Despite my hatred of Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes, I've always felt at least a little respect for the Republican Party if only because of my great respect and admiration for Abraham Lincoln.
Well, no more. Because if it wasn't clear at any point before in the last four decades, it is now. Lincoln's party is no more. There are only Democrats and Know-Nothings now.
In 1855, as Republicans were forming the GOP out of the ashes of the Whig Party, they initially had to compete with a growing nativist movement, of which Lincoln said:
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." 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.
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