I was raised to be a Republican. My parents and most of my teachers were Republican. Somehow, through the fog of my political ignorance, I sensed that Goldwater and Nixon were both race baiting in their own way. Though I left that party, in my heart of hearts, I am not partisan. The two political issues that draw me to political action are universal human rights and environmental sustainability. To me these are the two issues that AREN’T partisan. I wondered this week what historical Republicans like Lincoln and Eisenhower would have thought about the Republican Convention. How has the party of Lincoln fallen to where the only test for truth or ethics is whether one agrees with Donald Trump?I was saddened, of course, at the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. I do not wish suffering on any human being (or animal for that matter). Still, I wondered what it meant when he said,, “In a certain way I felt very safe because I had God on my side.” I then heard a number of MAGA Republicans who claimed that God had intervened and steered the bullet away from Donald Trump. I wondered what kind of God would steer the bullet away from a messianic leader into an innocent crowd. I wonder how that claim of divine intervention felt to the parents of school children who experienced no such divine intervention. I thought how different the theology of Donald Trump is from that of Abraham Lincoln. I may be remembering the setting wrong but it seems that Lincoln was in church when the preacher asked everyone to stand who believed that God was on their side. Lincoln famously responded, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”Lincoln realized the humanity of his enemies. He lamented, “Both [sides] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes (God’s) aid against the other.” (Lincoln’s Second Inaugural)Republican president Dwight Eisenhower received a letter from a dying veteran who asked him to speak with more certainty and clarity. Eisenhower responded that that kind of unity of thought was appropriate for the military but would be deadly for a free society.Eisenhower said, “I doubt that citizens like yourself could ever, under our democratic system, be provided with the universal degree of certainty, the confidence in their understanding of our problems, and the clear guidance from higher authority that you believe needed.” The former general then referred the dying veteran to Eric Hoffer’s assertion that strong authoritarian leaders and dogmatic certainty are an attempt to“Escape from Freedom.” Eisenhower continued, “…dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.”To be clear traditional Republicans are not villains and traditional Democrats are not heroes. But something has happened to the Republican Party when any who question Donald Trump are humiliated into conformity or driven out of power.I have always been haunted by the fact that Nazi soldiers had belt buckles with the words “God is with us.” To claim that God is on our side is the rhetoric of Crusaders and Inquisitors, not of any who would be public servants in a free society. There is a world of difference between those who believe God is on their side and those who seek to be on the side of justice, which ultimately means UNIVERSAL human rights.