BY DOUG DAY

Next month will mark the 161^st anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Peoria speech that served to revive the political career of the country lawyer, former one-term Congressman and future President.

The Peoria speech was part of the Lincoln-Douglas debates that helped define the nation’s stand on slavery.

Leading up to the debates, U.S. Sen. Stephen Douglas from Illinois, one of the most popular Democrats in the country, had sponsored and pushed through the Kansas-Nebraska Act that called for “popular sovereignty” allowing voters in each state to decide for or against slavery. Douglas’ legislation effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that had limited the spread of slavery and had settled the question of slavery for a generation. By allowing “popular sovereignty,” the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed slavery north of a designated latitude. Lincoln spoke in Peoria against the Act and against reopening the question.

In June 1858, Lincoln spoke to Republicans in the state legislature in Springfield and accepted their nomination to run for the senate against Douglas, and it was during that campaign that the “Lincoln-Douglas debates” occurred.

The campaign and debates focused on the spread of slavery into the new states in the west. Illinois was bordered by slave states on two of five borders and feelings ran high. We were and continue to be a diverse state.

In his acceptance speech in Springfield Mr. Lincoln stated regarding the spread of slavery:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved- I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all

one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, ‘til it shall become lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.”

He lost the election.

Now comes Bruce Rauner, our billionaire Republican Governor, who thinks that our state finances have been ruined by unions. His argument seems to be that it is all the unions’ fault, and if we just pass “right to work” laws all our problems will be over. Instead of slave states on two borders we now have “right to work” states on all borders.

Rauner’s “right to work” plan sounds familiar. Let each county decide through “popular sovereignty.” This is a clever argument to which Lincoln would say the same thing, ” A house divided against itself cannot stand” for what would be the effect if Woodford County decided to be “right to work,” and Tazewell County decided to be pro-union? Would not one county gain an economic advantage over the other and by having lower wage scales be more attractive for potential employers? Would we then be treated to the spectacle of Rick Perry coming to each county attempting to poach jobs for the benefit of his corporate paymasters?

Lincoln’s argument was not just a moral one, but also an economic one, how would a free state compete with lower (no) wage slave states? On this Labor Day we need to advocate for a national repeal of “right to work” legislation so that all states compete on other issues and be on the same playing field on wages. On a level playing field, Illinois will do well against an Indiana or a Texas.

GM food NOT ruled safe by world’s leading scientists

Contrary to a recent report on NPR that misleadingly stated the world’s leading scientists have agreed on the safety of GM food, evidence continues to mount showing correlations between GM crops and human health problems. The New England Journal of Medicine has a recent piece by two authorities who challenge recent federal approvals and endorse labeling. The authors call federal risk assessment “flawed.” GM crops are engineered to tolerate pesticides, particularly glyphosate (Roundup), now considered a “probable human carcinogen.” As GM crops have multiplied, so has use of glyphosate, up from 0.4 million kg in 1974 to 113 million in 2014. We are saturating our food and our environment with a “probable human carcinogen.”

Access the article at:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1505660#t=article

Clare Howard