.
JOHN MCCORMACK:
“…In Lincoln’s famous 1860 Cooper Union speech, he noted that of the 39 framers of the Constitution, 22 had voted on the question of banning slavery in the new territories. Twenty of the 22 voted to ban it, while another one of the Constitution’s framers–George Washington–signed into law legislation enforcing the Northwest Ordinance that banned slavery in the Northwest Territories. At Cooper Union, Lincoln also quoted Thomas Jefferson, who had argued in favor of Virginia emancipation: “It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly….”
To be sure, the Founding Fathers weren’t abolitionists. But they were overwhelmingly antislavery…”
Lee Brown:
“…A Roman Catholic diocese in Rhode Island on Monday publicly named 50 church leaders who have been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children.
The damning list was posted on the Providence diocese website — and includes 19 priests and deacons who are still alive. Most have been removed from ministry, with one priest having resigned.
The other 31 are dead, according to the diocese.
Of the listed, 17 — including four who are still alive — were not in the database of accused Rhode Island priests maintained by BishopAccountability.org, a website that tracks the Catholic abuse crisis nationwide, according to WPRI.
Bishop Thomas Tobin called its release “a difficult but necessary moment” in the history of the church…”
DAVID KRAYDEN:
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele insisted his country must start asking questions about why its residents are trying so desperately to reach the United States and to ensure emigration is “an option, not an obligation,” he told BBC News.
“People don’t flee their homes because they want to, people flee their homes because they feel they have to,” Bukele told the BBC. “Why? Because they don’t have a job, because they are being threatened by gangs, because they don’t have basic things like water, education, health.”
Bukele refused to shift the blame. “We can blame any other country but what about our blame? What country did they flee? Did they flee the United States? They fled El Salvador, they fled our country. It is our fault.”
Nicholas Fondacaro:
CBS Evening News
July 1, 2019
6:52:40 p.m. Eastern
DAVID BEGNAUD: Across the country today, a flurry of new laws, some catching nationwide attention. We will begin in Vermont, where they’re hoping to curb vaping. They slapped a 92 percent tax on e-cigarettes. New York City has banned agencies from buying single-use plastics. In Washington, D.C., there’s a ban on plastic straws. And in California, background checks are now required for the purchase of ammunition.