"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoast, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not the reliance against the resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle."

"Our reliance is in the love of liberty, which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is the preservation of the spirit, which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere." Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your down doors."

"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."

These patriotic words of American Republicanism were uttered by Abraham Lincoln, America's 16th president, at Edwardsville, on September 11, 1858. Pres. Lincoln, affectionately known as "Honest Abe", was America's commander-in-chief in her gloomiest hour of in the Civil War. He skillfully directed the Union effort of "proving that popular government is not an absurdity" until the vendetta between brother and brother, countryman against countryman played itself out; until patriotic sanity prevailed. 

When the Civil War was concluded, and some peace reinstated, his own life was sacrificed through a bullet of an assassin. He name was John Wilkes Booth.

Pres. Lincoln believed that the American Question--slavery--was a moral wrong against black Americans. On December 1, 1862, he said, in the State of the Union Address, about the Union effort that "in giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve".

He so endeared himself to his own people and countrymen of every region, creed, and religion that they dedicated a statue in his honor. Lincoln Memorial stands at the far end of the National Mall in Washington, DC.   

He came from the Republican Party--the GOP. The party that stood for progress for the American People. The party that argued patriotically, on the basis of the Declaration of Independence, in favor of the forward march in the American experiment in democracy. The Grand Old Party (GOP) once believed in freeing the human spirit.

Today the GOP is adopting a contrarian stance, for its own sake. For that reason, it is being blamed "for the first government shutdown in twenty years". This development comes after the Republican Representatives in the House of Representatives refused to allocate necessary appropriations to keep the federal government budgeted for. The standoff's sole aim is to side-track the health legislation introduced by Pres. Obama. The Americans call it the Affordable Care Act. It was actually upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012.

 

Ironically, the GOP is currently a house divided. The Republicans don't seem to see eye to eye within their formation. A Republican of California, Representative Devin Nunes expressed his own disgust this way: 

 

“You have this group that keeps saying somehow if you’re not with them, you’re for Obamacare. If you’re not with exactly their plan, exactly what they want to do, then you’re somehow for Obamacare, and it’s just getting a little old. It’s moronic to shut down the government over this." 

 Pres. Obama himself said in the White House briefing: "You don't get to extract a ransom for doing your job". He called the GOP's tactics "Republican brinkmanship'. And that is true. The Republicans came in to existence on the ticket of American upward mobility. And now this stale game of hide and seek? It's quite rich coming from them.  

 

Here's one comment from a seemingly frustrated American named Quinn of New Providence, New Jersey, addressed to House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio:

If the Affordable Care Act is "not ready for prime-time" as you say, then what have you done to fix it? Dozens of failed votes to repeal it don't count. Holding the U.S. government hostage as you try to defund it hardly seems like a way to make the Act "ready for prim-time".