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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums“People who just want stuff”: 1860
Last edited Thu Mar 12, 2015, 07:43 AM - Edit history (4)
With all the conservative whining and wailing going on about Obamas re-election, saying that he won because of people who just want stuff and other assorted poutrage, its worth noting that this is a trope theyve been playing for a very, very long time.
Below is a conservative political cartoon from 1860, engraved by Currier and Ives and published in Harper's Magazine.
Back then, when The Party of Lincoln was actually running Lincoln for president, it was considered the liberal/left party.
See if you recognize the playbook:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003674590/
"The Republican Party Going to the Right House"
Lincoln rides in on a (fence) rail, carried by Horace Greely (anti-slavery editor of the New York Tribune), leading his followers into a lunatic asylum.
GREELY: "Hold on to me Abe, and we'll go in here by the unanimous consent of the people."
LINCOLN: "Now my friends I'm almost in, and the millennium is going to begin, so ask what you will and it shall be granted."
Younger Woman: "Oh! what a beautiful man he is, I feel a passionate attraction' every time I see his lovely face."
Bearded Man: "I represent the free love element, and expect to have free license to carry out its principles."
Man with trim beard and hat: "I want religion abolished and the book of Mormon made the standard of morality."
Caricatured black man: "De white man hab no rights dat cullud pussons am bound to spect' I want dat understood."
Older woman: "I want womans rights enforced, and man reduced in subjection to her authority."
Scruffy man with bottle: "I want everybody to have a share of everybody elses property."
Barefoot man: "I want a hotel established by government, where people that aint inclined to work, can board free of expense, and be found in rum and tobacco."
Seedy top-hat man: " I want guaranteed to every Citizen the right to examine every other citizen's pockets without interruption by Policemen."
Man at the end: "I want all the stations houses burned up, and the M.P.s killed, so that the bohoys can run with the machine and have a muss when they please."
Lets go down the list, shall we?:
Supported by "liberal media": Check
Liberals will embark on profligate giveaways to THOSE PEOPLE? Check.
Flighty, emotional, entranced by charisma/celebrity? Check.
People conservatives consider sexual deviants? Check.
People conservatives consider religious deviants? Check (and how ironic, this particular turn).
Grasping minorities after special rights? Check.
"Feminazis"? Check.
There's a vast army of layabouts, terrorists, and outright thieves who want to take your hard-earned stuff? Check, check, check, and check.
A hundred and fifty years later, and they're playing the same effing tune.
Maplegrass
(41 posts)That this incredibly tired playbook continues to influence almost half this country.
tblue
(16,350 posts)Redistribution of wealth doesn't count when it's redistributed UP. That's 'earned.'
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)...in seeing their king was rich.
Not that THEY would EVER be like him but it gave them a sense of security and they bowed to his power and authority, and his mercy.
Kings that had no mercy sometimes found their head on a pike.
chalky
(3,297 posts)150 years of stupid, passed from father to son.
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)I am fascinated with political cartoons from different eras. This one sheds a lot of light on the zeitgeist of the late ante-bellum era--Much more complex than what is taught in history classes.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)Great pic, great insight to the past, and present!
7wo7rees
(5,128 posts)dgauss
(1,007 posts)Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)When they couldn't get him out another way. Not that the opposition organized it. But the tone, the words, the environment fostered the kind of thoughts and behavior that resulted in an assassination.
Speaking of which...Obama's secret service men (sexual misbehaviors notwithstanding) have done an excellent job.
SpartanDem
(4,533 posts)Seriously thought that's going on the fb page tommorow
ffr
(23,071 posts)Can't be true. It can't!
PossumSqueezins
(184 posts)Just read the Emancipossum Locomotion.
<img src=>
SaveAmerica
(5,342 posts)each caption, that is really telling!!
struggle4progress
(119,827 posts)JHB
(37,379 posts)Their first instinct is to lie.
The bigger lie usually does better than the smaller one, so they REALLY go big at times.
"Family Values" anyone? "Fiscal Conservatives"? "Small Government"?