The Great Emancipator. Although I'm a big fan of Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln was probably the greatest President who ever served in office. We Hoosiers should be proud that he spent his formative years here in this state. Happy Birthday, Abe.
2 comments:
Reagan, sure. Roosevelt was a big government, congress can catch up with me later, international adventurist.
Lincoln maintained troops on foreign soil to incite the misnamed 'Civil War', suspended habeas corpus, was losing the war against the southern states until Grant got command, he set up a central bank/fiat currency system, and made proclamations over a country that he was not in charge of (ie: freeing the slaves only in states that were in active rebellion against the union). While the South was morally wrong, they probably had the right to voluntarily disassociate from the United States and Lincoln might have been more concerned about the loss of tax revenue and reputation.
Lots of nuance to the history here that is long forgotten as Lincoln helped America become the only country (??) that ended slavery through non-peaceful means. The rest of the world didn't need a war to do it although the other side of the argument is the strong influence Southern representatives had in the U.S. Congress.
They are all 'nitpickable' but, RELATIVE TO THE OTHERS, give me Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Taft, Coolidge or Reagan (minus the explosion in the debt and foreign interventions) any day. Reagan gets credit largely for saying all the right things and educating a whole generation on the evils of big government even if everything he did wasn't quite perfect. :-)
Opinions will vary.
Wonder what Obama would have thought of this. Afterall, he traveled Lincoln's route, used the Lincoln Bible for the inaugural, etc. I ran across this link if your readers are interested.
http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=12110
With this being Lincoln's birthday a more realistic look at him is in order. His own words condemn him:
"I have no disposition to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together on terms of respect, social and political equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there should be a superiority somewhere, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position;"
"I will say then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor have I ever been in favor of making voters of the negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry with white people...there must be the position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any other man am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man."
Darren Wolfe is the former Eastern Vice Chair of the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Puerto Rico and lived in Venezuela for seven years, including the first year of Chavez' rule. His articles have appeared in OpEdNews.com, the (more...)
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