Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 2:34am

Top Ten Reasons Why Liberals Would Have Hated Abraham Lincoln

The Lincoln (2012) film is coming out on Blu-ray and DVD on March 26, 2013 and I can’t wait to get my copy.  Faithful readers of this blog know that I immensely enjoyed the film.  Go here to read my review.

The film I enjoyed.  The attempt by liberals involved with the film  to steal Lincoln, a very partisan Republican, as one of their own, I did not find amusing, except in a bleakly dark fashion.  Go to here to read a post I wrote to refute the contention of the director of the film, Steven Spielberg, that the parties had switched positions since Lincoln’s day.  Actually modern liberals would have hated Abraham Lincoln, and here are ten reasons why:

1.  Marriage Equality-Gay Marriage was obviously not an issue in Lincoln’s day, but I know he would have been against “Marriage Equality” , the most vacuous political slogan in many a moon, because he was against “marriage equality” for polygamists.  Not recalled much today, but the Republicans ran opposed, as they said in their 1856 platform, to “those twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy”.  Lincoln signed the Morill Anti-Bigamy Act on July 8, 1862.

2.  Military-Industrial Complex-The first example of a Military-Industrial Complex in American history was the mighty war machine assembled by Lincoln to crush the Confederacy.  One can imagine the outraged Code Pink demonstrations.

3.  Catholics-One does not have to peruse Leftist web sites for lengthy periods before usually finding examples of raw anti-Catholic bigotry.  Go here to read about what Lincoln thought of the anti-Catholic bigots of his day.

4.  Separation of Church and State-Imagine, just imagine, the outrage of liberals if a President were to use the White House grounds to host a fund raiser to build a Catholic Church.  Yet, that is precisely what Lincoln did on July 4, 1864.  Go here to read about it.

5.  Dead White Males-Lincoln did not regard the Founding Fathers as dead white males, but champions for human liberty as he ringingly proclaimed them on August 17, 1858:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. [Applause.] Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began — so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built. (This statement also indicates where Lincoln would likely stand in our current debate on abortion.  Lincoln could always see the common humanity that unites all those “stamped with the Divine image”.)

6.  God Talk-Modern liberals would be appalled by any President who mentioned God as frequently as Lincoln did:

 Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.

7.  God the Punisher-What can one imagine the reaction of contemporary liberals would be to a president who declared that a war that the nation was fighting was God’s punishment and that it would go on as long as God willed?

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

8.  Malice Towards None and Charity For All-  Lincoln viewed the Confederate States as never having left the Union.  As soon as ten percent of the voters making up the voter rolls of any Confederate State, based upon the voter rolls of 1860, had taken the oath of allegiance and formed a state government that abolished slavery, he was willing to have that new state government assume civil authority and elect members to Congress.  Radical Republicans bitterly opposed this plan and wanted to both  punish the South and ensure the civil rights of the newly freed slaves.  Indeed, it is difficult to see how the rights of the newly freed slaves could have been protected under Lincoln’s plan, although I am sure that Lincoln would have attempted to do so.  If Lincoln had lived, I believe his second term would have ended with all the former Confederate States resuming their seats in Congress.  Sadly, the newly freed slaves would likely have found their rights largely disregarded by these new state governments.  If Lincoln had not died from the bullet wound he received one hundred and forty-eight years ago, it is likely he would today be regarded as a great American villain by liberals.

9.  Fly Over Country-Lincoln was a lawyer who lived in Central Illinois, a denizen of what liberal elites on the West and East coasts mockingly refer to as fly over country. Not only that, he never lost his rural mannerisms that today would make him a figure of laughter for urban liberals, tolerant of everything except what they hate, and rural white men tend to head that list.

10. America the Hope of Humanity-Contemporary liberals have absolutely nothing in common with a man capable of uttering this sentence:

We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

Liberals say they love Lincoln only because they know almost nothing about him and understand him as poorly as they do the nation he cherished and saved.

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Jay Anderson
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 5:29am

I can’t believe you left out the number one primary reason liberals would have hated Lincoln no matter what he may have done – his party affiliation. The “R” next to a politician’s name is to liberals like garlic to a vampire.

On the other hand, a “D” next to a politician’s name offers one unlimited political immunity with liberals.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 7:00am

Spot on. The entire “the two parties have switched” fallacy has been uttered by people who are simply bone dry ignorant about politics and history. Were that our kids taught actual history and not mythology they might have a better understanding of the man, Lincoln.

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 7:11am

I think it would stand to reason that Lincoln would be heartbroken about the slide to the left that much of his beloved Republican Party has taken.

You have many republicans on the wrong side of many of the things you listed.

Wasn’t it a republican president (Ike) that coined the term ” military industrial complex”?

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 7:27am

Wasn’t it a republican president (Ike) that coined the term ” military industrial complex”?

1. The ratio of military spending to domestic product during the eight years after the Korean War was nearly twice what it is today.

2. Military conscription was in effect (bar one year) from 1940 to 1973. This had no precedent in American history.

3. During Eisenhower’s first 27 years in the military, the ratio of military spending to domestic product (deducting the 1st World War and a few years thereafter) was around about 1% of domestic product. At no time after 1940 was it ever less than about 6.5% of domestic product.

4. The propensity to spend on the military has proved responsive to external circumstances. The military and the aerospace industry have never developed into the sort of entrenched rent-seeking combine that you see in various areas (public employee unions, various institutions of the schoolteacher trade (schools of education, accrediting bodies, and, of course, unions and the very bureaucracies themselves), higher education, real-estate development, agribusiness). This was not clear yet in 1961.

