Eric Zuesse

1: One core Republican belief is spread by religious fundamentalists, and it’s a conviction to do war against others by outpopulating them — reproducing more than the other humans do. Part of this is their campaign for fertilized human eggs (the one-celled zygotes of homo sapiens) to become legally declared to be beings who have the same Constitutional protections that their sentient mothers do — beings who have thoughts, emotions, and preferences; pain, pleasure, sorrow, and joy; and thus rights: beings who have life in the more than mere vegetable-biological sense. Actually ignoring the entire issue of consciousness (or soul), essentially ignorant of the spiritual realm, they focus only on the flesh: that fertilized egg is as important to them as the woman herself is. They want all of their own eggs or sperms to become additional fundamentalists; and, if the mother gets hurt in the process, or if the family cannot afford an additional child, or if the couple aren’t fit to be decent parents, or if sex was forced upon the wife, or if there’s a genetic defect that might be passed on to a child, or if there’s misery created in some other way, then that’s just unfortunate, but the cause (Christianity’s version of Islamic jihad — the defeat of other religions, and also of non-religion) must be served, because God (instead of “We, the People”) is sovereign here, and it’s ‘our’ God, and we are ‘his People,’ and we are fighting for Him against the non-believers. Also, and especially: there must be no birth-control, because that would especially reduce the numbers of new members of fundamentalist (or anti-scientific) families. The woman’s mere wishes are far less important than are the needs of God: victory for God’s People. Genesis 1:22 said “Be fruitful and multiply.” Genesis 1:28 said specifically to humans: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it.” This core Republican belief can be called “forced population.” It’s reproduction as God’s warfare to “subdue” everyone and everything else. “Subdue” everyone and everything else, so as to serve their own particular “God.” Increase the size of God’s Army. Reproduce to the max.

2: The other core belief of the Republican Party is that wealth trickles down from employers, instead of percolating up from employees and from consumers-in-general (i.e., from the given firm’s customers). This belief will here be described by one of its most profound opponents, a man who understood, to the core of his being, what it is, and how dangerous it is. Here, then, is one of the first Republicans, Abraham Lincoln, during the Republican Party’s brief introductory stage, when it was America’s progressive Party — before he himself became shot by a conservative, and his Party quickly then became taken over by America’s aristocracy (culminating first with William McKinley, and then with Richard Nixon — and especially with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” which acknowledges that the Republican Party is now 100% the anti-Lincoln party). America’s greatest prophet, Lincoln, states here why he rejected the Republican Party that was destined tragically to come after his assassination. This implicit condemnation of today’s Republican Party is the end portion of President Lincoln's Annual Message to Congress, 3 Dec. 1861, from v. 5 of the 1953 The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, published by The Abraham Lincoln Association — and every school-child should be taught it, and have its profound insights expained to them, so that they can understand what it means in our own time (but Republicans would not want such teaching); so, here it is:

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 connexions, 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 connexion 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. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital, producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and, with their capital, hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class — neither work for others, nor have others working for them. In most of the southern States, a majority of the whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters; while in the northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men with their families — wives, sons, and daughters — work for themselves, on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital — that is, they labor with their own hands, and also buy or hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed, and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class.

Again: as has already been said, there is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in these States, a few years back in their lives, were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just, and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way to all — gives hope to all, and consequent energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty — none less inclined to take, or touch, aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost.

From the first taking of our national census to the last are seventy years; and we find our population at the end of the period eight times as great as it was at the beginning. The increase of those other things which men deem desirable has been even greater. We thus have at one view, what the popular principle applied to government, through the machinery of the States and the Union, has produced in a given time; and also what, if firmly maintained, it promises for the future. There are already among us those, who, if the Union be preserved, will live to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions. The struggle of today, is not altogether for today — it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us.

That’s what Lincoln said, on 3 Dec. 1861. Today, the most prominent representative of Lincoln’s (today) anti-Republican-Party viewpoint, is the independent Democrat, Bernie Sanders. However, no one can express this viewpoint better than Lincoln himself did, even though Lincoln headed the Republican Party at its start, which is when he attacked what subsequently became the core of the Republican Party itself.

This second core principle of the Republican Party, which Lincoln condemned, has since come to permeate the entire world’s aristocracy. For example, as the great economic commentator who goes by the pseudonym of “Yves Smith” noted recently in regards to Greece, “Eurozone policies, particularly in the post-crisis era, are about squeezing labor.” (She has always documented that both Obama and the Clintons are also supporters of that. However, they’re not public about being so; they instead claim not to be; they can’t espouse it and win the Democratic nomination.) Lincoln would be mortified, if he weren’t already dead. “Capital” has won, worldwide. Or, as one of the world’s richest people, Warren Buffett, has said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” He was a Democrat, and so was expressing opposition to this reality; but, to Republicans, there’s nothing wrong with the reality at all, if they even acknowledge that it exists (which Republican masses tend to deny — calling it “Marxism,” which is also false).

That core belief of today’s Republican Party — support of the aristocracy against the public — can be called “conservatism”; and, so, the Republican Party can therefore be characterized as pressing both for “forced population,” and for “conservatism.”

Those are the Republican Party’s two core beliefs. A vote for a Republican is a vote for both of those beliefs, because Republican voters won’t elect any candidate who opposes both beliefs: the needs of both women, and the public in general, must be crushed. The desires of both men, and the aristocracy, must instead be served.

That’s the Republican Party — its two core beliefs.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
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