Abraham Lincoln on the eternal struggle between good and evil, between Liberty and tyranny, between the rights of the individual and the brute force of government

Lincoln surveying the war effort

Who deserves the fruits of one's labor, the one who works for it, or someone else? Who knows best how to spend what one earns, the person who toiled for it, or a politician? If the person who works for them doesn't deserve "all his wages," then who does?  If no one can govern himself, then how can anyone govern someone else?  Why would anyone think that an "elite" knows better than himself how to live his own life?

Here is the Great Emancipator, the Republic's sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln in his seventh and last debate with Stephen Douglas, held at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858, speaking simple, clear, self-evident, moral truth about one of our basic, God-given, unalienable rights:

"It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride[*] the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."

*bestride means "to ride" or "to dominate."