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 7:43am

Art,

I’m not saying that Ike would have approved of what are seeing today with the wholesale gutting of our military. I’m surprised you left out his threatening to use that very same “military industrial complex” to use nukes in Korea, Problem was the phraseology he used. It may not have been clear in 1961.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 9:25am

I do not think our military has been gutted wholesale. It increases and declines in comparative size in accordance with circumstance. It now consumes about 5.7% of domestic product, which is adequate.

Just to be clear, I am pointing out that when Eisenhower used the phrase “military-industrial complex” the context and referent was quite different from what it has been at any time in the last 40 years. That is what makes invocations of Eisenhower by the peace-and-justice set invalid.

Given the comparative size of the military in 1956, it boggles the mind that the brass thought it ‘underfunded’. (The events of the last 50-odd years would suggest the military was adequately funded at that time).

Historyshowsus
Historyshowsus
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 1:08pm

Lets not forget that he also suspended habeas corpus, suppressed free press (confiscated printing presses), jailed newspaper editors without trial for sedition (Gitmo anyone?) and indulged in massive wire tapping of the telegraph system.
But he also confiscated citizens firearms which the left would have loved.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 1:19pm

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

Harry Piper
Harry Piper
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 2:03pm

Have you read “Team of Rivals”? I knew nothing about Lincoln before I picked it up, but after I read it I think of him as something like the model politician. Excellent character, could deal fairly with even his worst enemies and had a profound view of God’s actions in history (though he remained a quasi-Christian at best).

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 3:24pm

The number of Army battalions were reduced by half from the Korean War.

The ratio of military spending to domestic product during the Korean War was 0.145, or equivalent to the general mobilization during the 1st World War. I have been rummaging through old issues of the Statistical Abstract of the United States. The service history of American men born during the years running from 1930 to 1938 was as follows:

55% Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines
9% Guard and Reserves
24% disqualified upon examination
12% divers

About the same shares would apply to those in the 1926, 1927, 1928, and 1929 cohorts (who generally did not have WW II service. I do admire my father’s contemporaries and the next cohorts down, but I am not sure how sustainable this is over time.

Mary De Voe
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 5:06pm

“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”
Lincoln suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus through Congress. Congress could return the writ intact after the war.

Jon
Jon
Friday, March 22, AD 2013 6:54pm

I have to say Lincoln was wrong on number ten. The church is the last best hope for the world. I don’t see America playing that role at all. It may have been the best country in which to thrive for a while, and a relatively short time on the historical stage. But I don’t see it as some kind of peculiar hope these days. Perhaps I’m viewing things too darkly, but it seems to me we’ll go the way of all nations. We rose pretty quickly and we’ll probably fall rather quickly too. I find no reason to think we’ll escape the trajectory that has been common to all great powers.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Sunday, March 24, AD 2013 8:37am

Lincoln was also a staunch opponent of the cardinal principle of liberal economics, Free Trade. “I am in favour of a National Bank; I am in favour of the internal improvement system and a high Protective Tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles.” (From Abraham Lincoln’s first political speech, 1832.)

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, March 24, AD 2013 2:06pm

Lincoln was also a staunch opponent of the cardinal principle of liberal economics, Free Trade. “I am in favour of a National Bank; I am in favour of the internal improvement system and a high Protective Tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles.” (From Abraham Lincoln’s first political speech, 1832.)

It is not the cardinal principle. It is a policy recommendation derived from microeconomic insights.

Prior to 1913, the federal constitution required that direct tax collections be apportioned among the states. That made the imposition of direct taxes quite cumbersome and IIRC none were ever enacted. The federal government was proportionately small and subsisted on imposts, excises, sales of federal property, and the sale of postage stamps. “Internal improvements” refer to public works; whether or not the federal government would build and maintain interregional roads was a matter of some controversy. Whether or not latter-day economists would recommend it, a tariff was how you financed the government.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Sunday, March 24, AD 2013 2:38pm

The perennial “high, protective tariff” (HPT) was not motivated by a need for federal revenue. It was deployed to foster northern economic/industrial growth and development by diverting cash (making English manufactured goods more costly than New England’s) from “Cotton King” south.

The HPT was the main weapon wielded by the north/federal government in the economic civil war of the first 60 years of the nineteenth century.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, March 25, AD 2013 9:03am

The perennial “high, protective tariff” (HPT) was not motivated by a need for federal revenue.

1. Sales of federal property constitute a liquidation of assets, properly applied to debt retirement (whether they were or not I leave to Mr. McClarey).

2. The sale of postage stamps constitutes a user charge. If you price according to average costs, you have no profits over time. If you price according to marginal costs, you may have a profit depending on the cost curve. The retained earnings of the postal service would be properly applied to investment in plant and equipment for mail delivery. If you need to finance the postal service deficits, you require another revenue source.

3. Which leaves you with one or another sort of indirect tax: tariffs, excises on particular commodities, general sales taxes, &c. General sales taxes penalize consumers in general; tariffs penalize consumers of imported goods and (indirectly) those dependent on foreign markets; excises penalize consumers of the commodities taxed. Any tax imposed brings in revenue. It is just that different taxes have different distributional effects. You seem to be arguing that the interests of those involved in foreign trade trump the interests of consumers of liquor and tobacco. If you would care to elaborate….

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