Actually, he was. Conservatives are missing a great opportunity here, by pointing out that while Lincoln was a genuine liberal (and the first Republican president), the people who aren’t liberals are the leftists who call themselves that today. They stole the label decades ago to try to dress up their politics of envy and redistribution in prettier clothes.
28 thoughts on “Was Lincoln A Liberal?”
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Lincoln wasn’t a conservative
1) He grew the Government
2) He raised taxes
3) He opened the courts to more
4) He put human rights over Property rights
5) He was unconcerned about property damage in the south
Who said he was a conservative, you moron?
Who says you are a conservative?
I don’t know. I certainly don’t, you moron.
One of the problems progressives have is that they always focus on “growing” the government, regardless of what size the government happens to be.
Lincoln was elected in an era of out of control spending, with federal revenues rising from 1.3 percent of GDP in 1858 to 3.5 percent of GDP in 1865. It spiked to 6.4 percent in 1866, then fell back down after the initial phases of Reconstruction.
Darned revenue widget.
I think most conservatives would quite happy if federal government only consumed 15% of US
GNP- particularly if during period of major war.
Nor would conservative have too much problem with 40% of GNP during WWII- because there was major world war going on at that time.
Nor would conservatives have much problem having to spend about 20% GNP in Cold War.
What they would be concerned with is whether such spending of national treasure was required, and used in effective manner so as bring to end to war in as short of time as possible.
So therefore Reagan increase in military spending which was done with goal of ending the Cold War, was something that conservatives supported.
And in regard to purpose defeating the USSR it was only thing Lefties did not want to spend globs of money on, and the sole reason why they demonize Reagan.
But a conservative does not want fight wars which are not necessary. So does not want to get involved in wars which are not in America national interest. But it’s difficult to argue that WWII or American civil war was not in national interests.
Now if you were a conservative and didn’t think the war with Soviets was winnable, or the restoring the Union was possible, then it is reasonable to oppose such enormous spending.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/07/government-spending-as-a-percentage-of-gdp-2/
Well, #5 alone would get him thrown out of the Democratics – after being pilloried.
It translates to “Knew how to actually fight a war.” And that’s forbidden.
The Democratic Party has always been, and will always be, the Party of slavery.
Would Jefferson Davis salute President Obama?
Maybe Obama’s white half.
And before you throw the racism card at me…
Stupid question gets an answer fit for it.
By the way, the last presidential primary for the Republicans had both a woman and a black man, and prior to that a woman was up for vice president in the general election.
Regardless of what you think of those candidates’ personal qualifications, you can’t say the Republicans don’t put up people from the “minority” groups. Roughly the same distribution of minority candidates as the Democrats.
Oh, I know, that just blows your mind. You can’t scream that the Republicans hate Obama because of his race anymore when the party puts up non-male and non-white candidates.
How many Delegates did Cain get at the 2012 convention?
How many Delegates did Bachmann get at the 2012 convention?
They ran as individuals, the party hated them.
That wasn’t because he was black and she was a woman, you moron.
Even if that is true, it wasn’t for their race or sex. It was for their individual qualifications. You know, just like MLK wanted.
People liked Cain quite a bit. His campaign imploded due to allegations of an affair. Was that story true? Who put it out there, a Republican or a Democrat? We may never know.
What didn’t damage his campaign, is being black.
Are you ever going to stop asking stupid questions?
You don’t have to answer that, it was rhetorical. We know the answer is “no.”
“Would Jefferson Davis salute President Obama?”
Perhaps. They are ideological soul mates. The one was white, and wanted to keep blacks and poor whites in thrall. The other wants to do the same.
Democrats view the world in these racial stereotypes. That is why it doesn’t fit their world view that people can not be a racist and not be a Democrat or that Sunni and Shia sometimes work together. Their racial constructs impede an accurate assessment of reality.
The modern Republican party has been successful in making “liberal” a negative label in American politics. It would take a lot of work to change that.
No, it’s the Democrats who made it a negative label, by first stealing it, and then implementing awful policies in its name.
However we got here, we’re now at a point where Republicans use the liberal label as a term of derision. Why would they take on the burden of explaining to the public that “liberal” means something other than what they have been using it to mean these past decades, that it’s actually a positive term, and that it rightly belongs to the GOP?
Classical liberalism was about freedom for all. What passes for modern liberalism is the expansion of government powers into all aspects of our lives. That’s what we’re deriding and we have good cause to do so. We’re not laughing with you, we’re laughing at you for being so ignorant about damn near everything.
Jim,
As much as Wikipedia sucks, sometimes it gets it right.
Here is the definition of classical liberalism from there:
“primary emphasis is placed on securing the freedom of the individual by limiting the power of the government…. advocates civil liberties with a limited government under the rule of law, private property, and belief in laissez-faire economic policy”
Please tell me which party, Republican or Democrat, more closely relates to that definition?
Let’s run down the checklist for Democrats:
1) Civil liberties with limited government under rule of law: Democrats violate this on all counts. The language that rights have to be “restricted for the common good” I read over and over from leftist commentators bears this out. No right to free speech except as the government defines it. The government wanting to define who is and isn’t a legitimate journalist. The Democrats trying to define what gun I can buy. All in contravention to the plain language of the Constitution. Also, limited government has no meaning to the current Democrat party. Rule of law doesn’t mean anything either, otherwise Obama wouldn’t be delaying the ACA left and right. It would be implemented hard and good as written, no deviations of any kind.
2) Private property: Democrats basically take the same stance as communists here. All private property is subject to the taking where desired by a base 51% vote of the Democrats. No respect for that it is the private person’s property, not the groups property, regardless of the vote.
3) belief in laissez-faire economic policy: Does this even need explanation? If the Democrats even slightly subscribed to this philosophy there wouldn’t be such things as the stimulus, endless welfare and food stamps on the backs of the working population, ACA killing off 2 million jobs of productivity, endless regulations that do nothing except show how much Democrats hate anyone who succeeds in life, Keynesian economics in general, and on and on.
So, yeah, it isn’t the Democrats who are liberals. Not by a long shot.
it isn’t the Democrats who are liberals
Tell that to the Republicans who’ve been inveighing mightily against “liberal tax and spend Democrats” for the last forty years. It would be fun to watch the GOP decide that being a liberal is actually a good thing, and that from now on they are going to proudly label themselves as such. But that’s about as likely as Apple deciding to rename the Macintosh as the “PC”. It isn’t a matter of the word’s “true” or historical meaning, it’s a matter of branding.
Tell that to the Republicans who’ve been inveighing mightily against “liberal tax and spend Democrats” for the last forty years.
There’s a difference between the definition of capital-L Liberal and lowercase-l liberal. In fact, there are at least 4 distinct definitions of the word, only one of which is political in nature.
For instance, if I were to apply a liberal coat of wax to my car before buffing it out, I doubt that anyone would even consider that I was washing and waxing my car in a political manner.
The “liberal” in “liberal tax and spend” refers to the generous degree of taxing and spending, not necessarily to the political undertones or political motivations of the taxing and spending.
OK Jim, I’ll play your word game.
The Democrats and progressives have stolen the word and changed it’s meaning to be essentially synonymous with socialism if not outright communism. That definition is what is being derided.
Going back to the original definition, the Democrats are not liberals.
It wasn’t the Republicans who took the idea “let’s try -new- things!” and applied it to failed -old- things with nice little scientific namecards stuck on front.
If State-humpers like Jim call themselves “liberals (and they do),” it’s no wonder the l-word got a bad reputation.