Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT
when i fabricate a quote, and say that abe lincoln was a liberal and that robert e lee was conservative, then let’s talk about what a must i am.
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Poor victim,
Republicans are fixated on the idea that their party is connected to the party of President Lincoln, whose party also bore the name Republican. During this election season, they keep evoking the hallowed connection again saying “the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln.” Republicans want to imagine that there is a grand tradition between the Republican Party of the Reagan era and Abraham Lincoln’s federal interventionist party of 1861.
The Republican Party has spent decades shouting, among other hollow slogans, that big government is bad and small government is good. They contend that small government is morally virtuous and good for liberty and freedom—epithets from Barry Goldwater’s 1960 Conscience of a Conservative, Movement Conservative’s manifesto. And, one must ask: whose freedom? But, if Republicans understood that Lincoln’s party is the origin of the modern, interventionist, administrative state, they would condemn it as socialist.
Big government began with President Lincoln’s Republican Party, which in fundamental ways is the progenitor of the modern Democratic Party of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lincoln’s party was not one of small, non-intrusive government, minimal taxation, traditional social mores, and white supremacy. It was the party of strong federal intervention and moral directive against the institution of slavery and Southern secession, the party of federally funded higher education, federally funded national transportation, and social welfare. The radical Republicans of Lincoln’s Party with their reform zeal and moral interventionist vision would be to the left of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Lincoln’s administration gave us big government: first income tax, first national banking system, big bureaus like the Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Pensions, an explosion of government contracting for the war, Pacific Railroad Act for federally funded intercontinental railroad, the Morrill Act for federally funded higher education (the land grant universities that changed America).
Lincoln’s administration and its legacy brought welfare to a persecuted and disadvantaged minority. It also issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing constitutional rights for every citizen, Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing suffrage, Freedman’s Bureau to aid newly freed African Americans.
interventionist, administrative state, they would condemn it as socialist.
Big government began with President Lincoln’s Republican Party, which in fundamental ways is the progenitor of the modern Democratic Party of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lincoln’s party was not one of small, non-intrusive government, minimal taxation, traditional social mores, and white supremacy. It was the party of strong federal intervention and moral directive against the institution of slavery and Southern secession, the party of federally funded higher education, federally funded national transportation, and social welfare. The radical Republicans of Lincoln’s Party with their reform zeal and moral interventionist vision would be to the left of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Lincoln’s administration gave us big government: first income tax, first national banking system, big bureaus like the Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Pensions, an explosion of government contracting for the war, Pacific Railroad Act for federally funded intercontinental railroad, the Morrill Act for federally funded higher education (the land grant universities that changed America).
Polina Barskova, Masha Gessen, & Catherine Ciepiela at Greenlight Bookstore
lithub.com
Lincoln’s administration and its legacy brought welfare to a persecuted and disadvantaged minority. It also issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing constitutional rights for every citizen, Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing suffrage, Freedman’s Bureau to aid newly freed African Americans.
President Trump’s failure to understand the history of the federal government’s role in times of crisis has cost the nation greatly.
Today’s Republicans, with their passion for states’ rights, their protection of the white supremacist segments of American society, their aversion to ethical federal pro action, have more ideological connections with the slaveholding southern Democrats of the 1860s than they do with Lincoln’s party.
President Franklin Roosevelt continued the Lincoln tradition because he understood that a well-organized federal bureaucracy was essential to rescuing the nation from an extraordinary crisis in 1932. Unregulated and corrupt capitalism had run the economic and financial infrastructure into the ground. FDR’s New Deal brought the power of federal leadership and the administrative state to a new place. His financial regulations and public work projects stabilized the economy and provided jobs and relief for millions.
The Works Progress Administration, Social Security, and the Fair Labor Standards Act were just some of the innovative and nation-saving programs FDR created. The New Deal put people back to work, rescued capitalism, and restored faith in the American Way.
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