w paraphrases the great ”house divided” speech of 1858. Then bw comes alomng and starts cwork on the Cooper Union speech ofg 1860 –the one which gained Lincoln the nomination, and set in motion the cure spoken of in the 1858 speech.

The wiki is excellent:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Union_speech

(snip)

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Lincoln’s speech has three major parts, each building towards his conclusion. The first part concerns the founders and the legal positions they supported on the question of slavery in the territories. The second part is addressed to the voters of the southern states, clarifying the issues between Republicans and Democrats, arguing that the Republican position on slavery is the ‘conservative’ policy. The final section is addressed to Republicans.

In the first section, in response to a statement by Stephen Douglas, Lincoln asks rhetorically “What is the frame of government under which we live?” [note, bogie's question] and answers that it “must be: ‘The Constitution of the United States.’” From there he begins his reasoning on why the federal government can regulate slavery in the federal territories (those that were not states), especially resting on the character of the founders, and how they thought of slavery:

The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one – a clear majority of the whole – certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories…

In the second part, in which he creates a prosopopoeia by creating a mock debate between Republicans and the South,[4] Lincoln denies that Republicans are a “sectional” party, only representing interests in the Northern part of the country, and help incite slave rebellions. He rebukes the Southern accusation that Republicans helped John Brown by saying “John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise.” He addressed the single-mindedness of the Southerners, saying:

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

He also tried to show that the Southern demand to secede from the Union if a Republican were to be elected president was like robbing a man with a gun: “the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle” from that of a robber.

The third section, addressed to fellow Republicans, encourages level-headed thinking and cool actions, doing “nothing through passion and ill temper.”

We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them.

Lincoln states that the only thing that will convince the Southerners is to “cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right” and to support all their runaway slave laws and the expansion of slavery. He ends by saying that Republicans, if they cannot end slavery where it exists, must fight through their votes to prevent its expansion. He ends with a call to duty:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

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(close wiki snip)

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…a thought, the phrase ‘house divided’ is from the book of Matthew, which also contains a question put to Jesus re the Ten Commandments, which Jesus –can i paraphrase? –more or less says that the first half says to love the Lord with all your heart (which can be seen as a stern rebuke to the ”whatever” attitude on the importance of the difference between right and wrong) and the second half is to treat your neighbor as you would be treated –the golden rule appears. Here’s the thing: who is your neighbor? Is it every person on the planet? Is it the people physically proximate? Is it the like-minded people regardless of location? It just seems significant that he used the word ‘neighbor’ and not the total word ‘mankind’.

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last thought, re ”free money” –only part of what we think of as ‘free money’ is actually charity to the indigent. Govt workers, in returning fifty cents worth of services, compared to private industry workers, per dollar spent toward those services, are creating hidden ‘free money’ via sopping up excess productivity. Which brings up another question: Clearly excess productivity exists, ergo what would the missing fifty cents be buying relief from? So the question is excess of what?

IOW, what is it that has the excess that needs buying up?